Are pagan gods more logical in a theological sense

[Shuttlecraft]

Jesus said "I'll be back" (Mark 13:26)
Right Arnie?

"Yah, you betta believe it!"

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I am sorry but your thorough rebuttal is everything but thorough.

True. That's because you didn't make any arguments you asserted things. However, I'll try to better set up a framework and supply arguments for you:

"(1) There is for every knower a set that contains precisely the propositions that this knower knows.
(2) An omniscient knower would know every true proposition.
(3) (The Power Set Axiom) There is, for every set S, a power set Pow(S) that is the set of all subsets of S.
(4) (True Propositions About Subsets of Sets of Known Propositions) For every knower and every set K composed of propositions known to him, for each member K
' of the power set Pow(K) of K there is a true proposition kn(K
') that of him and of K'
says precisely that he knows each of its members; and, for any distinct members K'
and K

'' of Pow(K), any proposition, kn(K'
), that of him and of K'
says precisely that he knows each of its members, is distinct from any proposition kn(K''

) that of him and of K''

says precisely that he knows each of its members. Now comes a lemma that presupposes (3).
(5) (Cantor’s Theorem) The power set Pow(S) of any set S contains more things than does that set S: That is, Pow(S) is of greater cardinality than is S.
Conclusion
(6) There is not an omniscient being."

Sobel, J. H. (2004). Logic and Theism: Arguments for and against Beliefs in God. Cambridge University Press.


(1') There is for every knower a totality that contains precisely the propositions that this knower knows.
(2) An omniscient knower would know every true proposition.
(3') (Subtotalities of Totalities) For every totality T: (i) For each member x of T, there exists the singleton totality {x}; and (ii) for every mapping Mof T onto a totality Sub(T) composed only of subtotalities of T, there exists a totality T* that is a subtotality of T such that T* includes x of T if and only if x is not a member of M(x), the totality in Sub(T) with which x is paired by M.
(4') (True Propositions About Subtotalities of Totalities of Known Propositions) For every knower and for every totality K composed of propositions known to him, for each subtotality K’ of K there is a true proposition kn(K’) that of K’ and of him says precisely that he knows each of its member propositions; and, for any distinct subtotalities K’ and K’’ of K, any proposition kn(K’) that of him and of K’ says precisely that he knows each of its members is distinct from any proposition kn(K’’) that of him and of K’’ says precisely that he knows each of its members.
Now comes a lemma that follows from (3
) and a More-Than rule to be explained.
(5') (Cantor for Totalities) Every totality has more subtotalities than
members.
Conclusion
(6) There is not an omniscient being.
(ibid)

Now for a counter-argument:

The problem comes in with what kind of knowledge an omniscient being would have. Need it have propositional like knowledge broken into discrete "bits" of knowledge? Need an omniscient being have in mind the truth of every proposition or just access to knowledge of it? And so on. It's kind of difficult to understand how an omniscient being might comprehend. And mathematically we can deal with uncountable sets and mappings between these. Infinite regress is possible for us to model, just not to keep in mind the way an omniscient being would be required to.

The original goals of formal logic failed and with it the hope that mathematics could be both consistent and complete. Thus the idea that knowledge can be distilled into distinct propositions or that thoughts discrete units was dealt a serious challenge prior to the advent of neuroscience and modern linguistics (which have dealt blow after blow against this idea). Thus we may ask what being omniscient means when we come up against logical issues with infinities and the nature of subjective, conceptual content. Our ability to understand what knowing everything entails is further hampered by our current inability to define "time" in the sciences (in classical physics, time is basically our intuitive notion of it whereas it doesn't exist in special or general relativity and can't be readily related to physical systems in quantum mechanics). To crudely illustrate the problem in a way that also highlights issues with free will (if you are unfamiliar with 4D Minkowski space, just note that in TGR angular movements can "shift" one's time-like coordinates more drastically than linear) :

Imagine that those around me are finally so fed up they put me on a very fast spacecraft travelling at speeds we can't yet achieve, but they were really motivated. They also felt kind of bad about it (they were my family, after all), so they developed some "long life" pills which would allow me to live many times the lifespan of most humans.

