Anti-Humanism Thread

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I have to say I don't really get how omnipotence is incompatible with omniscience either. If anything, the two seem complementary. 
 
Mage246 said:
Magorian Aximand said:
rebelsquirrell said:
What do you mean by omnipotence? There are several meanings.

I'm assuming the coherence of the actual meaning of the word (all powerful, can do anything) for the sake of argument, because the watered down "logically possible" version presented to get out of the omnipotence paradox is a meaningless tautology.

There's no reason for a paradox. Some people simply choose to apply the word in a way that logically contradicts itself. That's a problem of user error.

...


You're aware that some concepts, which appear at first glance to be possible, may actually be incoherent upon further examination, yes? The quality of being "all powerful" is one of those. Omnipotence, in the way it has always been envisioned, is incoherent and that is demonstrated by the paradox.

If you water it down to mean the power to do that which it is logically possible for god to do, then you've rendered it a meaningless tautology. A pointless truism. God is capable of doing that which god is capable of doing. No ****. By that definition, I'm omnipotent.

FrisianDude said:
I have to say I don't really get how omnipotence is incompatible with omniscience either. If anything, the two seem complementary. 

The problem comes with knowing, with infallible certainty, what will happen in the future. If god is omniscient, then he is powerless to do anything other than what he knows will happen at any given moment. He can't make anything different happen. As such, he is not omnipotent. If he can make something else happen, then he didn't know with infallible certainty what would happen, and is not omniscient. An omniscient being would be one of the most impotent beings imaginable.
 
But what if the God kept a diary where they wrote down everything they planned to do for the rest of eternity*, and they already knew (since they is omniscient and everything) everything that would happen between the events they plans?

EDIT: *Planned to do for the rest of eternity regardless of any events that occur that are not caused by them.
 
Mags is just applying a very limited view of time and causality - small wonder that he runs into trouble when he intentionally chooses a meaning of the words omniscient and omnipotent that have no limits. He himself has already imposed a limit, so of course they conflict! User error.

Let's suppose there is an entity that is both omniscient and omnipotent. It has the ability to know everything that has happened, will happen, and what CAN happen if any of those things change. It also has the ability to change anything that has happened or will happen. Should such an entity choose to change what happened in the past, for example, it would also simultaneously know everything that would result from that change. It would be simultaneously oniscient and omnipotent.
 
Imposing arbitrary limits changes the meaning of the words, and renders them pointless. For example, your change of omniscience ignores the fact that, while god knows what will happen with any given choice, he is apparently unaware of which choice he will make. If he can make different choices, then he was wrong in predicting which choice he will make, and is not omniscient. The moment you add "if any of those things change" you're accounting for things which God did not predict. Even if it is God that goes back and changes things, god would have to know that he would do that, and he would be powerless not to.

An omniscient god would not have free will. Plain and simple. Knowing all possible outcomes of anything doesn't matter, when all possibilities other than the one god is destined to choose are only counterfactual. They can't actually happen. No matter what games you play with god changing the past, his actions are still determined, and he can't change them.
 
Still user error. Why does an omniscient god need to "predict" anything? From a godlike perspective, all outcomes and timelines could be equally valid. A god with this kind of power would have the freest will that could ever exist - having simultaneously made EVERY possible choice and none, and everything in between. There's no chance involved - all roads are taken simultaneously. It is only from a limited, human perspective that only one road would seem to have been taken.
 
Having made every choice and none. Another basic contradiction. You don't like this coherence thing, do you?

You're conflating things that are literally true with things that are only counterfactually true in order to make this work, and that would be a fallacy of equivocation. And even then, it still doesn't solve the problem.

If, at any point, God makes some choices and not others, then God would have had to know he'd make those ones previously, and he would have no choice but to make them. The problem remains. The only way to solve this is to say that God does make all choices, and have every possible version of reality take place. But then God is similarly powerless. He can't not make any of those choices.
 
Making every choice does not mean having no choice. Infinite choices means infinite versions of god, from a human perspective. All making choices, all knowing how different choices would end up, and all sharing in the experience of those choices with every version of itself.

Let's say I placed you at a fork in the road, and you, possessing supreme free will, chose to take the left path. Then I sent you back in time to the same point, but this time, since you have free will and your choice is not pre-determined, you choose to go right. No say I somehow merged the consciousnesses of both the you that took the right path and the you that took the left. Which path did you choose? Both. This remains true even if you had foreknowledge of all of this - being conscious of things that have not happened yet simply means that you are conscious of making BOTH choices.
 
Pharaoh Llandy said:
Argeus the Paladin said:
We just happen to be at the top of the food chain.

Not really. It depends on where you go. A surfer in shark-infested waters isn't at the top of the food chain, neither is an unarmed tribesman in the African Savanna. I could continue with a dozen other examples. Simply put, humans are not apex predators like sharks, lions, tigers, etc, are. The very fact that we're omnivores, and cannot kill/eat our food without using created tools, proves this.

Top of the intelligence chain, perhaps, but that's an entirely different thing.

I disagree here. An unarmed human is like a lion with 2 broken legs or a camouflage ambusher painted bright neon.

Like it or lump it, tool use is the human species hunting gimmick. I can't stand this weird attitude that picking up a spear or bow 'breaks' natural selection rather than it being the logical continuation of the opposable thumbs and huge brains tree.
 
I wasn't going to bring it up sense he seemed to be talking more about anthropomorphic conceptions of God.

But he did say any.( See Below)

"An example of such a god would be ANY that is defined as both omnipotent and omniscient. Those two qualities are mutually exclusive"

A impersonal Pantheistic God is by definition everything and thus is all power and all knowledge, and with causation the only one course of events can stem from the nature of this God. So God must Know all things knowable and do all things doable at any given moment of existence.

To say that  this God is not omnipotent because it could not make a marshmallow the size of the galaxy would be a false claim.  Because it is literally everything, all things that it is not, are simply not. The term power may not be attributed to anything that is not, for that which is not is meaningless. Just because one conceives of something as a power does not make it a power, only if it exists at that very moment then it is a power.

Because The God I mentioned does not posses a unified conciseness it does not make a decision to pick from a myriad of hypothetical scenarios. That which is hypothetical does not exist. (In this particular philosophy of religion)

There then is no paradox, what happens simply happens. All knowledge is a result of what happens as well.


 
Narcissa said:
I disagree here. An unarmed human is like a lion with 2 broken legs or a camouflage ambusher painted bright neon.

Like it or lump it, tool use is the human species hunting gimmick. I can't stand this weird attitude that picking up a spear or bow 'breaks' natural selection rather than it being the logical continuation of the opposable thumbs and huge brains tree.

Disagree all you like, but if we're talking about the 'natural' state, then a human's natural state is to have arms, legs, opposable thumbs, nails and teeth designed for an omnivorous lifestyle. When a baby comes out of the womb pre-armed with a spear, then I'll accept that it's the natural state of the human being.

Contrary to popular belief, tool use is not unique to homo sapiens. The great apes, as well as some monkeys, crows and ravens, some non-corvid birds, as well as otters, have been observed using tools. "Being armed" is not the natural state of a human being, otherwise, as I stated above, we'd all be born wielding uzis. The potential for adapting tools into weapons is what has given man an edge over other animals. That along with mastering the use of fire, which allows humans to survive in practically any environment.

There's nothing to say that other animals won't adapt tools into weapons in the future; just that humans were the fastest to adapt that way.

 
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