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Ancalagon
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12 Mar 2013, 5:29 am

Jono wrote:
Ancalagon wrote:
But let's consider this from a practical point of view. Sure, this idea wouldn't sit well with an Abrahamic religion. Let's assume it's true, though. God is omnicient over this universe (and any others he may have created). By definition, God is more intelligent and more knowledgeable than any entity or set of entities that exist or could exist in this universe, and therefore more intelligent and knowledgeable than humans. If this thing that God doesn't know about exists, then God can't detect its existence, and since God would be better at detecting its existence than humans, humans will never detect it, so it cannot have any practical effect on any human being, ever. If this thing were to exist, it would necessarily have exactly zero importance to humans.

So although the idea doesn't quite sit well with me, if it were proven to be true (or rather possible, since it couldn't possibly be proven to be true), then it wouldn't take me long to get used to it.


Well, the whole point is to kind of argue against the Abrahamic conception of God. From that same practical argument then, why would God even have any importance to humans?

The argument I made doesn't apply there, since humans are not even close to omniscient, and God isn't trying to deliberately hide even the possibility of his existence, unlike the posited meta-thing.


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Ancalagon
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12 Mar 2013, 5:43 am

Jono wrote:
Ancalagon wrote:
Jono wrote:
The_Walrus wrote:
Unknown unknowns possess no challenge for an omniscient being- it knows that there is nothing it does not know.


The statement in bold is logically impossible since by definition, unknown unknowns are called that because you are unaware of them. Therefore, if it is possible for unknown unknowns to exist, it is impossible to say for certainty that they don't. Please point out where that is circular.

Your first sentence is circular: you assume that there are unknown unknowns with respect to an omniscient being, and that because of the existence of these unknown unknowns there must be unknown unknowns.


No, I have actually never assumed that there are unknown unknown with respect to an omniscient being at all.

Then that first sentence doesn't make sense. What are you trying to say there?

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In fact, I freely admit that they may not.

Wasn't your argument against omniscience based on the opposite of this? If not, what exactly was it based on?

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However, I did argue that it is impossible for that omnipotent being to know whether or not they exist because he would be unaware of them by definition.

Are you trying to argue that whether unknown unknowns exist is an unknown unknown?

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Obviously, someone is misunderstanding the argument here.

Clearly.


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13 Mar 2013, 7:56 am

As Charles Darwin once said "God was created from the image of man, not man from the image of god”.



Jono
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13 Mar 2013, 9:19 am

Ancalagon wrote:
Jono wrote:
Ancalagon wrote:
Jono wrote:
The_Walrus wrote:
Unknown unknowns possess no challenge for an omniscient being- it knows that there is nothing it does not know.


The statement in bold is logically impossible since by definition, unknown unknowns are called that because you are unaware of them. Therefore, if it is possible for unknown unknowns to exist, it is impossible to say for certainty that they don't. Please point out where that is circular.

Your first sentence is circular: you assume that there are unknown unknowns with respect to an omniscient being, and that because of the existence of these unknown unknowns there must be unknown unknowns.


No, I have actually never assumed that there are unknown unknown with respect to an omniscient being at all.

Then that first sentence doesn't make sense. What are you trying to say there?

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In fact, I freely admit that they may not.

Wasn't your argument against omniscience based on the opposite of this? If not, what exactly was it based on?


No, the argument was not initially concerned at all with whether or not there are things unknown to God, rather it was only concerned with whether God would be aware of such things if there were. That was the whole point of introducing the concept of unknown unknowns, it was never relevant at all whether they really exist with respect to an omniscient being, it was only relevant whether or not they can be known to exist.

This is supposed to be similar to the argument for Godel's incompleteness theorem when one discusses statements that can neither be proven true or false within a consistent system of axioms. One is not concerned with whether such statements are true or false, only their provability or whether they can be proven to be true or false.

Ancalagon wrote:
Quote:
However, I did argue that it is impossible for that omnipotent being to know whether or not they exist because he would be unaware of them by definition.

Are you trying to argue that whether unknown unknowns exist is an unknown unknown?


I am arguing that that is unknowable, yes. One could argue that it's actually a known unknown because at least you could deduce that it's unknowable but that doesn't change anything because it still can never be known.

P.S. This argument against omniscience was first used by the guy in the video below. Maybe his explanation is better than mine:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vauFcJAnnTY[/youtube]



ruveyn
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13 Mar 2013, 10:20 am

Jono wrote:

P.S. This argument against omniscience was first used by the guy in the video below. Maybe his explanation is better than mine:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vauFcJAnnTY[/youtube]


This is not as bad as some philosophical discourse I have read or listened to, but it is still (in the end) word salad.

