Omniscient & omnipotent?

Discussion in 'Religion' started by fess, Feb 19, 2020.

  1. davewhite04 Valued Senior Member

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    Zeus is still King of the Gods to this day. Lost his crown for a while.
     
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  3. Hapsburg Hellenistic polytheist Valued Senior Member

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    No. I believe the gods sprang, many at once, after the physical universe began.
     
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  5. davewhite04 Valued Senior Member

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    Titans first, in this universe, then the gods.
     
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  7. kx000 Valued Senior Member

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    Because you know your going to do it, that's fate.
     
  8. Laser Eyes Registered Senior Member

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    First of all, is God saying in the Bible that he is both?

    Secondly, why cannot God choose not to know something if he wishes?
     
  9. pluto2 Banned Valued Senior Member

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    It doesn't take a genius to realize that all religion is a big joke.

    If a superpowerful God existed then this world would have much much better place to live in. We could actually be living in an interplanetary transhumanist utopia by now.

    For starters there would be no poverty and people wouldn't die young because a superpowerful God could make sure that bad things such as poverty, hunger, depression and diseases just will never happen to people.
     
  10. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    How does that follow?

    Do you assume "super powerful" and "micro managing" are synonymous?

    I am super powerful from the PoV of the moths butterflies in my garden, does that mean they do not fear death and instead all live a life of luxury?
     
  11. arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

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    Interesting that an all-powerful God could create or destroy a universe, stop time or reverse it, maybe make it loop.

    Such a God allows the anthropic version of knowledge to explore certain hypothetical domains, a parallel world, running backwards.

    But if an all-powerful being can play with time or the universe, why would it bother letting this one exist?
     
  12. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Because God, in any form, cannot refuse knowing something for which it is causally responsible.
    That is why Gods are presumed to be omniscient and omnipotent......

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  13. arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

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    An omnipotent being could choose to remember how they created a universe, or not. They could decide whether to have any memory at all, if they choose a universe they know all about when creating it, then forgetting about it. Since they know for the necessary amount of time what it will do, they know they don't need to know anything else.

    But if you introduce the question of whether the being wants to be able to change things, then it will need to have a memory, or it will need the knowledge of those things it wants to change, and when it will.

    So it seems that giving an omnipotent being omniscient knowledge is the only way to resolve the paradox of change, or of changeable futures for this being. Therefore there is no change, or something.

    It's a physics joke. What do you get when you give an omnipotent creator omniscience? A universe and change.
     
    Last edited: Sep 29, 2020
  14. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Self induced amnesia? Neat

    So can this self induced amnesia be set to be selective? Can it be set to cancel and normal memory restored?

    Bummer if induce yourself to forget and the fogetness extends to the "Who am I?” stage

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  15. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Divine Alzheimer's disease? Is there a doctor in the house?

    There is a saying that the "hardest thing to do is to forgive yourself" for the mistakes you made.
    If that is true, how could God live with itself "knowing" all the terrible things it is responsible for?
     
  16. arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

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    An omnipotent being decides to create a universe. How did it decide? It must know something about the universe it will make. The knowledge it has is theoretical.

    So why, after the creation event, would such a being need to change anything this universe will become? Why doesn't it know something might need to be corrected, it made a mistake? Wouldn't that be obvious before the universe is created, so it wouldn't make any mistakes? But it would have to be absolutely certain the universe wouldn't need any future corrections; it would need perfect, absolute knowledge of it.

    If so, it follows that once created, the universe can be forgotten.
    Ahem, but Landauer's theorem says that you can't erase information, only convert it into heat.
     
  17. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    "Once it has begun, it is that way......"

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  18. arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

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    Another take is an omnipotent being that has no memory of what it does. The blind creator.
    But the thing about creation is it implies either knowing or not knowing "what will happen", i.e. a creator that can predict. This doesn't obviously hold when the creator is only omnipotent and has no knowledge or memory.
     
  19. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    But without knowledge or memory the creator is not sentient and we return to the quasi-intelligent mathematical function, which does not require memory or knowledge.....

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  20. arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

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    So it follows there is a paradox with a creator who "knows how to create", and well enough it can forget about its creations. The paradox is right there in the word forget.
    Does it still know how to create this universe or not? Could it bang out another one or two the same way?
     
  21. arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

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    That's why the omniscience-omnipotence debate isn't over.

    Suppose you go with the blind creator of universes hypothesis. There must have been enough "creation freedom" for this being because it got around to creating the one we are in, among the unfathomably many other creations. There must be enough "creation stuff" around so it can do whatever the hell it likes, and time isn't a factor either, since there is no reason to assume the existence in this universe of time, is true otherwise; there is no otherwise anyway. Not for us.
     
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  22. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, but that's assuming creation is a consciously motivated act. It isn't.
    Creation is a probabilistic "function" of the spacetime geometry.
    It does not need to know how to create. Creation (evolution) is not an act but a function, a probabilistic function, a mathematical function.

    Function
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Function_(mathematics)

    More formally;
    https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Function.html
     
    Last edited: Oct 1, 2020
  23. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Yep, subjectively, gods were born with the evolution of observable mathematical "patterns" (regularities) in nature. Gods are symbolic representations of Universal "functions".

    These self-evident regularities have led to the misconception of an Intelligent Designer, a "conscious intelligence".

    The reality is that gods are the expressed results of universal mathematical functions.

    The emergence of the Universe was a quasi-intelligent self-referential function. No motive, just "probabilistic causality"
     

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