From: rstevew@deeptht.armory.com (Richard Steven Walz)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.misc,rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Mandatory negatives (was Re: Agnostics and Athiests)
Date: 25 Aug 92 12:35:18 GMT
Organization: The Armory

In article <1992Aug4.203510.29977@pbhya.PacBell.COM> whheydt@PacBell.COM (Wilson Heydt) writes:
>In article <1992Aug4.175730.21033@cas.org> sdr57@cas.org writes:
>>In article <1992Aug4.163903.24568@pbhya.PacBell.COM> whheydt@PacBell.COM (Wilson Heydt) writes:
>>>Only if you are omniscient (are you?) will you predict correctly at
>>>all times.  One of your coworkers might otherwise surprise you.
>>>However, within the restrictions you've noted, there may only be a
>>>single 'permitted' choice, given sufficient knowledge (in the form of
>>>a competent professional) and you can--logically--determine that
>>>choice as easily as your colleagues.
>>>
>>Does the prediction actually predetermine the outcome or is it
>>the outcome that determines the prediction? 
>
>I don't see the knowledge gained by being omniscient as predetermining
>the outcome, but rather as knowledge that that *is* what will
>happen--regardless of any attempts one the part of the 'predictee' to
>change the outcome.  The omnicscient entity will know about *all* the
>twists and evasions that are part of the final decision.  In that
>sense, there can be no free will when an omniscient operator is
>contained in the system.
>
>>(Which leads us to
>>the possibility that my deity, while omniscient, may not have
>>free will - you did notice that I said nothing about omnipotence,
>>didn't you? - because it is retained by the mortals).
>
>I noticed that nothing was said about omnipotence.  Before dealing
>with that, let me note that I don't think the omnisceint entity can
>have free will, either.  Said entity would know of all its own future
>actions/thoughts/whatever--again, regardless of efforts made to do the
>unpredictable.  Sounds like a dull existence.  Knowing you're trapped
>by knowing everything that will happen . . .
>
>Omnipotence raises similar problems.  An omnipotent entity should be
>able to create the unpredictable, but omniscience should be able to
>predict all things.  This looks like you have to discard logic in
>order to have an omniscient *and* omnipotent entity.
>
>>By-the-by, my dictionary (Webster's New World, 2nd Ed.) defines
>>omniscient as "having infinite knowledge; knowing all things."
>>There is a tendency to assume that this means knowing which outcome
>>will occur. I find myself wondering if this is absolutely valid.
>>Consider quantum situations, exemplified by the "Schrodinger's
>>Cat" gedanken experiment. Could not the requirement to know all
>>things be satisfied by a knowledge of the possible outcomes and
>>their associated probabilities, leaving the final collapse to
>>a single outcome to be determined by free will? (Just another
>>topic - not really an argument on this one)
>
>An interesting conjecture.  I think it fails on reasonableness, for if
>all outcomes are known *about*, but not which one will actually occur,
>then omniscience supplies no data that is not derivable through less
>powerful means.  The case is a good deal less clear with omnipotence
>(since you brought it up).  An omnipotent deity might wish to create
>the unpredictable for novelty, if no other reason.  That way, the
>universe will constantly surprise it's creator--but it also means that
>said entity *doesn't* know what is going to happen.
>
>>Full circle, indeed. We are no closer to demonstrating the
>>*nonexistence* of a deity than before, and, while we have
>>come up with several ways a deity might demonstrate his or
>>her *existence* should the deity so chose, we have developed
>>no way to do so in the absence of such a choice, leaving us
>>with only our faith in our individual interpretations of the
>>evidence. 
>
-----------------------
Nor should it. But I would like to offer something, unless this is a
private conversation. Doesn't omnipotence not only enable, but also
require and demand that all things thereby being possible, that they
are all done at one and the same time? If this is the case, and if
omniscience is then boring, is it not possible to have generated being
that is also not omniscient, while retaining omniscience in the
ultimate deity, and that this also requires omnipresence, thus the
self-same entity which in its deified form is omniscient also exists
as all possible beings at one and the same time, having differeing
degrees of knowledge at all possible levels of existence. I guess what
I have hypthesized then is a Hindu Brahma. But then we run afoul of
the important "mu-shin" or "no-mind" doctrine of the Buddha. Unless of
course we realize that omniscience is truly a lack of mind, since mind
is that thing in us which lives a life and only "gradually" acquires
some knowledge peculiar to our lives by a process we imagine as time.
Thus the ultimate diety has no mind as we would "know" it, such not
being necessary to pure diety, and also that it need no existence or
non-existence, not needing mind to contemplate these. If one carries
omnipotence to its ultimate conclusion, we come upon a "being" which
only has being through us that we know, and which has no need for mind
or even existence, these being things that we do, being done by that
non-existent entity witnessing them through our very eyes. Could it be
that existence is only a facet of OUR being and thus omnipotence does
all things. Our lives are quantum fragments of existence in time, all
which are coherent and form a life for one of us only through the idea
that they do. I was born only a moment ago and die only a moment
hence. And when I live another life, it is likewise true. And who
knows when that has been? Then all lives are possible and in fact must
occur. Each quantum mechanical deviation from causation then leads to
a different life, and perhaps there is no death, which is what the
Buddha alluded to when asked about it. Perhaps there cannot be
non-being for us, even though we "experience" it each night and even
each moment, not knowing for certain quite where we were before we
slept or indeed even blinked just now. Perhaps when we die we simply
don't, and our life path takes a turn which somehow miraculously keeps
just us alive, just us, and medical science marvels or participates or
isn't important to it in that life. But I think that the miraculous
point that all this makes, when we take omnipotence to its ultimate
extreme is that whatever divinity looks out of our eyes becomes
neither existent nor non-existent, and so then, what looks out of our
eyes and has our memories!? I suspect that even our much vaunted
existence is but a concept, a percept/concept that exists without ever
needing a mind to think it, and that perception is a gestalt of the
observer and observed, inseperable, another per/con/cept. Do I see the
tree, or is the tree actively being seen by me; transitively, and not
intransitively, as we commonly prejudice the directionality! We are a
necklace of trinkets and baubles on an imaginary string. I'm not
teasing, this is what I believe.
- Richard Steven Walz
(rstevew@deeptht.armory.com)
 P.S. Please email me about this, unless you wish to ignore it. I
don't often get over into this newsgroup.

>
>	--Hal
>-- 
>Hal Heydt                    |    "Boycott Time-Warner"
>Analyst, Pacific*Bell        |         --J. Danforth Quayle
>510-823-5447                 |    "... kill all the lawyers."
>whheydt@pbhya.PacBell.COM    |         --William Shakespeare


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