Ah, I see the misunderstanding. This is a grammatically valid but misleading phrasing of an IF THEN clause. It’s my bad.
I’m not assuming X, and I don’t think the evidential POE makes that assumption.
I have added a “very likely” here, but that’s something argued elsewhere in my post. I don’t think “very likely” is an assumption of the argument either; it’s pretty much the conclusion.
I still would experience “waning faith”. Anyone would. I’m not sure why you’re arguing against this.
If someone presented me with a program that has solved chess, and it demonstrates that ability by winning 50 out of 50 games, then I might be inclined to have “faith” that even in a game where it’s getting its ass handed to it, it will nonetheless win.
But that’s not analogous to anything here. The analogous situation is a program claimed or believed by some to be perfect that is playing its first game of chess. And all indications are, it’s playing a terrible game. It’s reasonable to lose confidence in the program.
btw Your mention that we might not be able to keep score of evilness, smacks of the other way of biting the bullet that I alluded to – that only god knows what evilness is.
This has consequences of its own, which are unpalatable for many.
Either we have a reasonable idea of what evilness is, or we don’t. Either way, there are arguments to face.
You don’t get the point. It’s easy to arbitrarily define god as self-contradictory - “Hey Christians! Your god has a nose, and simultaneously doesn’t have a nose, so he’s self-contradictory and doesn’t exist! Hyuk hyuk hyuk!” This is simple but a waste of time; if one wants to disprove as wide as swath of god-definitions as possible they have to focus on the definitions of the god that don’t get tripped up on the easy hurdles. That is, you start with a god that otherwise sounds viable, even if that requires one to whittle down “omnipotence” to merely have the usual definition (rather than a stupid one), and then you take that otherwise-viable god and use the POE to grind him to peices too.
Focusing on the gods that are inherently silly to start with and ignoring the others lets the others slip by unopposed. I prefer opposing all of them that can be snookered by any correct and rational argument. Which in this case requires you to limit yourself to ones that you can entertain belief in long enough to apply the POE to them and see what it does.
As I said, I disagree - that’s a freakish definition of omnipotence that nobody uses, which is itself absurd. Using usual definitions I find no conflict between omnipotence and a god making his own choices - which is all that you’re talking about. Choosing to refrain from acting is not the same as being unable to act and does not violate omnipotence.
Based on your mention of it you seem to believe in “free will” as something unbounded by rules, which is probably your problem. Presuming you’re not using some bizarre definition like randomity, having free will means nothing more than being a slave to your own thoughts and preferences and opinions.
So what that that mean for Mr Omnimax? Well, he’s omnibenevolent - but that’s not a rule set, not really. It’s a description - a description of the entity’s personality. That is, an omnimax god will never want to cause or allow unnecessary evil. This is not a rule that’s restraining it; if he ever chafes against its ‘boundaries’ it’s not a paradox, he simply doesn’t qualify for the ‘omnibenevolent’ label. If he is omnibenevolent, he will still have his awesome godlike powers; he will simply of his own choice refrain from using them for evil.
Succinctly - omnipotence is about what he could do, and omnibenevolence is about what he would do. Different subjects, despite the fact that they both inform what he does do.
Relating this to the Barber Paradox, it’s simply not a rule that causes a contradiction on closer examination. The barber paradox has such a rule, but omnibenevolence and omnipotence don’t conflict in that way. Not unless you use a self-contradictory or absurd definition of omnipotence (or of omnibenevolence, I suppose).
I do not, at any point, introduce my conclusion as a premise into the argument.
Is this some garbled attempt to talk about Kripke semantics? In this case, my accessibility relation derives from logical possibility – i.e. necessarily p means that p is true at every possibly world such that this world obeys the same laws of logic as ours; possibly p means that there is at least one world in which p is true such that this world obeys the same logical laws as ours.
The frame starts out as the set of all possible world such that they obey the same logic as ours, and stays the same throughout; an omnimax god changes nothing about this, as even a world he does not create still remains logically possible, as does a world he doesn’t exist in.
Yes, precisely. In some of my possible worlds, an omnimax god exists, and in at least one of them, he exists and the world is optimal wrt the existence of evil being at a minimum – that’s the argument.
And where would that be, exactly?
