Big Problem with "God's Plan": Determinism
Offline I recently listened to a debate between Dan Barker and Todd Friel.
Friel argued at one point that God has numerous emotions. Anger, Happiness, Sadness, etc.
Now Barker didn't argue the way I'm going to...
But if God has a fixed plan that he's known for eternity, then how could he possibly have emotions?
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ARGUMENT 1: GOD HAS NO EMOTIONS
Premise 1: Emotional states require time. That is, if you at any point in time, exhibit one emotion, that emotion exists for a certain period of time and is then replaced by another emotion. You cannot be happy, sad, or angry for eternity or "outside of time."
Premise 2: In order to have an emotion, one must be a temporal being, that is, he must be "inside time."
Premise 3: God is an atemporal being. That is, he exists outside of time because the universe supposedly requires an "eternal" creator.
Conclusion: God cannot have emotions because he is an A-temporal being. (If God is temporal, the cosmological argument is false, and the entire contigency for God's existence is annihilated.)
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ARGUMENT 2: THE ALLEGED "GOD" IS A COMPUTER PROGRAM, not a loving "father."
God is a machine. He is deterministic. He is a robot. Everything that is happening right now is part of "his plan." For good, bad, whatever, God doesn't change his mind because everything is falling in line according to his plan that has already been laid out. So when Christians tell you that God is angry about your sins or that he is happy when you are doing good deeds, they REALLY mean that you are following rules in a type of computer-like program that is entirely impersonal and uncaring. IF good, THEN heaven. IF bad, THEN hell. Bad = not following 631 rules. Good = following 631 rules. God is not a sentient, intelligent being that loves you; he is a computer program!!!
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ARGUMENT 3: GOD CANNOT CHANGE, BUT THE BIBLE SAYS HE DOES, THEREFORE THE BIBLE IS FALSE
Premise 1: In order to CHANGE, you must be a temporal being.
Premise 2: God is an A-temporal being.
Conclusion 1: God cannot change.
Premise 3: In the Bible, God shows a rainbow to Noah after the "Great Flood" to show him a promise not to smite down most of the Earth's inhabitants ever again.
Premise 4: The God of the Bible changed his mind about humanity after the "Great Flood."
Conclusion 2: Since God changed his mind in the Bible, he is either INSIDE time (temporal) or the Bible is false.
Conclusion 3: The most rational answer due to principles of contradiction is that the Bible is false and there is scant logical reasoning for even supposing that an impotent deistic God exists.
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--DoctorO
REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM.
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It goes futher than simply having a "plan" for eternity, it cuts right to the "why bother creating eternity in the first place" question.
A perfect being should not have wants or desires. Why should a perfect, satisfied, content being desire to create? Desire to change things? Can an omnimax being simply get bored? Doesn't make sense to me.
When things are going well, I tend to do as little as possible to rock the boat. If I'm a perfect omnimax being, why would I ever need or want to rock the boat, let alone create all of creation then rock that? At the very best, it's like a child building an ant farm simply so he has something to place under his magnifying glass on sunny days.
I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. - Richard Dawkins
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To be honnest, those arguments with using the bible, are weak arguments. It's like letting the door open for the theists. It doesn't disprove god at all, it only disprove a quote from the damn book.
I never use the bible to defend my arguments. The real weapon is the dictionary. So i will argue:
-Pikachu-
God had no time to create time.
P1. God Can’t Change [according to the time paradox]
P2. God Has The Ability To Change [according to the bible]
C1. God Has The Ability To Change And Is Unable To Change
P3. Nothing which Exists Can Be Both A And Not A
C2. God Doesn’t Exist
God had no time to create time.
God had no time to create time.
please show me a peer reviewed essay, or widely known publication that determines these statements as facts; and no please dont' point to any bias sources (whether atheist or christian) a complete neutral source would be fine
Same as above
How's this (sorry my online access to journals is misbehaving right now)...http://www.philosophynow.org/issue50/50goldblatt.htm...I had to find an online periodical. It is actually published, philosophically neutral (by their mission statement) however not sure about the peer review (I'd be willing to bet it is, but I don't know). You may have been joking, but I just thought I would point out that this is a valid philosophical argument and now you can address the issue. If you want to that is.