And I end up way out in space, far away from Earth, lightyears later (which is really odd, since lightyears aren't units of time). Then I finally figure out how the controls on the ship work. I can't head back, but I can turn a bit. So I decide to.

At one moment, before my turn, my sense of "time" is, say, 1,000 years into the future (thanks to the speed I was travelling, the angle, and the pills). That is, "now" for me is the "now" some 1,000 years in our current future. So we have lots and lots of choices which are already made from my perspective and from the perspective of people on earth 1,000 years from now.

Then I turn. Suddenly, my perspective of time lines up with one a thousand years into our current past. For me, the 20th century just went from being a thousand years in the past, to being a thousand years in the future.
...
For such a sentient being on some far away planet then, at one moment their perspective of "time" is such that what will happen 100 years from now on earth happened 900 years ago for them. At the next, what is happening now won't happen for another 1,000 years. So at one moment, all of the choices we are all going to make are done with for that being. We've made them. At another, choices we've already made are not yet made. Did their experience of "time" change what our choices were? Did it effect them in any way?

And now, having set up some of the issues involved, we can turn to the matter. We still haven't settled on definitions, but for these and further nuances see my thread here: How Free Will Works

Let us imagine as best as we are able that their exists an omniscient being. Defining free will as the capacity to do other than we might have (or, alternatively, to make choices such that we could have chosen other than we did and our choice was not determined), we immediately run into the problem of when an omniscient being makes choices. Theists typically describe God as acting in time, but many recognize that this need not be anything other than our inability to conceptualize events other than linearly ordered despite the fact that this notion of "time" has largely been abolished by modern physics. Certainly, we are required in physics to model physical systems which
1) Are uncaused
2) Do not have linearly ordered temporal states
3) Do not exist in a universe in which "time" does

The most common way to depict 4th-dimensional Minkowski spacetime is that of a 2D space which is like the surface of a sphere (Escher has excellent wood-cuttings famous for aiding in such visualizations). Imagine galaxies, planets, or even angels & demons on such a surface:

From the perspective of the angels/demons on such a surface, they are all evenly spaced and of the same size. From our perspective, which results from the projection of non-Euclidean space onto a Euclidean, this is not the cases. This is deliberately similar to the ways in which our sense of "time" in spacetime is skewed and what we perceive as "now" is more or less illusory (more technically, in relativity simultaneity doesn't exist). However, we can't "get out" of the space we experience any more than the figures in the 2D image can experience our 3D (Euclidian) space. A being capable of conceiving spacetime would arguably necessarily require a knowledge of everything that is or was simultaneously. Even if not required, this is logically possible (and the use of such omnipotent sentience has been used for practical and theoretical purposes in physics from Laplace and Maxwell unto today). Thus, rather than a subjective sense of "now" and no real simultaneity such an entity may have no sense of now but only a simultaneity consisting of the collection of all possible subjective "nows" in our universe.

Simplistically, we can imagine such an entity as looking at a picture rather than a movie, i.e., seeing the entire thing at one moment rather than unfolding. The problem is that this analogy still involves action (seeing) as we conceive of it, and therefore is necessarily rooted in a time that wouldn't exist for such an entity. We may, though, imagine how the creator of a picture can both create and regard the entirety of that which is (the picture) the way that one creating a film (or in one) cannot.

The point is that the limits placed on such an entity are largely limits of our own ability to comprehend existence without/outside of "time" or even spacetime.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

You have seriously failed by all means I am not going to take you seriously until you answer that.