Now that’s just wrong. Perhaps you mean to say (G → ~E) implies (G → ~E)? (And even that’s only right if the accessibility relation is reflexive, which, granted, in this situation it is.) The two are certainly not equivalent, as (G → ~E) may be contingent. Otherwise, P → P, and everything true in one world would necessarily hold in every other. Not to mention that (G → ~E) is not the right starting point for the argument, as it asserts the necessity of the existence of an omnimax god, which the problem of evil doesn’t – it can’t, or else it would be inconsistent.
Well, yes, that’s the doubter’s position – and it’s difficult to frame the analogy in such a way as to get you in a believer’s position. But still, I think the logic is sound – strictly speaking, you are not justified to infer that the program is a bad player. Think about the situation where you yourself programmed the computer – you know that it has solved chess, it’s not merely good, it’s perfect – as I said, it’s difficult – however, the Leibnizian argument takes faith as pre-established, and with such a faith under your belt, you are being perfectly reasonable if, despite contrary appearances, you still hold to that faith.
No, I merely meant that we don’t know the totality of the world, the way god presumably does.
If you think making choices is all I’m talking about, you don’t understand it at all. To a Christian, God chose to cause Jesus to be born around 4 BCE. That was a free choice, in that he could have chosen 6 BCE or 2 BCE. That he chose as he did in no way is an indication that his omnipotence is diminished. However to remain omnibenevolent, his choice is constrained. What is omnipotence other than the ability to do anything logically possible. Not to do it, but to have the ability to do it. Clearly, if you ignore omnibenevolence, doing evil is logically possible for god, whether or not he chooses to do evil. Do you agree? And is it logically possible when omnibenevolence is factored in?
An omnimax God has omnibenevolence as an inherent part of his being. It is not just descriptive, it is a requirement of being omnimax. If you assume an minimax god, your assumption that “if he ever chafes against its ‘boundaries’ it’s not a paradox, he simply doesn’t qualify for the ‘omnibenevolent’ label.” directly contradicts the assumption he is omnimax, thus disproving it.
If I am so afraid of heights that I am physically incapable of walking to the edge of a cliff, saying that I choose not to walk to the edge of a cliff in no way reduces my constrained freedom of action. Saying that god chooses not to do evil in no way reduces his constrained freedom of action from being omnimax.
No, omnibenevolence describes what he can do also. if we consider that God instantiated the best of all possible worlds, and we in someway knew that event A would result in less suffering than event B, we will know for sure that event A will happen. Do you disagree with HMHW that the model of God sorting through all possible universes and picking the best one is a good one? Forget about God’s choices - if you could identify the best universe, and knew that god was omnibenevolent, you’d know exactly what god would do for eternity. I have a hard time accepting such a constrained god as omnipotent. if I know in advance what he will want to choose to do, it is just as constrained as if I knew what he chooses to do.
It isn’t about making me a believer, and I think this dichotomy between “believer” and “doubter” is wrong.
Pretty much everybody is a “doubter”, at least from the way you’re describing the positions. A theist who has an extraordinary run of bad luck and tragedy will probably have increasing doubts.
Go to just about any Christian site on the web and you’ll probably find general advice about doubts as well as a page about “Why do bad things happen to good people” and such.
The evidential POE does not rule out god’s existence. But that doesn’t mean it is not a significant argument for a significant proportion of people.
Of course not. But we can certainly keep approximate score of the world’s evilness.
If we can’t even keep an approximate score of “evil”, then God’s idea of evil must be radically different from ours.
Only in the sense that the “argument” is so poorly formuated as to both lack formal premises - and a formal conclusion!
Rewrite the damned thing formally.
Then you’re completely doing the logic wrong.
Rewrite the damned thing formally.
This is wearisome. Just rewrite the damned thing formally.
Funny, it doesn’t look like your argument. If your argument looked like this I wouldn’t have any problem with it. Of course, this also is no refutation to the POE whatsoever.
Let’s be clear here. There is a set of possible worlds. In some of them an omnimax god exists (presuming a non-selfcontradictory definition of ‘omnimax’) - but such gods only exist in possible worlds where the existence of evil is at a minumum. (That minumum being the minimum that is logically possible - no constraints may apply. No crap about simulating up to this point; no falderal about poorly-defined free will.) In any possible world where evil is not at the logical minumum, there is not any omnimax entity. That is readily and definitively provable directly from any halfway-sensible (ie - halfway acceptible) definitions of omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent, even before we bring our little universe into it. That is, this is true by definition. Call this premise A.
Now, our observable universe is also (part of) one or more possible worlds. This is readily provable via overvational experiment: look around; is there a universe? Yep, we’re done. This universe is possible - proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Call this premise B.