No Gods, Know Peace.
To Doc 101:
This is a priori deductive reasoning, not a scientific hypothesis. Do you understand the difference?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_priori_and_a_posteriori_%28philosophy%29
Yes, peer-reviewed journals are required for scientific claims, but claiming that it is illogical for God to have emotions is not a scientific claim.
A scientific claim is something that can be studied, tested, and observed. How do I create an experiment to test whether or not God has emotions? I can't. That's the point.
A priori knowledge (the realm of my argument in this post) and a posteriori knowledge (the realm of science) are separate and only SOMETIMES overlapping realms.
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Now if you're asking for a philosophy journal essay, I don't know what to tell you.
The beauty of a priori reasoning though, is that you don't NECESSARILY need a peer-reviewed journal article to establish a fact.
Do I need a peer reviewed journal to establish the following as a fact?:
1. All men are mortal.
2. Socrates is a man.
3. Socrates is mortal.
Sure, it would help if I had a Harvard professor write a journal article to convince the philosophy community that I'm right, but I don't NEED such a professor to write the article for it to be an established fact.
REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum
God had no time to create time.
On the "God is like a computer program" argument.
I would agree, Pikachu, that neither God nor a computer could create time because that would be a temporal decision.
However, one could argue the Nick Bostrom "living in a simulation" possibility. If we live in a simulation within a computer, and that computer is artificially intelligent, it could in theory be at least all-knowing and all-powerful -- AND the originator of time in the simulated universe. This is silly, I know. We do not live in such a place. But using this as a thought experiment may be helpful for what follows...
What I really mean to say is that the analogy of a robot or a computer with respect to God is based on 2 points:
1. Lack of emotions, lack of sentience, lack of intelligence, and all other characteristics of "being" or "personhood."
2. Determinism, that is all events are predetermined and unable to be changed. By definition, God MUST follow certain rules with NO degrees of freedom. God does NOT have free will even if he gives US free will.
Consider the fact that God or a simulation computer is all powerful and all knowing about the universe each has dominion over.
Consider programming such a computer with "DO ONLY GOOD THINGS." This would certainly require a large number of predetermined standards of good from the programmer. We would have to fiat that the computer has this ability. By fiat, I mean that we pretend for the sake of the experiment that the supposition of "all-goodness" is possible for such a computer.
God works the same way. If he is FORCED by his nature to do ONLY what is good, he does not have free will, and he is deterministic. In that God is deterministic, he is like a computer. Yes, there are many characteristics that God and a computer do NOT share, But in that they could both be deterministic, they are similar.
REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum
Pikachu, I think your restatements and tweakings of my arguments were quite good and even stronger than some of what I created. I will agree that creating straw man arguments is not a good way to debate, and I encourage you to correct my arguments in the future or my understanding of theist arguments that seem purposefully weak.
It would appear that you have some formal or informal education in logic, of which I am only just beginning informal study. (Consisting of reading a textbook on Logic.) I had been a debater in high school, and I think I used informal logic without knowing the true underpinnings of what I was doing. Studying formal logic is fascinating.
I read something yesterday I found important. Let me quote from "Schaum's Logic" by Nolt, Rohatyn, and Varzi:
"Implicit premises or conclusions should be "read into" an argument only if they are required to complete the arguer's though. No statement should be added unless it clearly would be accepted by the arguer, since in analyzing an argument, it is the arguer's thought that we are trying to understand. The primary constraint governing interpolation of premises and conclusions is the -principle of charity-: in formulating implicit statements, give the arguer the benefit of the doubt; try to make the argument as strong as possible while remaining faithful to what you know of the arguer's thought. The point is to minimize misinterpretation, whether deliberate or accidental."
I think this is in the spirit of what you meant earlier. I wholeheartedly agree that we should bolster theist arguments to make them as strong as possible so that both 1. they will be convinced by our refutation AND 2. we will not waste each other's time.
If I may ask some questions, Pikachu:
1. What is your educational background and have you had any formal training in Logic, or are you self taught (like I'm attempting)?
2. What recommendations do you have for one who wishes to study introductory materials on Logic? Any good books or internet resources?
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I have had a number of mentors on internet message boards, and I welcome your criticism so that I may learn.
REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum