balderdash9

@balderdash9@lemmy.zip

I’m mostly half-serious.

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balderdash9, (edited )

Reminds me of the G.E. Moore epistemological argument against universal skepticism:

  • Here is one hand,
  • And here is another.
  • There are at least two external objects in the world.
  • Therefore, an external world exists.

Philosophy sometimes goes so far that an appeal to common sense is a breath of fresh air.

balderdash9,

https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/4261e2a9-304c-48a7-98ae-9c0f42e0ffbf.webp

balderdash9,

https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/33c3d620-87ca-4370-81c7-898f47af2712.webp

balderdash9,

Yeah, I decided to take it in a different direction. Europeans have probably had enough lol

balderdash9,

Human creativity is only outmatched by human cruelty.

balderdash9,

https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/a1663a34-5c68-4543-9573-3682080593ed.webp

balderdash9,

He’s not really dead. Made me look though.

balderdash9,

Remember in grammar school when your teacher told you that Wikipedia is not a valid source? I’m sure they’re saying the same thing about AI right now.

balderdash9,

If we can pick math, then I choose logic.

balderdash9,

I think they’re saying two things. 1) You have to live for a few million years in the past in order to get a billion dollars when you reach the present age. 2) You can’t just go to sleep for a long time to get out of the scenario.

balderdash9,

I’m going to say no. Most of human history is nasty, brutish, and short.

balderdash9,
  • Police arrive on the scene
  • Shoot suicidal person
  • "Problem solved"
balderdash9,

https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/9bd41755-80b8-473b-868c-14c6088a3224.webp

balderdash9,

I agree with the classical interpretation of an infinitely perfect immaterial God outside of time. But the way out of the paradox is to scrutinize the question itself.

To illustrate the point, take three paradoxical questions: 1) Can God kill himself?, 2) Can God create a stone that he can’t lift?, 3) Can God create a square circle?

#3 Is obviously a meaningless question. The words individually have meaning, but the “square circle” refers to an impossible object whose properties are self-contradictory. Because we interpret God’s power as the ability to do all logically possible things, the inability to create this self-contradictory object is not a limit on his power.

#2 Seems better on the surface because we can posit increasingly larger stones. But the contradiction here is between the object and the nature of God. Once we accept an infinitely perfect God, there can, by definition, be nothing greater than it. If there was a stone that God couldn’t lift, this would contradict the fact of God’s existence. Therefore, as we are under the assumption that God exists, the object itself must be impossible.

#1 Is another form of the omnipotence paradox in #2. Can God do something that contradicts his own properties? This would make God immutable/eternal and yet not immutable/eternal. But an infinitely perfect God is, by definition, immutable/eternal! So any action that would contradict himself is a contradiction in terms and thereby logically impossible. Just like in the case of #3, the answer to the question isn’t “no”. Rather, the question itself is nonsensical.

balderdash9,

The specific example doesn’t matter much. Google “category error” or read the comment below where I explain the response in more detail.

You don’t strike me as someone I want to interact with.

It’s not like I’m trolling. This stuff is philosophy of religion 101. But, you are, of course, always free to ignore information that contradicts your world view.

balderdash9,

Agreed. And if God can do things outside of logic/reason, then we can’t understand him. Then the answer to the paradox would be: it is both impossible and possible. Which doesn’t make sense, but now we’re supposing God doesn’t follow the law of non-contradiction.

balderdash9,

Wait, isn’t space and time infinitely divisible? (I’m assuming you’re referencing quantum mechanics, which I don’t understand, and so I’m genuinely asking.)

balderdash9,

Given a being exists outside of this reality, the laws of this reality do not apply to it.

When we assume a contradiction is true (e.g., God is immutable and God is not immutable: P ^ -P), then we can derive any proposition and it’s negation from that contradiction.

  1. P ∧ -P
  2. P (1)
  3. -P (1)
  4. P ∨ X (2)
  5. X (3, 4)
  6. P ∨ -X (2)
  7. -X (3, 6)

If God can make a contradiction true, then every other proposition whatsoever can be proven true and false at the same time. We can infer the following: 1) All questions about God are useless because God is now beyond reason/logic and 2) Reason itself would lose all applicability as logic, necessity, mathematics, etc. can no longer be taken for granted. These seem like untenable consequences. We have, however, an alternate conception of God’s omnipotence that doesn’t force us to abandon reason/logic.

balderdash9,

There are different logics that account for temporality, modality (e.g., necessity), degrees of true, etc. But I doubt there’s any logic we could construct that can account for the inconceivable and the impossible being possible. Human reason throws up its hands and sits in the corner.

balderdash9, (edited )

Can God kill Himself.?" This presumes God is a physical and material being.

I’m afraid I don’t see why being non-physical entails being eternal. For example, couldn’t God create an angel and then destroy it later? If angels are non-physical beings that can be created and destroyed, then immateriality doesn’t entail eternality. Moreover, you’re right that God cannot die, but it doesn’t follow that the answer to question #1 is “no”. If there was something that God couldn’t do, then God wouldn’t be omnipotent. So the question asks can God commit a logically contradictory action.

God would then be both a non material being, and a material being in which he animates, that has the potential to lift the stone. Now if you belive that every material object has consciousness…

I think our starting assumptions are somewhat far apart.

balderdash9, (edited )

I think you’ve proven my point as you’re contradicting yourself.

And if God did exist, we think God is a total dick

The Abrahamic conception of God is of an infinitely perfect being who’s attributes–viz., omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence, omnipresence-- are maximally unified in that one being. So to suppose that this God exists but then deny his omnibenevolence is a logical contradiction of the definition of the Abrahamic God. (This is akin to, for example, supposing that a square-circle exists.) If God does exist, but he isn’t omnibenevolent, then this is no longer the Abrahamic God. Which is why I argued that you are not “taking the starting assumption seriously” in my earlier comment.

balderdash9,

Right. We consider the existence of God to be nonsense, because any god that was omnibenevolent wouldn’t be such a piece of shit, yet here we are in reality. Your premise is faulty.

Yes, you are once again proving my point that you aren’t taking the “starting assumption” (i.e. the existence of a perfect God) seriously. It’s perfectly fine if your conception of God is of a terrible serial killer, I am not trying to convince you otherwise, but now we aren’t talking about the same God.

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