The question of the POE is, does the set of possible worlds that includes our observable world overlap the set of possible worlds that include omnimax beings - which from premise A provably includes only worlds with the absolute logical minimum of evil possible. If there is no overlap, then we don’t have an omnimax god in the possible world that includes our universe.
The POE answers the question with “duh, of course not”, mainly by the route of declaring it trivially obvious that the minimum amount of logically possible evil is 0 - something which can be argued for quite directly by referring to empty universes, or ones containing only invulnerable omnibenevolent happy entities. However, even if you speculate that some evil is necessary (which is generally done using terribly crappy arguments or a complete lack thereof, a la ‘mysterious ways’), that doesn’t actually disprove the POE, since to do that you would have to not only show that there is some necessary evil, but also that our world does not obvously have more evil than that - more unnecessary evil, which no omnibenevolent god would tolerate.
The OP argument’s completely unsupported declaration in 13 that we are in “exactly the situation” where “The denizens of this world” “can ask the question: ‘Without this act of evil, wouldn’t the world be a better one?’” and have it be the case that “the answer to this question would always be no, as the resulting alternative world would always be either worse, or impossible.” - that claim of the OP’s argument is laughable at best. Completely unsupported mysterious ways crap, and it certainly doesn’t “make the argument that this best of all possible worlds is indistinguishable from the one we’re living in”, as it claims to.
It’s a frigging joke, is what it is.
Quoted from the OP, with the relevent parts bolded by me:
It starts out as “the simulation”, in 1 and 4 - false toy worlds explicitly creatable by the external simgod. 6 explicitly state that “possibilities” are these simulations. 7 explicitly states that “these possibilities” (simulations) are what are being assessed for evil. 9 explicitly adds the moniker “world” to “one” of “these possibilities” (simulations).
In the rhetorical bit between, you finish the process of explicitly tying “possibilities” and “world” together into the term “possible world”, the selected representative of which is thereafter referred to as “the world”, aligning with the term used for the selected simulation earlier.
It’s really a work of art, if you look at it. Nauseating, but definitely artistic!
I bolded your reference to “the situation” (the only way you tie our world to the one arbitrarily selected in the 10-13 argument) too, to point out that it does not refer to worlds/simulations. It doesn’t; it refers to the fact that the denizens of both worlds are asking questions. (I’ll gloss over the bullshittiness of the baseless claim that in our world 12 is true - talk about assuming your conclusion!) The thing I really wanted to point out is that you’re hinging the “indistinguishibleness” of our world on an extremely circutuous approach, burying the claim that 12 applies to us under a layer of misdirection to make is sound like you’re just saying that we and they both ask questions. You know, as if you hadn’t written 12 at all. And as if the mere asking of questions is somehow important without 12. Very indirect indeed.
So what you’re saying is, I’m right, but I didn’t hint at the shades of meaning you are pretending are relevent after parenthetically admitting they are not?
And P -> P doesn’t imply that everything true in one world would necessarily hold in every other, at least not the way I learned it. <>P does not imply P.
And no matter how you learned it, (G -> ~E) doesn’t assert the necessity of G. “If it’s raining, I need an umbrella” doesn’t mean that it’s raining.
If you’re that desperate to dig out errors I made, though, I can provide one to you: I called the Modal Ontological argument sound, which was pretty freaking stupid of me. I meant it’s valid, of course. (Seriously, sometimes I can’t seem to make a single post without some stupid error creeping in. A clear example of unnecessary evil if there ever was one! )
I am at a loss how to explain this. It seems very obvious to me.
Of course, I know a secret - nobody is unpredictable. This is because nobody is a completely crazy random unconstrained person. People are compelled to obey their minds. And their mind, not being crazy random unconstrained things, are going to follow a course that is somewhere between “very very deterimined” and “completely deterimined”, with the difference hinging on the specific action selection method when you are literally 100% abmivalent. This isn’t just not caring, this is seriously not caring. Having absolutely not a planck-length of difference between your preferences regarding your options. Which I don’t believe for a second is the case for hardly any actions by anybody. This logically mandates that at virtually all times all people behave in a predictable manner (assuming the predictor knows everything about your cognition and mental state).
I will note that a person whose mind was not constrained by an systematic method of selecting preferences would not just be insane, they would be twitching uncontrollably all the time from random electrical signals shooting out of their brain all the time. Unless that part of their brain was able to damp out any ramdomity that may (or may not) exist - in which case, what makes it different from the rest of your mind?
So yeah. Entities that can do more than twitch uncontrollably are somewhere approaching perfectly predictable - or completely insane. (And they may not be unpredictable even then.) This would include any gods in question.
I will as an aside note that what unpredictability there is hinges on complete ambivalence - so that any diety with an omnibenevolent mindset will only be random when both courses are equally benevolent. So, if there is any unpredictability, it would be exactly aligned with cases where knowing the omnibenevolence already wouldn’t tell you their course of action. So if that’s not enough unpredictability for you then nobody and nothing even slightly sane is unpredictable enough for you.
So. Nobody sane is even slightly unpredictable (absence ignorance on the part of the predictor). This is kind of a kick in the balls of free will, except for compatiblist free will, which is not useful as “free will” in discussions about predictability or omnipotence. So essentially, nobody has free will - including god.
So.
So.
So…
So, I still think that people make choices. Computers make choices, for meaningful definitions of “choice”, after all; so people do to. The fact that when the moment comes all the unselected options will be discarded (in a predictable manner!) doesn’t change the fact that the entity in question still had the ability to carry out the other actions. If I did not believe this, the term “ability” would completely lose meaning, after all.
Which means that something can still be omnimally capable despite only following the course of actions they prefer.
Even if that course of actions is predictable by observers as the omnibenevolent one.
Even if that course of actions is predictiable directly by omniscience.
Either way it’s no nevermind to me; omnipotence is still logically possible. (Presuming it’s the kind that doesn’t directly allow for logically impossible actions, of course.)
I don’t know if this helps clear up my perspective, but regardless, you have two choices: either accept this or some other way of resolving/ignoring the potential internal contradictions in the term “omnimax”… or give up on discussing the POE or refutations to it. Because like I said, if you find yourself sticking “For all logically possible worlds there is no omnimax god” as a premise in every argument, then it’s a real short jump to proving that there’s no omnimax god in our possible world. Which pretty much terminates further discussion.
If we can prove that there is no omnimax god in any possible universe that is a good thing. Not good in there being no god, since that is not affected by our supposed proofs, but good in that something gets resolved. People who believe in god can then tell us how they think god decides to allow some sort of evil, and not just offer the “it’s all for the best” answer one must offer if one believes in omnibenevolence.
Anyhow, for anyone following, here is another example and then some set theory. For the example take someone who says
A. I am a vegetarian
B. I can eat anything.
Taken separately, these claims have no problems. Taken together, they are contradictory. By definition a vegetarian cannot eat meat, so the practice of vegetarianism limits what one can eat. And, if one truly does eat everything, at some point eating meat will contradict statement A.
Now, if B was “I can eat anything I want” there is no problem, since she can never want to eat meat. Omnipotence is not a statement of what god does, because even God cannot do contradictory things, it is a statement of what God can do. He can’t make the sparrow fall and keep it in the air both, but he can do either with no constraint, so him doing one or the other does not limit his omnipotence.
Now, considered as sets of actions, the universal set can be all describable actions, which can include both possible things and impossible things, like create a 4 sided triangle. Call this A. A subset of this is the set of all logically possible things, call this B. A subset of this is the set of all things God might wish to do - call this C. And a subset of this is the set of all things god actually does, call that D. We assume here that god never has to do anything he doesn’t wish to do, do D is a subset of C.
You seem to be saying that omnipotence involves set C, I say it involves set B. Surely an omnipotent god can do stuff he doesn’t want to do. He doesn’t want to destroy the earth again in a flood - he said so, but surely he can.
We’ve accepted that within this thread, for the sake of argument, but it’s not a given. There are plenty of people that are uncomfortable with restricting god in any way, and argue that god could even do contradictory things.
Who are we, to claim to know god’s limitations, using our possibly flawed human logic?
Again, while in pedantry mode, there’s a possible crack here.
Say god, with his omniscience, realises he’s about to sneeze: Nothing about omnimaxness eliminates the possibility that some things happen that are not initiated by god – in fact, this is implicit in most of the free will “defences”.
However, omnimaxness does mean that god knows he is going to sneeze and can prevent it. In this hypothetical he doesn’t bother to prevent it, as he knows it will not affect the evilness of the universe.
Now; we can say that god didn’t want to prevent himself sneezing. However, this is not quite the same thing as saying he actually willed or wished to sneeze because for one thing note that he did not initiate the action.