I'll wait for you to take your assertion that omniscience necessarily entails a lack of free will. I've given you some background (albeit limited, as this question goes back some 2,500 years) to do so. In the meantime, why not also begin to address the issue of the problem of evil? Again, I'll supply some basis for debate, as I need only refer to one post of many on this topic to do so:

There are perhaps three classes of refutations. One concerns the classical and neoclassical "perfect being" theology, there is the one I described, and finally one which combines modal logic of the type described in the second "class" with causal reasoning. Each has problems and variants, of course, but some do resolve the dilemma. However, it is not entirely clear that these "resolutions" do not introduce further problems such as whether or not God could have created free agents yet one's which could not suffer.


This is true. However, in order to be free agents (as understood in a theological sense), we necessarily require the capacity to do that which God does not wish us to. We must also have agency, of course, and therefore the ability to act, and to choose to act in particular ways. Again, without creation, in this resolution of the dilemma morality is independent of God, but only insofar as logic is. We are left with "dummy variable" morality: "if x has the moral property y, then it is neccessarily true that x has the moral property y."

In order to have agents capable of doing that which God does not want, or that which God does not approve of, these agents must have some properties such that they can act in ways contrary to God's desire (if they could not, they would not have free will). So, in any possible world God creates, free agents must have some property x which allows them to commit some act y such that God does not approve.
Necessary morality is independent of God, but God of course approves of moral behavior. If God creates agents incapable of immoral behavior, God has ensured that these agents are bound to do whatever God wants and only that which God wants. They are therefore not free.

Therefore, given any possible world, God's free agents must necessarily be able to act immorally. They must be able to act in a manner which has the property of being immoral. However, the particular nature of these properties is contingent upon God's choice. Depending upon the manner of creation, God could create a world in which being burned alive is pleasant or horrific, or even a world in which physical pain does not exist. However, there must be ways in which humans can act immorally, or God has not created free agents. Likewise, as God is benevolent, ensuring that agents are only capable of benevolent actions is again to deny them free agency by ensuring they do only that which God desires. So agents must be able to act malevolently. Once more, the ways in which acts become malevolent or not are contigent upon the manner of creation, but they are necessary components of it.



Moral truth only comes into play when it becomes possible for actions to occur (otherwise, there can be no deontic statements at all). This is akin to asking "whence comes 'truth'?" There can be nothing true or false other than logical truths. With any statement whatsoever, if that statement is true, it is. Any proposition that has the property T of being true has truth. But whence comes truth? Well, before propositions, properties, etc., there is only the "dummy variable" version of truth.

With the capacity to act and have properties comes both the ability for statements to have truth values and for objects to have properties. As agents have the property A, such that any individual P, if P has the property A, then P has the ability to act. Like truth, which requires truth-bearing statements about reality, moral actions require actors. Once these agents exist, they can act, and these acts (like propositions and truth values) can now have the property of being moral and immoral in specific ways rather than in the necessary formulation consisting only of dummy variable properties.




Moral "truths", without God, have no meaning. Truth itself has no meaning other than logical truths. Only upon instantiation of a reality do dummy variables become something meaningful. And this instantiation is contingent upon the way in which God commands the universe to be when God creates it. Therefore, moral truths cannot be accessible without God, any more than it is possible to say things about bachelors having the property of being married. It isn't until we have bachelors that any statement about their properties can be true or false. And it isn't until we have a reality such that any statement could be made and be true or false which had any relation to that reality. Similarly, with actions or properties, it isn't until God's creation that these can be moral or immoral, and they depend upon the manner in which God creates reality. Therefore, morality is independent of God, but inaccessible without God, because it depends upon the configuration set God chooses.




Look at your defense of ontological truth. It lacks any particulars. There is no semantic content in something like (A & ~ A). It's just there. The statements exist a logical truths, but cannot be instantiated or related to any reality until a reality exists. Once reality exists, truth can be related to it, but is entirely dependent upon the manner in which reality is created.


There can be no ontological truth without an ontology. Only tautological truths. Ontological morality depends upon God, just as ontological anything does.

 

[Sha'irullah]

To me, the biggest problem with monotheism, especially of the Abrahamic variety, is that it is conformist and rude. It's rude to deny the existence of other deities that people have valid experiences with or to say they are demons fooling people. Who are they to say that only their god really exists and is alone worthy of worship.

But, yeah. I do think that polytheism is more logical from my viewpoint.

It all comes down to comparative religion and apologetics at the end of the day. To conform an omnimax being with the reality we have it requires too much mental gymnastic.

You have issues like:
The Problem of Evil
Omnipotent paradox
Existence of other religions
Existence of gods
Non conformity amongst a single god
Inability to help
The default denial of free will if omniscient
Inability to create better outcomes

A monotheistic omnimax being that is allegedly benevolent is ludicrous because eventually you will have to try and reconcile this and the only way to do this is deny the god's benevolence will may have against the problem of evil amongst other things but then you have an evil god.
Removing power removes omnipotent with makes this deity unreliable and if you remove omniscience it makes this deity ignorant of matters.


All of these concepts conflict with each other

 

[Sha'irullah]

I'll wait for you to take your assertion that omniscience necessarily entails a lack of free will. I've given you some background (albeit limited, as this question goes back some 2,500 years) to do so. In the meantime, why not also begin to address the issue of the problem of evil? Again, I'll supply some basis for debate, as I need only refer to one post of many on this topic to do so:

I will award you a medal in useless rambling. Understanding modal logic was hard enough for me now Gibberishian Logic beats me.
Changing the definition of omniscience is moronic and fallacy riddled like changing the conception of Free Will. This is why Compatibilists exist because they think they can have their cake and eat it.

 

[Sha'irullah]

I'm not convinced and I'm not interested in your prattle.

He is using happy go-lucky statements, he has to be saying something Mr. Frankenstein .

Is it just me or do people have digital journals full of quote mining and catchy comebacks?

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I will award you a medal in useless rambling.

An invective long leveled at philosophers and scientists.

Understanding modal logic was hard enough for me now Gibberishian Logic beats me.

So you regard as gibberish two derivations that support your argument insofar as they show an omniscient being couldn't have free will as no omniscient entity can exist? Fine. Those were simply an attempt to formalize an argument against the possibility of an omniscient being with free will, as you
1) didn't provide any
2) didn't define "free will"
3) didn't indicate how you are using "omniscient" in any sense technical enough to address arguments since Anselm (and arguably before).

If you'd like to supply your reasons for thinking as you do (or given a reasoned argument that doesn't dismiss centuries of discourse and debate by some of the greatest minds in history), please do. Until then, I can't very well know exactly what I'm arguing against. Like Fermat, you make a claim as if it is proven but without any proof/argument, leaving others scrambling to do your work for you.

Changing the definition of omniscience is moronic and fallacy riddled

I didn't change any definitions.

Spoiler: Details

First, lexemes are generally encyclopedic and are organized according to there instantiations in constructions as they exist within a taxonomic, hierarchal conceptual network. This is a fancy way of saying that words don't have a definition but are defined in part by context, in part by their various senses, and in part by prefabrications or constructions.

Second, taking omniscience from the OED we are faced with different choices. Taking perhaps the primary meaning we have "As an attribute of God, or of a person: the fact, state, or quality of having infinite knowledge. Also: the fact, state, or quality of having, or claiming to have, great knowledge". We immediately run into several problems. The first is infinities. The second is the nature of knowledge. Hence my discussion (including that quoted from another post I made) on whether or not knowledge can be reduced to propositional statements or similarly discrete units. Simply asserting that omniscience means knowing anything runs into that most basic and infamous initial failure in the development of formal logic: naively defining sets such that our definition leads to logical paradoxes. If "knowledge" is a set of propositions or can be reduced to one such that an omniscient being can formulate a true proposition describing, defining, or otherwise characterizing any and all things, then such an entity cannot define the set of things which it knows, giving us a paradox. Hence more care is needed than naïve reliance on common parlance.

