Slam Dunk Argument Against An Omnimax God?

Great Debates
61

I disagree that one aspect of knowledge is direct experience. I think instead that one aspect of knowledge is to know what the direct experience feels like. Only the latter is knowledge; the former is action or something, but not knowledge.

Now, personally I think that knowledge is information, and that information is, in theory, transferrable. Supposing I develop a brain zeroxer, or get bitten by a radioactive gerbil and develop the ability to read minds. Supposed using one of the above methods I access your brain and copy the experience of a fight you had last week into my own brain. When I access the memory, I’ll naturally experience it as you do, in first person, remembering the feeling of the emotions you felt at the time. It’ll be like I experienced the fight myself - without having ever done so.

If I do this with your whole brain, I’ll be able to know what it’s like to be you -at least, as well as you know what it’s like to be you. All the direct experiences you have had? Everything they’ve done for you will be available for me. Because the experience is a separate thing from the knowledge of it.

62

Well, one of the world’s major religions *does *teach that God has the experience of being fully human. . .

63

That would be hijacking, actually. Kinda like we’re doing now. Coming into a thread just to say, “Your _____ sucks!” is threadshitting. Kinda like you did up there.

64

Only if they are Republicans. Ask any Democrat.

65

Be fair - we don’t accuse them of being tolerant, liberal, innocent, or (generally speaking) virgins.

66

I didn’t come into the thread merely to do that; note that I was among the first respondents.

67

It’s impossible for YOU to know an emotion without feeling it; it’s not impossible for God. He is not bound by logic, causality, or any of the other things upon which such an argument may be based.

In other words, he can create a rock too heavy for him to life. And he can lift it, despite it being too heavy for him to lift.

68

Extremely good answer. Profound.

The nonsense atheists tend to offer up as attacks against God are the intellectual equivalent of your five-year-old trying to outsmart you and out think you. What monumental hubris.

Consider the fact that after a physicist got the Nobel Prize for proving that the electron was a particle, a few years later, his son got the Nobel Prize for proving that the electron was a wave.

So who was right? YES!

It’s not an either/or proposition or question.

Some things are beautifully strange. In fact, a lot of things are.
And here’s the clue: They didn’t just MAKE themselves that way.

69

My pet unicorn agrees.

70

There is no such father/son pair of Nobel winners. This is easily checkable at the Nobel website, which lists all six father/son pairs and tells what they won for. Only two of the pairs were pairs of physicists, and none of the four were given the prize for proving the electron was a particle, and none for proving it was a wave.

It is a better use of your time and ours not to bring easily checkable falsehoods to the table like this.

You are right–something’s being a particle is not exclusive of its being a wave.

But something’s being a particle is exclusive of its being a non-particle. (Note that a wave is not necessarily a non-particle. Physics has shown how this can be.)

In fact, the thing to say about the electron is that it’s not a particle or a wave–it’s a thing with both particle-like properties and wave-like properties. There’s no contradiction in this.

There is a contradiction in the claim that God can do somthing logically impossible.

71

Yeah! Stick to vague unverifiable claims!

72

I don’t follow you. Do you mean something like “Why couldn’t a near-Omnimax God … be a God such as Deists believe in?”? Otherwise you seems to be suggesting that God believe in a further God …
Anyway assuming that’s your meaning, Wikipedia defines Deism thusly:

Impossible to argue against of course, as there is no possible observation that can distinguish between that and no god at all. What the point of such a belief is I don’t know, to me it seems like agnosticism - an inability to completely let go out of beliefs drummed in during one’s upbringing or prevalent in one’s culture or environment, perhaps out of fear of going it alone, or loyalty.

Yes, the formulation of Epicurus is hard to improve on:

73

Absolutely there’s hubris here. But it’s not where you think it is.

Atheists aren’t making attacks against God for the same reason you don’t make attacks against leprechauns. You’d be insane to attack something you don’t believe exists.

No, atheists make “attacks” (arguments is a better word) against those that believe in God. Sometimes the believers make the mistake you make: they confuse themselves with God, and think that they’re omniscient and possessing of perfect knowledge.

If you want to use the five-year-old analogy, the atheist’s arguments are the intellectual equivalent of a five-year-old trying to out-think another five-year-old in a discussion about The President or Santa Claus or something.

