From: exukjb@exu.ericsson.se (ken bell)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: God and Omnipotence
Date: 7 Oct 92 22:17:23 GMT
Organization: Ericsson Network Systems, Inc.
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In article <BvrCsu.AwC@news.udel.edu> absolut@ravel.udel.edu (Jamie D. Campbell) writes:
>From: absolut@ravel.udel.edu (Jamie D. Campbell)
>Subject: Re: God and Omnipotence
>Date: 7 Oct 92 15:38:53 GMT

>In article <1992Oct7.145235.3208@news.eng.convex.com> cash@convex.com (Peter Cash) writes:
>>>        Omniscience would require that "God" can read minds and predict
>>>the future.  I do not see how this is possible even though He/She/It
>>>did create the human mind and can alter the future.  I think this rules
>>>out omniscience.
>>
>>Because _you_ don't see how it's done, this proves that it can't be done? A
>>little weak, that. 

>      Personally, I don't believe in God, so I think the entire question
>is moot.  However, omniscience has not yet been proven to be a capability 
>of any being, so the burden of proof doesn't lie on me.  I imagine that 
>would be the "believer's" responsibility.  Correct?
>--
>Jamie Campbell                   "Sky fits heaven, so ride it."
>absolut@brahms.udel.edu                            - Max Blagg

It would be interesting to consider, whether or not you believe in "God"--
where that is a religious word--whether there can, in logic, be a being
omnipotent, omniscience, and wholly good.  I believe there cannot be. 
If there is a god at all, such a being must be limited in one or the other 
of these attributes, and perhaps in all three.

Omnipotence. I won't invoke the familiar paradoxes here. I think these--like
the Stone Paradox and other similar ones--can be resolved using something
like the reasoning advanced by Aquinas together with the very reasonable
thesis that an OB [omnipotent being] would have at least to be "limited"
by the laws of logic, since this does not involve any "real" inabilities
in any agent. Etc.

Omniscience. Now here there are serious problems. How can God know what
I express by "I am feeling a sharp pain in my arm"? Certainly there is
an irreducible pleasure-pain modality involved in my knowing my own pains, 
but how could God have this knowledge, since, at least on most views, he
has no croporeal embodiment, no physical or quasi-physical organism 
and therefore no sensory modality?  Also, there are familiar problems about 
God's knowledge of the future which I think cannot be resolved and which do 
require some modification of traditional doctrines about God's knowledge.
I am prepared to argue that with anyone who cares to.

All-good?  Here we confront more familiar problems, when we consider God's
relationship to the nature world he allegedly has created. Isn't God an
accomplice before the facts to all evil and suffering, whether natural
or moral, since in the act of creation all future states were omnisciently
previsioned?  It is no good saying, as Plantinga and other possible-world 
semanticists do, that God's not being able to co-instantiate the properties 
"Capable of significant moral choice [freedom]" and "Never choosing badly" 
does no damage to his omnipotence on the grounds that these properties 
aren't logically compossible.  Mackey is surely right in upholding that if
"S chooses rightly sometimes" is logically possible, so is "S chooses 
rightly always."  So, if God is good, much less all good, why then did he 
not actualize a world containing agents who both have the capability for 
significant moral choice *and* always choosing rightly?  There is no 
logical impossibility there.  God's goodness may, it appears, therefore 
be reasonably impugned on that account.

Also it is highly questionable whether an entity could be omnigood, if
this entails that the property of goodness is something which could be
possessed to an infinite or maximal degree.  I am inclined to think
that goodness does not admit of infinite degrees, but I'm not prepared to
argue for that.
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Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc