OT: Omnipotent being (WAS: Making money from Java)

"Judson McClendon" <judmc@sunvaley0.com> wrote in message
news:wAnlf.103$wP3.62@bignews6.bellsouth.net...

The "omnipotent being" what-ifs mentioned earlier are indeed purely
speculation, as you mention. I avoided calling this being "God" because I
didn't want to imply that any of the conclusions reached would nescessarily
be true of what christians typically call "God". It was just some perhaps
something "fun" to think about.

So these next few comments I'm making are, again, not nescessarily true
of your God, but just observations about any being which might be true of an
omnipotent being.

> God certainly has gone to a lot of trouble to make it possible for any
> human who so desires to have an intimate relationship with Him.

Assuming that the being really was omnipotent, then anything it wanted
to do would, of course, be no trouble at all (unless the being specifically
wanted it to be troublesome, in which case it would be troublesome -- again,
here's the difficulty in trying to come up with any conclusion about an
omnipotent being).

> I'm not sure we are in a position to understand God's reasons, even if He
> tried to explain it to us.

Then again, if God wanted us to understand, being omnipotent, we would
understand (whether this be via explanation, or divine revalation, or some
other manner). If he explains and we don't understand, it is probably
because he wanted us to not understand. I don't think it could be possible
that "God doesn't care one way or another, and just gave an explanation; and
whether we understand or not is up to us", because being omniscient, he
would know ahead of time whether his explanation would cause us to
understand or not. In a sense, before he ever utters a single word from his
explanation, the knowledge is already there of whether we will understand
the explanation, so he's forced to already know ahead of time whether the
explanation will make sense, and thus it is a conscience decision on his
part as to whether to cause us to understand or not (unless of course he
doesn't want it to be a conscious decision, in which case it isn't --
because he's omnipotent again).

> Also, none of us have any experience wielding omniscience or omnipotence.
> We can only speculate about what it might be like. How could we even know
> what God might like or dislike, or desire, apart from Him telling us? :-)

Whatever an omnipotent being desires will happen. I'm pretty sure of
this, and even the wildcard that is "omnipotence" cannot stop this. Because
let's say the omnipotent being declares "Well, I want for my desire to NOT
happen", in which case it won't happen, which is exactly what he desired. So
assuming for now that the omnipotent cannot defy the laws of logic, then the
statement "Whatever an omnipotent being desires will happen" must be true.
Of course, taking the word "omnipotent" literally, an omnipotent CAN defy
the laws of logic, but it is not really possible to reason about what would
happen in that case, because our analysis would assume that logic holds,
when in fact it doesn't.

So instead of considering a purely-omnipotent being, let us consider an
semi-omnipotent being, where the restriction on his potentcy is that he
cannot defy the laws of logic. That is to say, a semi-omnipotent being is
defined here to mean a being which can do anything it want, except to do the
things which would lead to a logical contradiction.

I'm not sure, but I suspect that a semi-omnipotent being (where
"semi-omnipotent" is defined above), cannot be omniscient, because if he
could make himself omniscient, he could create some sort of paradox like
Alan Turing's halting problem, thus creating a logical contradiction, and
thus proving that no such semi-omnipotent but omniscient being could exist.

The pseudo-proof is that the being would ask itself "Will I do A or will
I do B?" and, being omniscient, it would know the answer. But then, being
semi-omnipotent, it could willfully choose to the opposite of whatever it
was that it had predicted for itself. This is obviously impossible: either
the being was wrong in its prediction (and thus not omniscient), or it is
unable to deviate from its prediction (and thus not semi-omnipotent).

Therefore, any omniscient being is either truly-omnipotent (i.e. it can
defy the laws of logic), or it is significantly restricted in the actions
that it can do (i.e. less powerful than a semi-omnipotent, but
non-omniscient being).

Note also that this implies that a semi-omnipotent being cannot cause
itself to become omniscient, unless it is willing to sacrifice its
semi-omnipotence in exchange.

- Oliver

On Tue, 06 Dec 2005 22:38:53 GMT, "Oliver Wong" <owong@castortech.com>
wrote:

>    I'm not sure, but I suspect that a semi-omnipotent being (where
>"semi-omnipotent" is defined above), cannot be omniscient, because if he
>could make himself omniscient, he could create some sort of paradox like
>Alan Turing's halting problem, thus creating a logical contradiction, and
>thus proving that no such semi-omnipotent but omniscient being could exist.

After a period of "my god is bigger and badder than your god",
inflation leads to "my god is omnipotent".

The Bible often mentions how God is terrible and awful and shows Him
to be a great ally in war.   He is even more powerful than other gods
that are mentioned in scriptures in a way that accepts that those
other gods exist.

Just because we now believe in omnipotence instead of the way the
people in the scriptures believed doesn't make us more enlightened
than those who actually spoke with God.    What happens if the
scriptures are actually correct and the churches are wrong?

"Howard Brazee" <howard@brazee.net> wrote:
> "Oliver Wong" <owong@castortech.com> wrote: 
>
> After a period of "my god is bigger and badder than your god",
> inflation leads to "my god is omnipotent".
>
> The Bible often mentions how God is terrible and awful and shows Him
> to be a great ally in war.   He is even more powerful than other gods
> that are mentioned in scriptures in a way that accepts that those
> other gods exist.

The New Testament refers to 'many gods' (1 Corinthians 8:5-6). The Old
Testament declares that men 'are gods' (Psalm 82:6) and Jesus quoted that
(John 10:34). I would be interested in seeing God's own definition of 'god'.
:-)
--
Judson McClendon      judmc@sunvaley0.com (remove zero)
Sun Valley Systems     http://sunvaley.com
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that
whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."

Howard Brazee wrote:

> After a period of "my god is bigger and badder than your god",
> inflation leads to "my god is omnipotent".

Yes, and much the same happens with today's 'gods'. The North Koreans
regard the Kim dynasty with awe and he is written about as being
'omnipotent'.

> The Bible often mentions how God is terrible and awful and shows Him
> to be a great ally in war.   He is even more powerful than other gods
> that are mentioned in scriptures in a way that accepts that those
> other gods exist.

Jehovah was the warlord (or just lord, cf Barons in England) of a
territory in today's palestine, or probably a dynasty of succession
that kept the name. North were the Canaanites with their lord El, also
a dynasty. It seems that according to writings found that Jehovah was a
son of El and so was Baalim. The reference to Elohim is to 'the house
or family of El'.  So the Jehovahs and the Baals (eg Baal Zebub) were
brothers or at least cousins.

The Jews promoted their lord (cf Baron) to being great and omnipotent
while making the lord of the next territory, Baal Zebub, as being evil.
In fact just like George V was 'all powerful and good' and his cousin
Kaiser Bill was an evil monster.

> Just because we now believe in omnipotence instead of the way the
> people in the scriptures believed doesn't make us more enlightened
> than those who actually spoke with God.    What happens if the
> scriptures are actually correct and the churches are wrong?

Then Judson will feel even more betrayed than he was when he discovered
that Santa Claus was just a deified and omnipotent version of the
actual Saint Nicolas of Myra.

The Jews have a cultural reason to keep alive their contract with the
Jehovah of the time. It is the foundation of their tribes and their
claim to land.