I’m not sure what my point is, other than that the concept of omnimax is pretty strange at best and always leads to “angels on the head of a pin” type discussion.
You’re making a valiant effort at pinning down the concept, but I don’t think it’s possible.
Well, I can accept this. But I still see a huge difference between the scope of the logical POE and the evidential one – the logical, if it had gone through, would have forced even the most ardent believer, if he acts rationally, to abandon the faith at least in god’s omnimaxness; with the evidential one, however, a believer is perfectly justified in keeping his faith, even when taking the evil in this world into account.
We can keep score of the evil we see, but I don’t think there’s an absolutely compelling reason this is a good indicator for all the evil there is. But that’s really a minor quibble.
Well, what am I supposed to say to that? ‘Am too!’? At least try to support your argument here.
Sure it is. If there is a possible world in which there is both an omnimax god and there exists evil, then both are logically compatible.
That’s a phrasing of the POE I’d agree with. One typically talks about accessible worlds, in order to do away with all the awkward set-definitions: the POE is refuted if there exists a world accessible from ours in which an omnimax god exists and there exists evil.
That, on the other hand, goes against the frame you’ve just established so nicely: neither the empty world nor that other one necessarily lies within the scope of the accessibility relation; you’d have to show that first.
Well, again, you’re welcome to show that there are accessible worlds in which there is less evil.
Why, exactly, is that? If there is such a best possible world, in which some evil exists, everybody living in that world could ask such a question wrt any given act of evil, just like we can in ours. For them, we know the answer to this question: no, the world wouldn’t be better without that act of evil, as it’s the best possible one. Hence, for us, the answer may be the same, as we’re otherwise in the same situation. What’s even controversial about that?
Also quoted from the OP:
Besides, the whole deal in the OP is perfectly compatible with the existence of possible worlds that do not include SimGod; however, since I just need to show one possible world in which there is evil and some omnimax god, it is perfectly justified to limit my attention to the subset of worlds in which SimGod exists. I could have equally well limited my attention to worlds in which yesterday, I stubbed my toe; if there’s a best possible world within that subset, then there is at least one in the larger subset of all possible worlds. It’s a commonplace technique in modal arguments.
I didn’t pretend that ‘situation’ here meant ‘world’ or ‘simulation’. Hence, I used the term ‘situation’, referring to the fact that denizens of a (hypothetical) best possible world (that includes a certain amount of evil) would find themselves asking whether or not any given act of evil is necessary; which, as might not have escaped your notice, we do, too.
Except that, of course, 12 only applies to the denizens of some best possible world, explicitly not to ours. For that world, we know that the answer to the question ‘Wouldn’t the world be a better place if Tommy hadn’t kicked the little puppy?’ sadly always would be ‘no’. We don’t know the same thing for our world; but the fact that it’s the case for one world means that it’s possible for out world.
No, you’re just wrong. P -> P, not P <-> P. I.e., P is not logically equivalent to P.
Well, regardless of what you’ve learned, P -> P, if true, explicitly says that if P is true, so is P; that is, if, for instance, ‘my coffee pot is green’ is true (which it happens to be) then it would follow that ‘my coffee pot is necessarily green’ is true, as well, meaning that in every possible world, my coffee pot is green.
I’m a believer in the idea that a simulation powerful enough to replicate reality to this degree is indistinguishable from reality such that any amount of ‘evil’ in that simulation would cause just as much suffering as the evil in the ‘actual history’.
I think probably the best of all possible worlds is: all possible worlds. Anything that could exist does, because information is reality. And I think a good argument could be made, given ‘choices’ being equivalent to ‘navigating alternate realities’, that everyone does live in the best possible world of their own choosing.
One of the problems in making atheist arguments is that the definition of God is so slippery. The making tacos too big to eat argument fails when the theist defines omnipotence to not include logical impossibilities. Since we have no actual god to observe, I always try to argue against the weakest God that still seems to qualify, (weakest in a proof sense, not strength) since the argument then covers the more powerful versions.
Some time back we had a long thread where I argued that omniscience is incompatible with omnipotence for reasons much like what you gave, with the counter much like you’ve seen here - God never wants to do anything counter to what he has foreseen. I’ve tried to assume omnipotence and omniscience compatible here to avoid a rehash of that and to examine omnibenevolence. But I definitely agree that the omnimax principle is a total mess - easy to state, but leading to all sorts of logical problems.
I’ve read the thread with interest, mainly as a learning exercise. Frankly, I don’t have the formal logic chops to run with you guys. That said, a few thoughts.
