Thread: Logical Proof for God #1

You should have merged these two points into one thread.
You're jumping from one idea to the other.

"understand, therefore control". You're making a false connection between understanding and controlling. Being able to understand something does not mean that you can control it. For instance. I understand how the earth revolves around the sun. But I am unable to control it. No matter how far we advance, there will always be things that are outside of our control. For instance, the laws of physics. Even if humans advance to the point of understanding how the universe works in its entirety(eg... there's nothing we DON'T know about the universe), does that mean we will be able to CHANGE the laws of physics? I don't think so. I think we can APPLY the laws of physics, and use them to make ourselves very very powerful. We could even apply the laws of physics to become so powerful that we can exert total control over worlds and civilizations. But we would never become omnipotent.

Given enough technology and resources you could control the way in which the earth revolves around the sun. There is still plenty that we do not understand about the universe. If we had the ability to go back to the birth of the physical universe before physical laws formed (before being only an approximate term since time itself did not yet exist) then we could influence the way those laws formed and thus control them.

Where would we obtain the ability to go back in time before the laws of physics formed? To me, the idea of existing BEFORE the laws of physics existed, would result in the person ceasing to exist. The laws of the physical universe are what hold us together, and being in a place where they don't exist would dismantle all that makes us what we are.

I think you're making the mistake of assuming that technology will advance to the point where we can do impossible things, on top of that, you're using it to justify the existance of an omnipotent entity. In essence, you're using one belief to justify another belief.

I personally don't believe that technology will advance to that point. I believe there must be a point where it cannot advance any further because there is nothing left that we can do. Because I don't believe in your REASONING, I cannot agree with your conclusion. Predicting what technology will be in the future is purely speculative. I feel like your argument to "prove" god is not concrete because it relies heavily on one's faith that technology will advance to the level you are asserting that it will.

To convince an atheist of something... You cannot use speculation and an appeal to faith. You must use knowledge and an appeal to reason.

Ex. "Cars exist because technology has progressed to the point to harness the power of combustion and convert chemical energy into mechanical energy."
is more logical than
"God exists because technology WILL progress to the point where humans will become God"
An interesting philosophical statement, but not "Proof".

I'm not denying that your conclusion is cool - it is. It is one of many possible explanations for the existence of a god, but I don't accept it as proof for the existence of a god.

Okay so you've come to one of the arguments against this that I have been able to come up with; that science (and therefore technology) has a limit. I personally don't believe this is true but I have no way to refute that claim. I will ask though, how could technology "have nothing left to do" and still not be able to do everything (controlling physical laws being encompassed by the set "everything to do")?

Originally Posted by Xaqaria

Okay so you've come to one of the arguments against this that I have been able to come up with; that science (and therefore technology) has a limit. I personally don't believe this is true but I have no way to refute that claim. I will ask though, how could technology "have nothing left to do" and still not be able to do everything (controlling physical laws being encompassed by the set "everything to do")?

Because when technology reaches its limit, it will have nothing left to do? Persuming that the laws of the universe are completly concrete, this is a valid conclusion because then you could potentially map all possible technology by applying these laws if you had a ridiculously powerful computer. I personally believe that the "laws" of the universe aren't as rigid as DreiHundert believes they are but this is just a conjuncture on my part. I've read your other "logical proof" and have a few bits of friendly advice for you:
1. Stop calling them proofs. They do not fit the defination of a proof, conjuncture is a more correct term.
2. For the love of God, define God. I can't believe I actually need to point to you how semantically loaded the word God is.
3. I find it quite suprising how you haven't explored the virtual world hypothesis yet. This is actually the most likely God manifestation there is as given our current projections of technology, its quite likely that we're residing in a virtual world. If you're going to post about this, please don't call it a "proof" because it isn't.
4. Keep working along these lines. You are bringing out some cool concepts, you just need to present them with a bit more rigour.

Thanks for the input but I'll call it what I want. Perhaps my threads don't follow the particular format that you are used to but the general definition of a logical proof is an argument that uses inductive or deductive reasoning which I have done here. If the only problem you can come up with in regards to my threads is that I didn't use the particular words that you would prefer then I think I've done a pretty good job. I am not presenting to a peer reviewed scientific journal so rigour is not that high on the list of priorities, this is a discussion on an internet forum.

I know this can be a hot button disscusion for some people but if you can't leave your egos at the door and cut the pretension then I'd rather not discuss with you.

