All Knowing, All Powerful; one tiny question...

[Frank Hipper]

Assume the all knowing, all powerful creator god exists.

Why does the universe itself exist?

Doesn't all knowing and all powerful mean that every minute facet of the universe's existence was known intimately by god before he created it?

[SirNitram]

Assume the all knowing, all powerful creator god exists.

Why does the universe itself exist?

Doesn't all knowing and all powerful mean that every minute facet of the universe's existence was known intimately by god before he created it?

Paradox prevention, unless we're postulating immunity from logic.

[Rye]

Assume the all knowing, all powerful creator god exists.

Why does the universe itself exist?

According to some nut on spacebattles, the answer is "love." I guess God so loved the world that he felt compelled to make it in the first place?

Doesn't all knowing and all powerful mean that every minute facet of the universe's existence was known intimately by god before he created it?

Well yeah, but I don't see what that has to do with creating it.

[Frank Hipper]

Assume the all knowing, all powerful creator god exists.

Why does the universe itself exist?

Doesn't all knowing and all powerful mean that every minute facet of the universe's existence was known intimately by god before he created it?

Paradox prevention, unless we're postulating immunity from logic.

I get physically ill when I run into "awesome god" statements, you know?

[SirNitram]

I get physically ill when I run into "awesome god" statements, you know?

I know. But a being who could perceive the universe before it's creation would be forced to create it, otherwise he's violated casuality.

[Dark Hellion]

The irony of Awesome God statements is how far short they fall of the true nature of an omnipotent being, logic bound or not. They short change their omnipotent deity at every turn. It's pathetic. If a truly omnipotent god existed, his powers would be so far beyond us that they are truly incomprehensible. Nothing can happen that an omnipotent god does not expressly will, removing free will, and making moral judgment completely illusory, unless the God is above logic, in which case we cannot, ever, ever hope to achieve any understanding of his workings, as our understanding is bound within logical systems. The fact that fundies claim to have any grasp on God shows how thin their grasp on reality is. If god did exist, they could not hope to understand any aspect of it, and they would only be able to parade about a caricature of their god. If they realized this, one wonders would they still worship?

[SirNitram]

Actually, there's another resolution. A combination of Culture Mind and Azathoth.

If we presume the perfect knowledge of the universe comes from a simulation conducted with perfect intellect, there is no paradox. It's just a simulation. However, if a being was truly all-powerful, it runs the risk of Creating without intention. Azathoth is slumbering, creating the universe from it's dream.

[Frank Hipper]

Assume the all knowing, all powerful creator god exists.

Why does the universe itself exist?

According to some nut on spacebattles, the answer is "love." I guess God so loved the world that he felt compelled to make it in the first place?

Doesn't all knowing and all powerful mean that every minute facet of the universe's existence was known intimately by god before he created it?

Well yeah, but I don't see what that has to do with creating it.

Why bring something into existence when that something is known so thoroughly, so completely, that it's existence is purposeless?

[General Zod]

I get physically ill when I run into "awesome god" statements, you know?

I know. But a being who could perceive the universe before it's creation would be forced to create it, otherwise he's violated casuality.

That means that God doesn't have complete omnipotence then doesn't it? He can't not do these things without violating causality, therefore he's restricted in what he can or can't do according to what he knows is going to happen?

[SirNitram]

I get physically ill when I run into "awesome god" statements, you know?

I know. But a being who could perceive the universe before it's creation would be forced to create it, otherwise he's violated casuality.

That means that God doesn't have complete omnipotence then doesn't it? He can't not do these things without violating causality, therefore he's restricted in what he can or can't do according to what he knows is going to happen?

I am presuming a deity who is all-powerful within the bounds of logic.

[K. A. Pital]

I am presuming a deity who is all-powerful within the bounds of logic.

Isn't causality a feature of our physical universe?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I get physically ill when I run into "awesome god" statements, you know?