This fellow, at least, sounds reasonable.

ruveyn



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13 Mar 2013, 7:18 pm

Who created God?
Some rich bloke with a large milling machine.



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01 Apr 2015, 11:58 am

I know that I posted this thread about 2 years ago but I've actually found the source of this argument against omniscience as paradoxical. Apparently it was first thought up by Patrick Grimm and is based on Cantor's theorem in set theory, except talking about whether it's possible to have a "set of all truths" and finds a logical contradiction regarding whether such a set exists. Though doesn't explicitly mention unknown unknowns like I did previously but the argument is logically equivalent.:

http://www.pgrim.org/articles/omniscience9.pdf

Look at the parts 5 and 6, "the Cantorian argument".



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01 Apr 2015, 12:37 pm

Jono wrote:
Here's another brilliant video from Darkmatter, in which God meets his creator. One of the arguments, given by religious people, for God's existence is the argument from design. The argument goes that something as complex as yourself and the universe must of had a creator. However, given that God is more intelligent and more complex, shouldn't that same logic mean that something created God?

The video also explains why the concept of omniscience, or all-knowing, is actually a complete and utter logical contradiction. The reason for that is that knowing everything implies also knowing unknown unknowns (things that you don't even know that there is to know), which by definition, can't be known. If that sounds confusing, maybe the video explains it better:






God in all theologies is exempt from causality since *he* exists outside of space and time which resolves that particular contradiction. But what makes an omnipotent being a logical contradiction is the question can God make a stone so big that he couldn't lift it? If God is omnipotent, then God could create a SuperGod that could dominate him and he'd have no control over!



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01 Apr 2015, 12:56 pm

Well, the solution is simple: declare questions such as “who created God?” to be blasphemies and burn all the heretics. Never forget the only truly valid argument in any discussion is force.


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01 Apr 2015, 7:52 pm

People who ask the question, 'Who, or what, created God?', are asking a question that no philosopher or theologian would ever take seriously. You're basically asking, 'Who, or what, created that which is atemporal and therefore has no beginning in time, is what is known as a necessary entity and therefore was not created, and which provides the ultimate explanation (i.e. effectively short-circuits the infinite regress issue) for why there is something rather than nothing?'

I mean, seriously. A question like this is only ever asked by the philosophically naive. Nothing 'created God'. That is the simple, straight and truthful answer, the only answer.

(By the way, by 'nothing' I don't mean 'gravity', 'branes' or 'a quantum vacuum soup' - I mean 'a complete absence of all, no-thing as such' - i.e. the true meaning of the word).



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01 Apr 2015, 7:55 pm

Spiderpig wrote:
Well, the solution is simple: declare questions such as “who created God?” to be blasphemies and burn all the heretics. Never forget the only truly valid argument in any discussion is force.


No 'Spiderpig', the question itself is a profoundly stupid one, a question that demonstrates, like nothing else does, the ignorance of the one asking it.



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02 Apr 2015, 12:43 am

Oh my the arrogance. "My version of philosophy proves God" Lintar your assumptions are something that most physicists and anyone seeking real understanding would never take seriously.


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02 Apr 2015, 1:19 am

xenon13 wrote:
Metagod?


ts;dr

God is just the singularity we all live in. Or potentially a neighboring one.


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02 Apr 2015, 6:26 am

Lintar wrote:
People who ask the question, 'Who, or what, created God?', are asking a question that no philosopher or theologian would ever take seriously.


That’s nothing short of an ad verecundiam argument to suppress the question rather than answer it.

Lintar wrote:
You're basically asking, 'Who, or what, created that which is atemporal and therefore has no beginning in time, is what is known as a necessary entity and therefore was not created, and which provides the ultimate explanation (i.e. effectively short-circuits the infinite regress issue) for why there is something rather than nothing?'


Only if you accept the premise that God is atemporal and a necessary entity, and, declaring Him to be the ultimate explanation, refuse to inquire any further.

Lintar wrote:
I mean, seriously. A question like this is only ever asked by the philosophically naive.


Now you escalate to mildly insulting whoever questions the aforementioned beliefs, while avoiding the matter itself.

Lintar wrote:
Nothing 'created God'. That is the simple, straight and truthful answer, the only answer.


Why? Because you say so, I suppose, since there’s no other reason.

Lintar wrote:
(By the way, by 'nothing' I don't mean 'gravity', 'branes' or 'a quantum vacuum soup' - I mean 'a complete absence of all, no-thing as such' - i.e. the true meaning of the word).