As for your attempt to answer my question, you didn't; you simply restated what was already said. If there is nothing left to do then necessarily everything must have been done and yet "control laws of physics" is something left undone in that scenario, so how can there be nothing left to do? The only possible response to this that I can think of is that you are arguing that technology's limit is actually somewhere short of everything that there is to do.

Also hey, it makes you look silly to be pretensious and still continue to do things like say conjuncture when you mean conjecture...

Ok how about this: If the laws of physics are completely concerte, then there will come a point when technology will have nothing possible left to so. Thats obvious enough for you? Where exactly did I say I have a problem with your thinking? I was actually trying to help you but it seems that you're so arrogant that simple advice offends you. You're correct that this is an internet forum and not a peer review journal but calling something a proof when its not is no minor error. If you want us to take you seriously, you're going to have to at least get the basic terminology right. If you're not interested in being taken seriously, what are you doing in this section of the forum?
I find it pretty ironic that someone who accusing me of pretension and a large ego calls me out on a minor spelling error. Its funny because some of your ideas, especially the ones on "proof" 2 are quite simular to some of my own. I was looking forward to having a discussion with you but I guess you think you're above and beyond discussion. Perhaps the next "proof" will go like this: everything is information. I know everything. This means that I'm not only omniscent but omnipotent too. I'm god, therfore god exists.

RationalMystic, I think you might have slightly misunderstood what I'm saying. I believe that the laws of physics are concrete. By that I mean that it is impossible to change them. I don't believe that the current understanding of physics is absolutely concrete. It is not. I believe humans don't even come close to full understanding of the universe.

The difference between Xaq and I is that we both speculate the future of our understanding of the universe to pan out in different ways. To which there is no solid "proof" for either side to use.

The best we can do here is share our opinions and thoughts on the matter, hoping to increase our understanding of the subject from both perspectives. However, Xaq - I second Rational's notion on the fact that you should have presented your idea with a bit of humility. And he is right that "Proof" is the wrong term to use, which is what my posts are mainly attempting to illustrate.

Nobody's trying to be egotistical and hostile in this discussion, but a debate on the existance of God will never be unicorns and rainbows, you know.

Man I could debate all day on the laws of the unverse DreiHuntert but I don't want to bolster this thread with more content then it deserves. Plus this guy's ego so inflated, he might report us for hijacking his thread. We'll do that battle on another thread I think.

Originally Posted by RationalMystic

Man I could debate all day on the laws of the unverse DreiHuntert but I don't want to bolster this thread with more content then it deserves. Plus this guy's ego so inflated, he might report us for hijacking his thread. We'll do that battle on another thread I think.

Idk about thread hi-jacking... This is all relevant to discussion. But I could report him back for double-posting! .

Honestly, you may be overestimating the size of his ego..

If you must leave, then I'll see you in the next thread. I'm willing to stay around and discuss unless it turns into an outright flame war. That's when I'm packin' my bags and getting out before the banhammer starts flying around.

Don't know if you understood my explanation of what a logical proof is so let me try it again. It does not claim to prove anything and can be falsified, it is merely a type of argument that uses deductive or inductive reasoning to come to a conclusion. A logical proof essentially says if the premise is true then the conclusion logically follows. If the premise can be shown to be false then the conclusion does not logically follow. Both threads that I posted are logical proofs in that they follow this sort of deductive framework. It was suggested that the premise may be invalid; I.e. that technology may be limited, but no evidence has yet been presented to support that assertion.

Feel free to discuss the topic, I just don't care to discuss with anyone with a chip on their shoulder who would rather critique the way in which I present my ideas instead of actually discussing the ideas themselves.

Ok I may have over reacted a little. I was in a bad mood when I sent those two posts so apologies if I was being a dick (which in hindsight I was). If you want discussion, i'll provide some.

For this hypothesis to hold true, the following conditions have to be met IMO:

1. It has to be physically possible to bend the laws of physics.
Likelihood: not as bad as people might imagine. We've managed to increase the maximum speed of light locally by using a phenomena known as cassmir effect. I consider the changing of the values of physical constants to be the first step towards law modification. As for the complete building of a new set of laws, the singularities in blackholes could potentially hold areas with no laws in effect.

2. At least one sentient race will be able to reach the level of technology necessary for large scale physical law modification without becoming extinct.
Likelihood: this is a harder one to answer as its hard to anticipate what kind of challenges would such an advanced race face. Obviously such a race's capabilities for destruction would be immense. I think ultimately this depends on whether it's possible to mature mentally as fast as one matures technologically.