To give a simpler example, no philosophers or theologians take seriously the question "could God microwave a burrito so hot he himself couldn't eat it?" and similar definitions of omnipotence that are entail logical contradictions.

For those who'd avoid the (still rather skimpy) details hidden above, we can see the problems with a naïve definition of omniscience easily:

"An omniscient entity knows everything. Ergo, an omniscient entity knows how to have free will, how to be a free agent, etc." (adding omnipotence makes this bad argument easier as we simply remove "knows" as omnipotence can naively be defined as capable of doing anything).

like changing the conception of Free Will

The conception of free will or the definition of free will? The conception of free will is by definition subjective. There is no generally agreed upon definition but rather most would accept that certain demands must be satisfied in any satisfactory definition. If you had a problem with my definition, you can address it rather than (confusedly) accusing me of changing some "real" one.

This is why Compatibilists exist because they think they can have their cake and eat it.

So you didn't understand what I said and therefore I'm wrong, but you are correct because of an argument you didn't make? Many pagans found the problem to be opposite to your own. This doesn't make them right, but if you are to assert that there is an incompatibility between omniscience and free will (and, oddly, the free will of the omniscient entity rather than all others as has proved to be a more serious argument), you might proffer your reasons before dismissing others.

 

[Aupmanyav]

He appointed himself like most politicians do, hahahaha.

Politicians face elections. Only dictators appoint themselves or prophets.

Jesus is God's head trainer..
"Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize" (1 Cor 9:24)

And the prize is .. ?

God said- "Like a scarecrow in a melon patch, their idols cannot speak; they must be carried because they cannot walk. Do not fear them; they can do no harm nor can they do any good." (Jeremiah 10:5)

Jesus said -"I've beaten the world" (John 16:33)

Jesus said "I'll be back" (Mark 13:26)
Right Arnie?

Arnie is in India these days. Yes, He came back.

 

[Shuttlecraft]

Yes I've heard the consp-theory that says Jesus studied in India, but I can't imagine what he studied unless it was how to make Tandoori Chicken, Onion Bhaji and Shish Kebabs

 

[Aupmanyav]

We have excellent carpenters and wood carvers. Perhaps Joseph sent him to learn the craft in India. We also specialize in Gurudom (Teachers Training).

 

[AsheCorvus]

In Wicca the god is a manifestation of all "Masculine" force and the goddess is a manifestation of all "Feminine" force. They are not omnipresent or omnipotent, in fact to speak to them you often need magic. (By the way in Wicca magic is not exclusive to Wiccan, anyone can learn to use it. Magic is sacred but not divine).

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

In Wicca the god is a manifestation of all "Masculine" force and the goddess is a manifestation of all "Feminine" force. They are not omnipresent or omnipotent, in fact to speak to them you often need magic. (By the way in Wicca magic is not exclusive to Wiccan, anyone can learn to use it. Magic is sacred but not divine).

Not all Wiccan traditions have a "god" and fewer still have just "a god".

 

[Riverwolf]

How would you as a theists feel worshiping a god who is not as powerful or great as you want him/her to be?

It's fine with me. Thunor (Thor) is titled "Almighty", but he's, well, not. Not really, anyway.

Woden my King (Odin) is a real prick, which seems to be quite common among the various Kings of pantheons. I'll just take Woden's prickery over Zeus's.

I will say, I don't know about "more logical", but pluralistic polytheism pretty much removes the entire problem of evil from the equation altogether, and IMO applies better to the universe was we understand it. (No, I'm NOT claiming there's any evidence for the Gods.) After all, this universe, contrary to the Star Wars one, does not have a single, underlying force governing everything, but seems rather comprised of several forces with varying degrees of influence, simultaneously working together and against each other.