The monumental hubris comes about when you think that somehow you’ve got better knowledge of God than the atheist does, when you think that, unlike the atheist, you’re not just struggling along trying to make the best sense you can out of an incomplete set of data. Monumental hubris indeed.

The most convincing argument against the omnimax God that I’ve heard goes something like this:

Omnimax God goes to the fridge wanting something to drink. “Hmm,” He wonders. “Will I have beer or milk?”

He’s omniscient, so he knows absolutely that he will have beer.

Can he, knowing what he’ll choose, choose to have milk instead?

If he can, then he’s not omniscient.
If he cannot, then he’s not omnipotent.

Not only is he not omnipotent: he’s less powerful than I am, because I can change my mind at the last second.

74

You don’t even need that “not bound by logic” stuff. A sufficiently intelligent non-god mortal being could know all there is to know about an emotion without feeling it. Maybe even some humans could.

75

I know! Atheists need to grow up and start believing in the invisible man in the sky that hears you think and gets mad when you touch yourself.

76

Well, if God can do the logically impossible then He could stop us from hurting one another while simultaneously preserving our free will. It’s logically impossible, but if He could do logically impossible things then it wouldn’t be a problem. Why, then, if God is capable of performing logically impossible acts, did he allow such atrocities as the Holocaust and the Spanish Inquisition to take place? Is God a monster?

77

If He feels everything at once, He is not all-loving. He is part-loving. As you said, He could feel all things with love conquering all other emotions. But that’s still not all-loving and therefore not omnimax, technically speaking.

78

(Repeating my point) Deists believe that great watches don’t need to be repaired constantly: they are created and then left to operate without intervention. Similarly, God creates the universe and then, in His perfection, moves on to other matters. I understand that this theory was popular during the Enlightenment.

There’s no reason to believe that an omnimax God would leave behind fingerprints. Just because a God can do something, doesn’t imply that He will.

Psycho-sociological argument: only partly substantive. Historically, it’s false insofar as the Enlightenment is concerned. Substantively, theists typically claim that God doesn’t leave fingerprints because of a) it’s a mystery! and b) He wants scope for free will. POE probably defeats that IMHO, but that’s another argument.

ETA: Cort: I wasn’t aware that POE implies doubly for the logic-bending pretzel God. Interesting.

79

I would argue that this like every other notation about “God” given here is culturally bound, in either the “Christian” or “Anti-Christian” preconception of “God”. If you break free from these cultural phenomena and basically European influenced ideas of “God” then you begin to free yourself from some of the cultural and linguistic hazards of all of the argument’s so far given. If you adopt the concept of the Hindu structure you find that our soul’s (for lack of a better translation) go on indefinitely. There for birth, life and death are nothing more than a stage of development. And every argument given to this point is useless. The stupidity of the immovable rock is just a level of development away from being moved, the argument of perfection, is believed to be based on current state of your mind, which is not yet perfect, there for your language is insufficient by definition to begin to make the argument of perfection. Consequently none of the things above apply. The omni concept is in the final stage of development and understanding, and a parent allows the child to learn to trust, by telling the child “no the stove is hot”, but does not stop the child from touching it, to prove to the child the truth of the concept (note not the words – they may change with the language) God (The truth) allows the development of self will, and freedom of choice, to expand the ability to learn, sometime a truth, sometimes as an example to others what not to do. Those intelligent enough to grasp the idea of gravity wont jump off the mile high cliff, those that don’t, serve as an example of “what should not be done” to others. Evil, is merely a convenience to define what we don’t like, but makes room for others to grow and possibly thrive. You might argue that Darwin was the interpreter of the rules, for how god improves the life forms here on earth. If you or others around you were never to die, would you learn? The consequences of choice, create situations of advantage or disadvantage. Make the wrong choice and your life ends, but your example becomes one of what not to do to the observer, adding a data point in the collection of intelligence pool.
Kick these ideas around for a bit.

80

But he’s able to do both; and for both to be non-contradictory. He knows that he will have beer, and remains correct when he chooses to have milk. Logic simply doesn’t work when you’re talking about [for want of a better word, although it always sounds patronizing to me) “magic”.