3. A race with such abilities is interested in being deities.
Likelihood: now this is where I have serious issues with such a hypothesis.
Why would a race that's advanced so far both technologically and (by not extinguishing themselves) spiritually be interested in creating and maintaining a universe so full of suffering and antrophy? The only plausible answer I can give is that it's some kind of experiment on a vast scale.

This is what I have so far. Thoughts?

I think we will probably be progressing technologically for the rest of the time we exist, and we might find a way to travel to other universes and keep our species going endlessly. But reaching omnipotence would take eternity to achieve. If we exist for eternity and keep progressing, do we ever become omnipotent? I think the answer has something to do with Zeno's Paradox and an asymptote.

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

But reaching omnipotence would take eternity to achieve.

Could you clarify the reasoning behind this statment please?

Originally Posted by RationalMystic

Could you clarify the reasoning behind this statment please?

Technological progress is gradual, as is the increase in humanity's power that comes with it. Such progress increases as time goes on, and omnipotence is an infinite level of such progress. So, it would take an infinite amount of time to reach it.

However, my point was a play on words. You can't take an infinite amount of time and reach something waiting at the end of it. There is no end to eternity. I also think omnipotence is impossible, partly because it involves too many contradictions. If you were infinitely powerful, would you be able to make it where nobody was ever infinitely powerful? If you achieved that, how would it be that you achieved it? If you tried to make another person lose his infinite power while he tried to make it where he keeps his infinite power, what would happen? And the classic theological point... Would you be able to make a rock so heavy you can't lift it? Etc.

How about the ability to do anything that doesn't lead to a logical contradiction?

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

Technological progress is gradual, as is the increase in humanity's power that comes with it. Such progress increases as time goes on, and omnipotence is an infinite level of such progress. So, it would take an infinite amount of time to reach it.

However, my point was a play on words. You can't take an infinite amount of time and reach something waiting at the end of it. There is no end to eternity. I also think omnipotence is impossible, partly because it involves too many contradictions. If you were infinitely powerful, would you be able to make it where nobody was ever infinitely powerful? If you achieved that, how would it be that you achieved it? If you tried to make another person lose his infinite power while he tried to make it where he keeps his infinite power, what would happen? And the classic theological point... Would you be able to make a rock so heavy you can't lift it? Etc.

Well first of all technological progress is most definatly NOT gradual or even strictly linear. Its subject to leaps and hops and even falls.
The same goes for humanity's progress except even more so. However I do understand what you're trying to get at. However if you accept that our universe is of finite (if stupendous) size, then omnipotence can simply mean control over this expanding domain and this won't take an infinite amount of time to achieve it.

To adress the parodoxes: if you alter history to make omnipotence impossible to acheive then depending on which model you believe, one of two things will happen: if you believe in the traditional Copenhagen's model, your adjusting of the timeline will simply alter the timeline but you will continue to exist as causality isn't a strictly required element of the universe. If you believe in the many-worlds model, then your action simply causes one set of universes to never develop a being of omnipotence (chances are, they already exist) while you will still exist in another set. I'm massivly simplifing the premise here but this is the basic gist of it. The second paradox is a lot more interesting. The best answer I can offer is that I don't believe that there can be more then one omnipotent being inhabiting the same universe by the very definition of the term. For the last one the answer is simple I think: yes but that would mean relinquishing your omnipotence.

Originally Posted by Xei

How about the ability to do anything that doesn't lead to a logical contradiction?

Sorry if I'm being dense but could you expand on this?
Also its good to see you enter this thread.

Seems to me God in the traditional sense could do more than control just physical reality. I also don't believe that we or any other race has enough time for this to occur. Even 10 million years doesn't seem long enough to control every aspect of physical reality, but I don't know what really would be involved in that.

Originally Posted by RationalMystic

Sorry if I'm being dense but could you expand on this?
Also its good to see you enter this thread.

I wasn't really making a very wholehearted foray. It just seems to me that 'a rock so big God couldn't lift it' is a contradiction in terms... one might as well argue that God couldn't create a cube that was simultaneously one and two meters wide. So for a definition of 'all powerful' to make any sense, we should rule out anything contradictory.