 

[Sha'irullah]

It's fine with me. Thunor (Thor) is titled "Almighty", but he's, well, not. Not really, anyway.

Woden my King (Odin) is a real prick, which seems to be quite common among the various Kings of pantheons. I'll just take Woden's prickery over Zeus's.

I will say, I don't know about "more logical", but pluralistic polytheism pretty much removes the entire problem of evil from the equation altogether, and IMO applies better to the universe was we understand it. (No, I'm NOT claiming there's any evidence for the Gods.) After all, this universe, contrary to the Star Wars one, does not have a single, underlying force governing everything, but seems rather comprised of several forces with varying degrees of influence, simultaneously working together and against each other.

When I say logical I merely mean which one can jump over the most philosophical hurtles. Polytheism seems to do a better job at this from a simplistic model of it.

 

[AsheCorvus]

Not all Wiccan traditions have a "god" and fewer still have just "a god".

No you confuse Wicca with Witchcraft, Wiccans believe in a god and goddess (besides Dianic Wiccans which believes only in a goddess) and use witchcraft as a part of worship. Due to misportrayal in media, many have believed that being a witch and being a wiccan is the same thing. It is not true, a wiccan is someone who uses witchcraft to worship the Wiccan god and goddess (usually) while witches are just people who use witchcraft. Because of the media saying witch and wiccan are one and the same many witches (or wanna be witches) are saying their "wiccan" or "wiccan-christian".

 

[The Sum of Awe]

The only logical conclusion would be to reduce this conception of god to the old pagan gods. Having a non omnimax being or beings because obviously none of these things apply to any conception of a god if such a thing existed.

How would you as a theists feel worshiping a god who is not as powerful or great as you want him/her to be?

Unsure if I responded to this thread yet, but I just wanted to say that that's not the only logical conclusion: We, as the consciousness of God, are in God, and therefore under his Will, revealed through every single thing that happens in existence, but we view his Will as a deterministic path, that's true, for us.

Because we are the universe looking in on itself, because we are aware of the Will of God, means we too have a will, but not freewill. Like it or not, we are bound in following God's will. At the same time we sometimes expect something that is outside of God's will. Your unfulfilled will conflicts God's always-fulfilled will.

It are these things that cause discomfort. Align yourself with God's will, accept all that happens.

God does things, man creates feelings about them.

----------------------------------------------------

Worship, for me, is not based on might. I honestly can't imagine myself finding such a deity though, the only deity that makes sense to me is the All

 

[Riverwolf]

When I say logical I merely mean which one can jump over the most philosophical hurtles. Polytheism seems to do a better job at this from a simplistic model of it.

In both cases, it probably depends on the model.

 

[Sha'irullah]

In both cases, it probably depends on the model.

Being a computer nerd I am very fond of the new monistic approach to technology in which a singular thing(a PC) does the functions of a console, music player, DVD player, TV, streaming device, BluRay player and media system.
So monotheism can be more utilitarian in nature than polytheism.

 

[Riverwolf]

Being a computer nerd I am very fond of the new monistic approach to technology in which a singular thing(a PC) does the functions of a console, music player, DVD player, TV, streaming device, BluRay player and media system.
So monotheism can be more utilitarian in nature than polytheism.

A computer nerd myself, though more in the gaming sense, I tend to lean more in favor of dedicated hardware that does what it's supposed to do very well, than the model of a single device doing dozens of things poorly.

 

[Sha'irullah]

A computer nerd myself, though more in the gaming sense, I tend to lean more in favor of dedicated hardware that does what it's supposed to do very well, than the model of a single device doing dozens of things poorly.

Funny, I hate gaming. I feel out of the norm because of it. I just have no interest in video games yet love computers and tech.
When I was a teen I wanted a PS3 so badly when it first came out then I just stopped caring about gaming when I started PC gaming on a laptop.
I played some of the major console ports and that was it.
I hated gaming in a matter of weeks and lost interest entirely.