Beliefs about and definitions of gods and Gods

A lot of the Greek/Roman gods were just on similar levels of pettiness and asshattery as the people worshiping them. Greek/Roman culture was pretty fucked up compared to modern views.

Also, you run into logical consistency issues with the three Os version of God. Namely, there being a greater-than-infinite amount of "everything" that an omniscient God would know.

I don't think you get to call logical consistency issues in the same sentence that you try to apply the phrase "greater-than-infinite" to something.

Valid point, that.

And here's your citation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfinite_number

More specifically, there are more statements that an omniscient God knows than there are natural numbers. Probably more statements than there are fractions as well.

edited 17th Aug '11 11:20:26 AM by Yej

Transfinite numbers aren't infinite, or greater than infinite, like you said they were.

1) You're assuming knowledge is discrete. While discrete statements may fall from it, there is no reason to believe that the knowledge itself that can construct them is. The best a statement can do is approximate it via arbitrary precision, much like we approximate irrational numbers to arbitrary precision.

2) You're using a mathematical construct created by selectively disregarding characteristics of infinity to compare its infinity-ness to the infinity-ness of what you believe to be a philosophical construct created by selectively disregarding characteristics of reality itself. This might be called a sophomoric dick-waving contest, but frankly the notion of an infinitely large or infinite number of dicks is unsettling enough to try and find another phrase.

edited 17th Aug '11 11:34:41 AM by Pykrete

1) There are statements that have "blanks" in them, so they actually represent an infinite amount of facts, but there are an infinite amount of those statements.

2) What am I disregarding?

This would serve for most Christians:

Brought to you courtesy of the Council of Nicea and Stephen Colbert.

edited 17th Aug '11 11:57:49 AM by Cojuanco

@ Yej: I'm confused. Why can't God know a greater-than-infinite number of things? And if He can't, what's to say that "omniscience" is defined in such a way that extends beyond the realms of what's actually possible?

edited 17th Aug '11 11:59:18 AM by BobbyG

There is no such "thing" as greater-than-infinite. There's no meaning behind the term. You might as well say "God blargle fargle turgle smork."

You can say "Well, I'm not being literal: God knows a shitload of stuff and I'm just being evocative" though.

edited 17th Aug '11 12:02:35 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

Depending on how you define omnipotent, why should "greater-than-infinite" being impossible stop Him from knowing it?

More seriously, I think there are different varieties of infinity; for example, there are an infinite number of integers and an infinite number of real numbers, but the former set contains less information than the latter, does it not?

And, hang on, if "greater-than-infinite" is meaningless anyway, what's the problem?

edited 17th Aug '11 12:07:09 PM by BobbyG

"Defining" omnipotent to allow for meaningless things is less a definition and more a gooble garble beeple beep.

The problem is claiming meaningless phrases are meaningful, because then it allows you to hide the fallacies.

edited 17th Aug '11 12:08:06 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

No, it would just mean that our perception of meaning is limited.

What part of "God knows everything" is meaningless?

edited 17th Aug '11 12:09:31 PM by BobbyG

No, it would mean that you're using a meaningless term to describe how meaningless terms aren't meaningless.

Alternatively, it's misunderstanding the meaning of meaning.

edited 17th Aug '11 12:09:37 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

No, I mean, if God is omnipotent, that could conceivably include the ability to do things that we regard as being completely impossible, could it not?

No. That is not conceivable. That's precisely what it means to be inconceivable.

I'm not sure I follow.

True or false: that there are things of which we cannot conceive does not imply that we cannot conceive of the hypothetical existence of an entity that can do things of which we cannot conceive?

edited 17th Aug '11 12:17:22 PM by BobbyG

There are not things that we cannot conceive, because "things" we cannot conceive are not "things." They're not even abstracts. They're simply "not."

Now, there are words that can be used to speak in a way that suggests there is a thing, when in fact, there is not a thing. But this is quite different from there "being" a thing we cannot conceive.

edited 17th Aug '11 12:18:52 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

@Bobby, whoops, I sort of missed the problem. Not only does God know a greater-than-natural-infinity number of things, and so it is, by definition, impossible for him to enumerate the things he knows*

universal set

Okay, this might take a bit. First I believe that something created the universe and the laws that govern it. This I call the Creator. I also believe that the preceding is all we can know about It including whether It's an It, a He, a She, a Them, or Something We Have No Concept For because it's just too frakkin' BIG. It's like a bacteria trying to understand the mind and motives of a human only more so.

Now I also believe in gods. I believe they spring from what can be called "the biospheric energy of the earth", "mana", "chi" or, if you will, "The Force". They are then given shape by the mass subconcious of humanity. We dream therefore they am. Which is why most deities, when it comes down to it are Jerkass Gods, because people are mostly jerkasses.

edited 17th Aug '11 12:23:25 PM by tricksterson

It begs the question: If some "thing" created the universe, did this thing exist prior to the universe? If time is related to space, and space had to be created, did time have to be created? And so, what precisely does it mean "to exist" "before time?"

Exist outside of time.

Ah, but "To exist" is itself a temporal statement in nature, except when describing such things as abstract objects like "The number two exists." So then, is God an abstract object? Does god "exist" in the same sense that the number two exists? What does this mean in a practical sense? Is this at all distinct from existing in the imagination?

Also, a mind can't exist outside of time.