I know. But a being who could perceive the universe before it's creation would be forced to create it, otherwise he's violated casuality.

The best answer is that the universe would exist entirely as a facet of the imagination of the Supreme Being. His imagining the universe, essentially, Willed it to exist, and the whole existence of the universe is an Idea in the mind of the Supreme Being.

[CaptJodan]

Why bring something into existence when that something is known so thoroughly, so completely, that it's existence is purposeless?

I think it's fairly clear that God gets really pissed off if you don't worship him. Even if he knows who is and who isn't going to worship him, he may still want or need that worship regardless of whether he knew it would exist to begin with. God has a major ego and if he didn't have anyone to show off to or terrorize, I suppose he gets bored and lonely.

Of course that begs the question why he didn't create a universe in which literally everything or almost everything actually worships him, instead of a universe with mostly non-living matter.

[General Zod]

Of course that begs the question why he didn't create a universe in which literally everything or almost everything actually worships him, instead of a universe with mostly non-living matter.

Because otherwise he'd be bored. What a better way to cure boredom for an omnipotent deity than to create a universe with the illusion of free will as your plaything?

[CaptJodan]

Because otherwise he'd be bored. What a better way to cure boredom for an omnipotent deity than to create a universe with the illusion of free will as your plaything?

But see, that's what Frank's on about. I don't imagine he'd be any more "bored" with the idea of, say, 90% of matter (we'll say it's living for sake of argument) in this fictional universe worshiping him than the less than .000000001% (I'm sure this is actually less) of living and even intelligent matter that can worship him now.

From what I can tell, giant balls of gas, empty space, and floating rocks don't make for great worshiping bodies. They don't DO anything (unless God finds their following his laws of physics a real turn on). But fill that space up with more intelligent life than you can shake a stick at and have them compete with each other on how much they love you, and you've got a party.

God was thinking pretty small scale if he has only ONE species fighting over who loves him best.

[General Zod]

Or maybe just for fun - maybe creating matter gives God some kind of pleasure.

What if God makes matter by masturbating? That would help explain some of his sexual hangups.

[Darth Raptor]

If you want to seriously examine the idea of an all-knowing, all-powerful being instead of just mock it, you'll need to form a more workable definition of "omnipotence" than the classic "ability to do literally anything conceivable". If we place omnipotence subservient to the laws of logic and causality, it becomes the ability to do anything that is possible- logical paradoxes are irrelevant because they're nonsensical. For example, we ignore the "unstoppable force vs. immovable object" question because it doesn't make any sense. This doesn't actually nerf God that much, because few things are really, truly impossible (possessing mutually exclusive properties, as opposed to merely being statistically improbable).

Omniscience is a far, far thornier problem. If the omniscience extends into the endless future with absolute certainty, the omniscient being cannot have anything resembling a free will. This has been mentioned before, but one point that's rarely examined is the impact of omniscience on motivation. If you know absolutely, literally everything you cannot be surprised. There will never be new information to react to, therefore you will have no emotion. Indeed, an omniscient being could not be moved to do anything at all. Except, perhaps, attempt to destroy itself. In short, the idea that God can be "bored" or "lonely" or "happy" or "angry" at all and at the same time know everything is laughable.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

If you want to seriously examine the idea of an all-knowing, all-powerful being instead of just mock it, you'll need to form a more workable definition of "omnipotence" than the classic "ability to do literally anything conceivable". If we place omnipotence subservient to the laws of logic and causality, it becomes the ability to do anything that is possible- logical paradoxes are irrelevant because they're nonsensical. For example, we ignore the "unstoppable force vs. immovable object" question because it doesn't make any sense. This doesn't actually nerf God that much, because few things are really, truly impossible (possessing mutually exclusive properties, as opposed to merely being statistically improbable).

