The Last Post Game!!!!

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Of course! And the all-knowing boss let it happen anyway.

Last _convenient Post

[Swatopluk]

HE can be subtle on occasion

Last _{even when using a reptile} Post

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

A creator is responsible for his creations more so if he knows what they (will) do.

Last _{ask the guys from the Manhattan Project} Post

[Swatopluk]

What part about 'free will' don't you understand?

Last _{it's the basic foundation of this 'hell' business} Post

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I call bullsh!t, the guy is supposedly omniscient, therefore he knew from the moment he created the snake what it would do.

Last _{more so, he knew every single time when someone was going to fall for it} Post

Omniscience precludes free will.

[Aggie]

Eden was just the testing ground for the new model. The Big Boss figured at first that the ideal creation should be totally obedient (angels), but that got boring quick. Pretty clever to set it up so that the new model got the knowledge of right and wrong only after proving they could disobey orders.

Last _{it still took some prodding to get them to eat the damned thing} Post

Omniscience precludes free will.

I disagree with this.  Perhaps if omnipotence and a desire to control events is included. Taking a time-independence stance and being able to view everything that ever will happened doesn't mean that free will was not involved at each moment.

Humanity's biggest error, IMHO, is making the assumption that anything that could see everything would give two shits about us. Pretty homocentric. You think we'd have kicked that whimpering little need by now.

[Swatopluk]

There could well be a difference between deterministic omniscience (the Laplace demon) and a non-deterministic one. In case A there would indeed be a contradiction between omniscience and free will (the latter would be simply absent though not necessarily the belief in it). In case B there is no necessary contradiction, the knowledge must be just independent of the in-wolrd processes. On a small scale it is possible even for us to predict with certainty things that are clearly non-deterministic in all their parts (but not in the outcome: we may not know the path but the final destination).
If we get more special in our definition, omniscience could also be seen as knowing all possible outcomes and all possible pathways leading towards them.

Last _{and now for the conflict between God and Gödel} Post

[Aggie]

If we get more special in our definition, omniscience could also be seen as knowing all possible outcomes and all possible pathways leading towards them.

That, plus the probabilities associate with each pathway, no?

I still can't make much sense of the insistence that God takes a hand in the affairs of men, although I do understand the attraction of the idea. Surely someone (Dawkins?) has contemplated religions as evolving memes? I'd think that what makes a religion successful (and therefore major) is the attractiveness-to-humanity-in-general of the ideas presented and the ability to adapt to new cultural / historical contexts.  'Truth' should have very little to do with it, since the 'truths' tend to be ineffable at best and are often unsatisfying to those who want certainty.

A god with a human face, who punishes bad people, rewards his subscribers, listens to prayers, and can directly influence the world is a little better selling-piece than an ineffable nothingness. The Abrahamic faiths in particular seem too... human for me to see much godliness in them.

Last _{What sells at the box office? Documentaries or action movies with lots of special effects?} Post

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Mmm, even assuming knowledge from all possible outcomes you can make a statistic and probabilistic analysis which would tell you the odds of specific events happening, and the more data you possess the highest degree of certainty you will have on the outcome (ever heard of Nate Silver/538?).

Aggie, I think that there is an odd mixture there, if you follow the benevolent+omniscient line of thought, it is by definition anthropocentric, which is why I dislike it so much. A real very powerful deity may not give a sh!t as you so clearly state, but then again it wouldn't be benevolent from an anthropocentric POV (or even not at all), it would be outside of our knowledge and for all practical purposes we would be outside of his'.

Last _{can we do moral judgements of individual ants?} Post

[Aggie]

I have never had much truck with divine benevolence (or potence for that matter, in the Newtonian action-reaction sense), so I suppose I struggle with the fact that the apparent lack of such leads to a de facto dismissal of 'god' as an impossibility.

I suppose if the only concept of god one can possibly consider contemplating is the shiny, wishful-thinking model that has evolved on account of being a nice, easily-propagated meme that sells well to the common folk.... well, sure, god can't exist. To me, it's like saying that a spaceship made only of Oreo cookies that can fly to Neptune and back in 3.5 seconds can't exist.

These are useful lines of thinking and argument for rebutting mass-market religionists, but I find it rather useless from a philosophical perspective. I find that many of the New Atheists are too keyed up about saving the world from Bog Teh Grate an Teddible to look beyond the most popular models.

_{hmmm.... I'm going to request some Daniel Dennett from the library...}

Last _{look for god within yourself, don't expect to find it elsewhere..} Post

[Swatopluk]

Someone stole my Last Post.

It was in answer to the ant question:

Yes, of course we can

Last _{It is just the question whether it makes sense or is in itself mmoral or immoral} Post

[Aggie]

I found this to be a good read:
http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=7992


Last Post

[Swatopluk]

I think we have to go back to the usual nonsense soon or this thread will go to the canines.

Last Post

[pieces o nine]

Last    'dog days of winter'   Post?

[Griffin NoName]

Last _{surely that should be cats?} Post

ps. I found Swato's last post and fed it to the dogs.