Originally Posted by Xei

I wasn't really making a very wholehearted foray. It just seems to me that 'a rock so big God couldn't lift it' is a contradiction in terms... one might as well argue that God couldn't create a cube that was simultaneously one and two meters wide. So for a definition of 'all powerful' to make any sense, we should rule out anything contradictory.

Good point. However maybe "God" could create a universal split where he can't pick up a rock on one and the rock never even exists to not pick up on the other. The annoying limitation with this though is that If you count all of his incarnations across all universes, he still can't be called all powerful! Maybe the key to Goddom is being breaking free of the constraints of language, and by extension, logic?
My head hurts now

Originally Posted by Xei

How about the ability to do anything that doesn't lead to a logical contradiction?

It's profoundly far fetched, but I don't rule any of it out.

Originally Posted by RationalMystic

Well first of all technological progress is most definatly NOT gradual or even strictly linear. Its subject to leaps and hops and even falls.
The same goes for humanity's progress except even more so. However I do understand what you're trying to get at. However if you accept that our universe is of finite (if stupendous) size, then omnipotence can simply mean control over this expanding domain and this won't take an infinite amount of time to achieve it.

Too much stuff happens spontaneously and drastically for progress to be linear. I wasn't saying that it is. I just meant that we have never shown an indication that we are going to suddenly hit infinite power. It's like one side of a parabola, in terms of base curve. There would be no horizontal axis coordinate paired with infinity. The actual graph would not be a smooth curve, though.

Omnipotence is infinite power, not merely ultimate power or the power to do all things except create contradictory realities. It has no limits. Omnipotence will never be achieved.

Originally Posted by RationalMystic

To adress the parodoxes: if you alter history to make omnipotence impossible to acheive then depending on which model you believe, one of two things will happen: if you believe in the traditional Copenhagen's model, your adjusting of the timeline will simply alter the timeline but you will continue to exist as causality isn't a strictly required element of the universe. If you believe in the many-worlds model, then your action simply causes one set of universes to never develop a being of omnipotence (chances are, they already exist) while you will still exist in another set. I'm massivly simplifing the premise here but this is the basic gist of it. The second paradox is a lot more interesting. The best answer I can offer is that I don't believe that there can be more then one omnipotent being inhabiting the same universe by the very definition of the term. For the last one the answer is simple I think: yes but that would mean relinquishing your omnipotence.

I believe that causality is a requirement in the universe, and altering the time line would alter your place in it, thereby contradicting and therefore invalidating the alteration. The idea of backward time travel is full of such contradictions, which prove that it is impossible. I have never accepted the many worlds model as an explanation for backward time travel. I had a dream in high school that I went back to "1982" and wigged out because when I was in the real 1982, my parents did not act the way they did in the alternate one. I realized that I was not in the real 1982 and freaked out over the idea that I would never return to my universe. I was in an alternate one. That is not backward time travel. That is parallel universe travel. There is a big difference. Also, I was talking about making it where there was never an omnipotent being in the past, anywhere. That would include the omnipotent being making it happen, which is a contradiction.

If there cannot be more than one omnipotent being in a universe, that puts a limit on what any being in that universe can do (it cannot create another omnipotent being), thereby disallowing the existence of any omnipotent being. Omnipotence is completely unlimited power. My sig line is a satirical illustration of that, although the person I quoted didn't mean for it to be one. It is my favorite line in the history of this site.

The most pressing reason why I have to disagree with you is because your opinion is contradicted by essentially every major discovery in physics from the last 100(+) years. A lot more than your word that there are contradictions that "prove" it is impossible is needed to invalidate 100 years of research. I will admit that it is nearly impossible to conceptualize in common terms since we are yet still linear creatures capable of traveling in but one direction in time, however I am told it makes perfect sense mathematically speaking. What is it that Richard Feynman said? Something along the lines of "a positron is actually an electron traveling backwards in time".

Perhaps it seems impossible precisely because you are putting it in human terms; imagining your human body popping off of some imaginary time "line" and dropping down onto it at some imaginary point before you left. There really is no line of time so this conceptualization is already too fundamentally flawed to make any sense.

Every major physics discovery of the past 100 years suggests that backward time travel is possible? I majorly disagree with that. Such a thing would be big news, and I know a lot of the theories. They don't indicate it.

Like I said about my dream scenario... If I were to go to 1982, it would not be the 1982 I experienced as a kid. It would be a parallel 1982. The past is what it is. Going to a year before now would not be the same year that already happened.