It’s hard to tell what exactly “nothing at all” means in a profound sense. The problem is similar to the paradoxes which pop up if you want to have a “set of all sets” in mathematics. Intuitively, if your “nothing” excludes gravity, branes, etc., why should it not exclude spacetime itself? After all, according to general relativity, gravity is nothing but the curvature of spacetime, and branes are structures made of spacetime, too. But now that the concept of time has been thus engulfed by science, there’s no room anymore for philosophical speculation taking a Newtonian time for granted. An Abrahamic-like God existing outside spacetime might as well not exist at all as far as we are concerned, because there’s no way to interact with it, anywhere in space or at any point in time. You could just as easily postulate the existence of any other kind of metaphysical being.

When you consider the whole of spacetime, the Big Bang is the beginning of time itself, just like the North Pole is the beginning of geographical latitude on Earth. There’s nothing special about that point in spacetime to warrant a particular connection with a metaphysical entity that you don’t feel the need to ascribe to any other point.

This could be the beginning of an interesting discussion, but …

Lintar wrote:
No 'Spiderpig', the question itself is a profoundly stupid one, a question that demonstrates, like nothing else does, the ignorance of the one asking it.


… you shut it down by further escalating your insults. In real life, this usually means that you’re offended by the question we’re discussing and that you will react with force to suppress it if others keep annoying you by not letting the matter go, instead of accepting the view you defend.

So, as I said before, the ultimate argument is force. We’re living beings, adapted to fighting for survival. Our very ability to discuss complex things is an accident.


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02 Apr 2015, 7:57 am

Spiderpig :hail:


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02 Apr 2015, 8:01 am

Lintar wrote:
People who ask the question, 'Who, or what, created God?', are asking a question that no philosopher or theologian would ever take seriously. You're basically asking, 'Who, or what, created that which is atemporal and therefore has no beginning in time, is what is known as a necessary entity and therefore was not created, and which provides the ultimate explanation (i.e. effectively short-circuits the infinite regress issue) for why there is something rather than nothing?'

I mean, seriously. A question like this is only ever asked by the philosophically naive. Nothing 'created God'. That is the simple, straight and truthful answer, the only answer.

(By the way, by 'nothing' I don't mean 'gravity', 'branes' or 'a quantum vacuum soup' - I mean 'a complete absence of all, no-thing as such' - i.e. the true meaning of the word).


You are taking this view as the only possible and self evident view. But it was not always so (as theologians and probably also philosophers are aware). A related and relevant question is 'when did the idea that there is only one God and that it(or he) is outside time and space come into being?' You are taking it as axiomatic that this must be so but it is only one of many creation myths.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_myth

Quote:
Eliade and his colleague Charles H. Long developed a classification based on some common motifs that reappear in stories the world over. The classification identifies five basic types:[22]


Brahmā, the Hindu deva of creation, emerges from a lotus risen from the navel of Viṣņu, who lies with Lakshmi on the serpent Ananta Shesha
Creation ex nihilo in which the creation is through the thought, word, dream or bodily secretions of a divine being
Earth diver creation in which a diver, usually a bird or amphibian sent by a creator, plunges to the seabed through a primordial ocean to bring up sand or mud which develops into a terrestrial world
Emergence myths in which progenitors pass through a series of worlds and metamorphoses until reaching the present world
Creation by the dismemberment of a primordial being
Creation by the splitting or ordering of a primordial unity such as the cracking of a cosmic egg or a bringing order from chaos

In Maya religion, the dwarf was an embodiment of the Maize God's helpers at creation[23]
Marta Weigle further developed and refined this typology to highlight nine themes, adding elements such as deus faber, a creation crafted by a deity, creation from the work of two creators working together or against each other, creation from sacrifice and creation from division/conjugation, accretion/conjunction, or secretion.[22]

An alternative system based on six recurring narrative themes was designed by Raymond Van Over:[22]

a primeval abyss, an infinite expanse of waters or space
an originator deity which is awakened or an eternal entity within the abyss
an originator deity poised above the abyss
a cosmic egg or embryo
an originator deity creating life through sound or word
life generating from the corpse or dismembered parts of an originator deity


The closest that your narrative comes to one of the narrative categories in this set is 'an originator deity poised above the abyss'. That is reasonably close to your repeated narrative of an originator deity outside of time and space.

But it's just a narrative. You are taking it as axiomatic as though there is no other possibility.

To answer the question of the OP, you created the God you believe in. It's your own narrative that you made up. You didn't make it up out of whole cloth since it is based on monotheism (which is not the only possible narrative, as you know) and is an iteration of 'an originator deity poised above the abyss'. But it's still something you made up.