Omniscience is a far, far thornier problem. If the omniscience extends into the endless future with absolute certainty, the omniscient being cannot have anything resembling a free will. This has been mentioned before, but one point that's rarely examined is the impact of omniscience on motivation. If you know absolutely, literally everything you cannot be surprised. There will never be new information to react to, therefore you will have no emotion. Indeed, an omniscient being could not be moved to do anything at all. Except, perhaps, attempt to destroy itself. In short, the idea that God can be "bored" or "lonely" or "happy" or "angry" at all and at the same time know everything is laughable.

Thank you for some badly needed commentary on this issue. I see how everyone ignored what I said, and it's annoying to me in the sense that the issue of God is not taken very seriously when it should be.

The issue is much less that God and the universe are incompatible and more than God and Miracles and God and Free Will are incompatible. You can have a Deist-Determinist religion (though it violates parsimony, but that's an unrelated issue) in which God creates the universe, but you cannot have a theistic-free will religion.

[Darth Wong]

If you want to seriously examine the idea of an all-knowing, all-powerful being instead of just mock it, you'll need to form a more workable definition of "omnipotence" than the classic "ability to do literally anything conceivable".

Excuse me, but most fundies, when pressed in debate, will literally tell you that God is able to violate logic itself, which is precisely the kind of omnipotence that you say we shouldn't use. As far as they're concerned, God can make parallel lines meet or contradict himself without being inconsistent.

[Darth Raptor]

Excuse me, but most fundies, when pressed in debate, will literally tell you that God is able to violate logic itself, which is precisely the kind of omnipotence that you say we shouldn't use. As far as they're concerned, God can make parallel lines meet or contradict himself without being inconsistent.

Yes, and this is why we can say with absolute certainty that the fundamentalist Judeo-Christian version of Yaweh does not exist. If there is a Yaweh, he's radically different from the fundie perception of him. Concepts like square circles disprove themselves. Contrary to what they will claim, absolute knowledge is not required to disprove the existence of their God; it's inherently nonsensical.

[Dark Hellion]

The irony is that when a Christian conceded that god can violate logic then you win the debate. The atheist position that god does not exist has to be correct if god violates logic, because if god violates logic, then it does not have to care about possession of mutually exclusive properties, and thus by existing it can also not exist just as easily, without worrying about paradox. As we are bound within logic, we cannot accept this, and thus can only chose one, thus giving God does not exist a positive truth value and making us right. Epic win.
Non-logical god is always funny, because fundies do not understand the actual consequences, or just how fucked up it actually would be. They spout the nonsense without understanding why so many theologians of the past discounted this outright, exactly because of situations like the one outlined above. Supra-logical beings do not make sense to logical bound humans, and appear arbitrary, paradoxical, and incomprehensible. Anyone who claims to know god and that god is above logic is a moron, although he technically could easily be a correct moron, because of the problems of supra-logical god.

[SirNitram]

I get physically ill when I run into "awesome god" statements, you know?

I know. But a being who could perceive the universe before it's creation would be forced to create it, otherwise he's violated casuality.

The best answer is that the universe would exist entirely as a facet of the imagination of the Supreme Being. His imagining the universe, essentially, Willed it to exist, and the whole existence of the universe is an Idea in the mind of the Supreme Being.

Indeed. The Azathoth solution that I referred to earlier.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The amusing thing is that prescience forcing the behaviour of the all-powerful down certain fixed lines, in which the only escape was self-destruction, was the main theme of Frank Herbert's Dune series.

[Alerik the Fortunate]

Everyone start praying, God's been hitting the Water of Life pretty hard lately!

But really, is there anything other than physical violence that can be done to reach someone who is more certain in the existence of something they have simultaneously defined in and out of existence than that of the world surrounding them? I suppose the only thing that saves the average believer from absolute irrevocable insanity is refusal to examine everything all at once in all earnestness.

[Alerik the Fortunate]

I suppose it boils down to the question, what distinguishes God's "imagining" of something from his "creation" of it, when his knowledge is supposedly equally perfect in either case? Does he arbitrarily declare a created reality more real than an imagined one?