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The existence of God is a subject of debate among the believers and the unbelievers. the choice of accepting that there is a being in heaven called God is based on personal experiences while others argue that there is no conclusive evidence to support the existence of God. Science has proven that earth was created through a process called accretion through all this process you could see that there was an invisible being who made the entire process smooth. I believe there is a God in heaven who is the author of everything we see. ''Genesis 2:1-25''
So, if non-human intelligence exists, and it deliberately influenced human affairs throughout most or all of our history, I would consider that entity God. Would you?
Not that it matters for a non-resolvable market, but I'm curious as to how others would answer this question to see what the consensus is.
@SteveSokolowski In general, no. I think that's way too weak of a criterion to be considered "God". By that definition, a God doesn't even have to be more powerful or significant than a human, since humans themselves have of course deliberately influenced human affairs throughout all of human history.
As a general rule, if your definition of God requires you to specify "non-human", it's not a good definition of God.
@PlasmaBallin Hasn't hypercomputation been proven to be impossible? Godel proved that a hundred years ago and Wolfram has expanded upon that with his Physics project's explanation of why anything exists at all.
Hypercomputation is required for the omniscient, all powerful God you described to exist, as the only way to be omniscient is to own a hypercomputer. Part of omniscence would be knowing what is going to happen without actually playing out the experience. But we know that is fundamentally impossible in reality due to the Incompleteness Theorem.
Therefore, this market must resolve NO if God is defined by your definition, as no intelligence can possibly exist that could know everything without actually taking the time to compute it. And given that there are an infinite number of possible computations, it could never compute everything to store all the answers.
Etymology of deus is heaven, theos festival, so I guess it can be nature, or whatever natural laws, such as the laws of true/false.
But finite beings are finite. So is a collection of finite beings. All that is finite has an end. That there is anything is proof that there is something infinite. The infinite which governs and transcends all is what some call God and others call law, or the universe itself.
Plotinus argued for the mental / intellectual capability of this infinite being: It is infinite. There is nothing it cannot do, or does not have and contain within it.
@XComhghall ... Plotinus very explicitly argued that the One is not self-aware and cannot act in any way.
@Sophia The One is. Anything that is not is not the One. Anything that cannot cannot be the One. Plotinus certainly argued for God's all-capability, including the capability to think and act.
@XComhghall It is somewhat disconcerting to have someone say something you know to be untrue so confidently. A relevant quote from the Enneads: "Everything moving has necessarily an object towards which it advances; but since the Supreme can have no such object, we may not ascribe motion to it [...] Given this immobility in the Supreme, it can neither have yielded assent nor uttered decree nor stirred in any way towards the existence of a secondary."
There are a bunch of others, but I don't really want to wade through all six volumes right now.
(Also the existence of a finite thing does not mean there must be an infinite thing. The finite thing could well simply exist without cause. Which is why the axiom of infinity is an axiom.)
@Sophia Unmoved mover. I interpreted the passage as God is not altered, nor alters himself, as the divine mind is created from him. But indeed, Plotinus does believe that the One is not self-aware, and does not act in any way. Having skimmed Plotinus again, I do not want to read Aquinas or a few other philosophers. I must have been thinking about one of them.
Finite beings cannot cause or sustain themselves because they are finite. It is untrue in the world where '2 + 2 = 5' 'This statement is a lie' 'Nothing is absolute' 'Logic and reasoning cannot yield truth' are true.
@XComhghall The unmoved mover is definitely Aquinas' thing. Though Aquinas also held that all we could know of God through pure reason is that He exists and created the Universe. He relied on revelation and scripture to determine His nature.
My position isn't that finite beings can cause themselves, it's that there may exist things without cause (uncaused causes, if you will), and that some subset of these may be finite. Could you explain why you think this is impossible? Or why you think a set of uncaused finite entities could not sustain each other for a finite period?
Fun side fact: There is a mathematical proof that 2+2=4. It was on my logic finals. It doesn't require the axiom of infinity, but it does require the axiom of the empty set. Also, in set theory '2' is generally defined as '{ ∅, {∅} }' - which is to say 'the set containing (the set containing the empty set) and (the empty set)'. All numbers are like this. Everything is ultimately made of nothing in various combinations. I don't think this proves anything, but I find it neat. Also, there are various interpretations of the liar paradox, but at least some philosophers believe it is a dialetheia (a statement which is both true and false), and thus technically true.
@Sophia Unmoved mover is Aquinas. That I know. I was commenting on the Plotinus passage with Aquinas's expression, which I thought was surprisingly fit. The God being perfect and infinite must have intellectual / reasoning / self-aware ability must have been Aquinas, Pseudo-Dionysius, or might have been my professor's idea. I do not exactly remember.
Nothing cannot create anything. Finite beings cannot just come from nothing. Finite beings are caused and sustained by other beings, but because they are finite, there is a final infinite uncaused cause. As you said, finite beings are ultimately nothing in themselves, because they depend on their causes and sustenances. If there are only finite beings depending on finite beings before them, but no infinite being that causes and sustain them, a nearly infinite number of zeros are still zero. It requires a perfect, infinite, first, even over Being for any being to be.
I cannot quite make sense of the statement that 2 is a set that contains an empty set and a set that contains an empty set. It is neat indeed. My statement was not to say the propositions require the axiom of the empty set, but to mean that propositions contrary to the axioms we accept are nonsensical -- I think the liar paradox is meaningless with its contradiction, of what a stone dreams.
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
Epicurus
@4mur1c4 Evil is non- (or anti- for that matter) existence. Non-existence is evil.
Evil is that which dis- and un- and non-exists.
Non-existence does not exist.
Evil is conquered. Death is trampled down by death. The Kingdom has come. 'Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.'
Yes. We have seen it.
O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
Indeed he is both able and willing.
Death is dead.
I want to plug a quality youtube channel/podcast, Emerson Green. In a recent episode, he talks about the gulf between:
- battles over popular forms of theism (with "activists" on both sides)
- battles over the most plausible forms of theism (with philosophers on both sides)
The former fight for/against the ideas because the ideas have imminent personal and societal significance, but not in order to make an airtight philosophical case. The latter engage in a truth-finding philosophical mission, but is not currently useful/popular. The two groups are engaging slightly different questions, letting the term "God" take on various plausible definitions.
It's fascinating that this question, in its vagueness, is bringing both battles onto the same field.