First, I agree with begbert2 that Voyager’s assertion that omnibenevolence contradicts omnipotence isn’t well taken. The point of omnimax, as I understand it, is whether God is worthy of worship. That his power (omnipotence) is influenced or constrained by benevolence doesn’t undermine this in the slightest degree. On the contrary, one presumably would prefer a God with this “limitation.” BTW, I’m an atheist, so I don’t really have a dog in this fight. I’m just saying that Christians (which is the context in which this is usually argued) shouldn’t find Voyager’s argument troubling.
Second, ISTM that the OP’s syllogism works better with one little tweak. Suppose we restate proposition #13 as “This may be the situation we find ourselves in.” Reading across the posts, I think this actually is the intended argument. Whether this goes through is more than I can say.
Third, I should like to say I don’t think of the Problem of Suffering (pain, evil, etc.) as mainly a logical or evidentiary one vis-a-vis omnimax. It’s mainly, again especially in the context of Christianity, a problem with respect to an interventionist God. The one who marks the fall of the sparrow. The one who hears and answers prayers. Experience (mine, anyway) says this God doesn’t exist. How believers conclude otherwise eludes me. Unless its the usual inductive fallacy of counting the hits and forgetting the misses.
I wasn’t considering God’s worthiness at all. Many religions have god without the omnimax characteristic, and consider that God worthy of worship. In fact it diminishes God in a way. Evil is a human concern - it is possible that God has good reasons for not making this the best of all possible worlds. Parents may work harder and be away more than a child would like - more than is necessary for keeping the child clothed and fed, and we don’t disrespect the parent. (Of course our God has been away on a really, really long business trip.)
I’ll try phrasing it a little differently. Why should anyone who believes in an omnimax god be troubled by the argument that benevolence limits omnipotence?
BTW, continuing Points 2 and 3 in my post above, it occurred to me today the OP is an epistemelogical assertion, that we can’t know this isn’t the best possible world an omnimax god can create. This might even be true. (Of course it doesn’t give us any reason to believe ours is such best possible world, but that’s repeatedly conceded by HMHW.) But I don’t worry about this any more than I worry about brain-in-a-vat. I work with the evidence I have and draw the conclusions it supports. One of those conclusions is that it’s difficult, perhaps impossible, to square an interventionist Christian God with the Problem of Suffering, unless one resorts to “mysterious ways” which (as many have mentioned) is simply hand waving or post hoc rationalization.
My guess would be that many “proofs” of god’s existence involve God being the greatest that can be, thus if you disprove omnimax (which you have if omnipotence is limited) you’ve disproven god under that definition.
God is one, under Western definitions. Say omnipotence is incompatible with omnibenevolence and omniscience. Then we can have an omnipotent god co-existing with an omniscient/omnibenevolent god. Oops. There might be logical problems with these two god both existing, which makes the problem even worse.
Huh? There are “proofs” of God’s existence which involve omnimax? Theories and conceptions, perhaps. But proofs, no. Cite to the contrary, please. Bearing in mind we’re both atheists, the question is whether these theories and conceptions are incoherent. I don’t see it. Unsupported by evidence, of course, even contradicted by the evidence, but that’s a different thing. Importantly, I don’t see the mainsteam Christian conception of an omnipotent God meaningfully challenged by the “limitation” of benevolence.
That works, too, but I’m not sure it’s necessary – the situation mentioned was the one of the denizens of the best possible world, who may live in a world that contains evil (as we do) and may ask whether or not that evil is necessary (as we do). That’s the ‘situation’ we find ourselves in, as well. I’ve phrased things somewhat badly such that it seems that the fact that for them, every evil is actually necessary, is part of the situation for us, too – but that’s not how I intended it; this only may be the case. Oh, and don’t view my list as really a formal syllogism – I merely wanted to break the argument down point-by-point such that it’s easier to refer to the points of disagreement.
Not if it’s not possible for omnipotence to not be limited in this way – then, there still doesn’t exist any greater being that can be conceived of, right?
I suppose that Voyager refers to the family of arguments known as ‘ontological proofs’.
That is why I put “proofs” in scare quotes - they are called proofs by the theologians who developed and teach them, but I share your opinion of them. Since the define God as the greatest there is, they assume omnimax. My point was not the quality of these proofs, or lack of them, but noting that Christians in general would have a hard time giving up omnimax because it rules out God as they define him. For Greeks - no problem.
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