Ialdabaoth
Posts: 1073
Joined: 5/4/2008
From: Tempe, AZ
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ORIGINAL: NihilusZero
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ORIGINAL: Ialdabaoth
Put more simply: Any being complex enough to "think" cannot, logically, be omnisciently predicted by any process that is not, in essence, creating that being and allowing it to "think", and then finding out what its thoughts are.
Isn't that the proposition of modern Abrahamic-based monotheism, though (that said process is creating that being and allowing it to think)?
Yes. But that doesn't grant God some supra-logical capacity to know what you're going to think before you think it. In fact, it suggests an intriguing motivation for our creation - God created us precisely so that He could observe beings that even His omniscience could not predict.
... Maybe that's a fundamental aspect of being "created in His image".
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Mathematics, it would seem, would render the evolution unnecessary, no? We're talking about complex machines (humans) but machines with finite variables. Under the presumption that those variables are understood by the creative force behind their existence (and omniscience is the defining characteristic distinguishing what people call gods and what they call 'role models'), an equation made with the knowledge of each variable will always yield a definitive result.
Yes, but not a definitively predictive result. I.e., the first time you run something with a given set of inputs (even if we're talking 10^51st inputs), you have NO IDEA what the fuck it's going to do. Sure, once you've watched it play out, you can run the same thing again and precisely the same thing will happen - but the first time, the time that matters, not even God can predict your actions.
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At very least, if the creative force is sentient and aware enough of the spectrum of possible values the variables the creations could have, then their existence if put into play with the precognition of the possibility of them ending in torment.
Well... again, not so much. The thing is, all computational systems are chaotic. And chaos means "exponential dependence on initial conditions". So, in this case, the possibility of Hell (even if God doesn't create one) is sort of a necessary consequence of creating anything as complex as a person in the first place. It's like the old "can God make a rock so heavy He can't lift it", problem - "Can God make a universe so complex that He can't reliably provide it with salvation?" - and the answer is necessarily yes - any universe sufficiently complex to encode for sapience, necessarily includes the possibility of unmitigatable suffering, as well as countless stranger occurrences.
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'Tis better to have loved and lost...? 
Well, from God's perspective, this is more of an omelet/eggs thing - "If I'm going to create beings interesting enough to not bore Me to tears, I have to be prepared that they might do some fucked-up shit to each other."
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Doesn't this lie on the presumption, though, that our variables are not arrived at linearly and are not infinite? I don't think the code programmer for Sonic the Hedgehog ever had to worry about him turning into Ecco the Dolphin mid-test.
Not if Ecco isn't in the game, no - but he does have to worry about Sonic spontaneously turning into Doctor Eggman mid-test, which is the point of testing. You run through a few thousand possible scenarios, to make sure that certain paths are unlikely to occur. Also realize that Sonic the Hedgehog, no matter how complex, is not sapient. Sonic is incapable of higher-order processing - all it can do is respond to your joystick inputs. You can't make Sonic solve calculus problems, for example - and if you could, you would have to worry about the possibility of Sonic suddenly turning into Ecco the Dolphin, among a near-infinite number of other possibilities. It's part of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem - if you want something smart enough to grok numbers or even logic, it's capable of surprising you. Period. This is mathematically provable, in-system. The simplest version of the proof is the Liar's Paradox.
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I don't see how someone who has created a closed system, placing each of its parts, cannot (except by willful denial) know what paths will lead to which results and precisely which switches would need to be active or inactive to get to each.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Ohhhh wow. Ohhhhhhhh wow. You've never written a computer program before, have you?
Ohhhhh MAN. Please, please understand; I'm not laughing at you. I'm... wow. Okay. Umm... the thought process you are describing simply doesn't work, because of the aforementioned Church-Turing Thesis (which itself is a result of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem). Suffice it to say, this is ultimately why Microsoft Windows crashes all the time. And not even God can get around that.
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So...at best, we have a hypothetical god that does not know if a person's coin will land heads or tails, but has still created that person with the potential for failure (rather than two heads-sides). This leaves us at the god of the dice.
YES! Precisely.
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ORIGINAL: Ialdabaoth
Of course, there's one possible out - God could simply transcend logic. If so, though, you've got another problem - because if God transcends logic, then saying that God is perfectly good doesn't get you anything.
I don't even find that concept comprehensible. At the moment a god would create the potential for differing value interpretations of an objective event, it has created non-goodness (which, boiled down, is ethical dichotomy).
Yes. It has also created WHAAARGHARBL. That's the thing - the only way to escape the "God can't predict human behavior" logic-trap is to ditch logic; and the moment you ditch logic, God is multiple conflicting things all at once, and you've got WHAAARGHARBL.
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ORIGINAL: Ialdabaoth
A God which transcends logic could be perfectly good and simultaneously be perfectly evil, while simultaneously being perfectly nonexistant, and while simultaneously being colorless green dreams sleeping furiously, while simultaneously being blueberry fromage underbelly plop-whaargharbl.
Ah, the burdens of omnipotence! Can he still create a lock so complex that he cannot then crack it open?
WHAAAARGHARBL.
< Message edited by Ialdabaoth -- 10/8/2009 1:42:38 AM >
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RE: God's Gays - 
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