The monotheistic all powerful one.
The Astley paradox.
If you ask Rick Astley for his copy of Disney Pixar’s Up, he can’t give it to you, because he’ll never give you Up. But by not doing so, you’d be let down, and he’ll never let you down.
Testing this scenario is ofc incredibly risky to the state of our reality, so the Astley paradox must remain a thought experiment.
Bootstrap paradox is my favourite time paradox. I loved Doctor Who’s explanation.
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Its my choice for favorite Paradox too. My favorite explanation was in the outstanding Netflix show from Germany, Dark.
Oh yes, Dark did it in an amazing way too.
Why do people always vote against their own self interests.
They don’t. They’re voting against your self interests or what you think are theirs
Oh man this one is easy. Temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
A similar one would be can God create a rock so heavy he can’t lift it. The problem with these statements is that they’re not logically sound. As this would be akin to saying, can god be god and not be god at the same time? Which is contradiction and syntactical jargon. A simpler example is like someone saying they have a squared circle.
Your “akin to saying” doesn’t track with the paradox. It is really a matter of anything being “all powerful” which cannot actually exist. There has to be a limit to the power, even if it is itself. That’s the entire point. It isn’t “syntactical jargon” at all.
saying “all powerful” is to say that a being can realize any possibility which can exist. A possibility which cannot exist is like a squared circle. The strawman is that all powerful means to realize even things which cannot exist. In this world there are things which are necessary existence. Meaning they cannot not exist. An example would be the statement “1+1=2” that statement cannot not exist and it is true in all possible worlds. Then you have possible existence such as someone eating an apple. There isn’t anything necessary about it and the person could have very well not eaten it or eaten something else. The apple itself isn’t a necessary existence. Finally, there is an impossible existence. Which would be something that cannot exist like a squared circle. A God which deletes himself or that can create a rock heavier than himself is an impossible existence as it would contradict the very definition we’ve given God. Which is the same as saying A and not A. Or that he can both be God and not God. Thus it is syntactical jargon like a squared circle.
You just replaced the word “paradox” incorrectly with strawman. Your issue is understanding what paradox means. The paradox stands. You also dont understand the full possibilities of “all powerful” since you keep applying things that couldn’t be done by an all powerful being. If there is anything a being cannot do, then they are, by definition, not all powerful.
I understand it very well but you seem to not understand that there is such a thing as syntactical garbage that means nothing. What you’ve done is gone and applied “all powerful” to mean the realization of possibilities which cannot exist. It seems like you really wanna push that definition upon people so you can claim God is paradoxical and thus ridiculous. But your position is just as ridiculous as someone saying that an apple can both exist and not exist at the same time.
No, you don’t. Especially since you swapped it for a strawman which you also dont understand. This, just like the definition of a paradox, isn’t up for debate. This paradox has existed for thousands of years and predates the Christian god itself. You are not “magically” smarter than the greatest philosophers of history, you are just far more arrogant.
Cheers bud.
And you bud seem to like to run with the authority fallacy instead of deconstructing my argument and showing it as false. A beacon of intelligence.
Coming from the person that thinks they are smarter than all of the collective philosophers from the past 2000 years. Rich.
There are two kinds of people in the world - those who think there are two kinds of people in the world and those who know better.
I think this one is easily solved: the person saying it is in the first group.
Right, but it’s not a paradox - it’s a conundrum. It’s not just that the person saying it is part of the first group, but that they necessarily are.
Since people want to believe that they “know better,” there’s a strong urge to count oneself among the second group, which immediately places one in the first.
I guess I’m the ladder 🪜
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who don’t.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world — those who understand binary and those who don’t.
There are 2 kinds of people in the world.
- Those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.
there are 10 kinds of people.
- those who understand binary
- those who don’t
- those who know ternary exists
Mine is similar to yours in that it’s about the power of God. It’s called the Epicurean Trilemma:
- If a god is omniscient and omnipotent, then they have knowledge of all evil and have the power to put an end to it. But if they do not end it, they are not omnibenevolent.
- If a god is omnipotent and omnibenevolent, then they have the power to extinguish evil and want to extinguish it. But if they do not do it, their knowledge of evil is limited, so they are not omniscient.
- If a god is omniscient and omnibenevolent, then they know of all the evil that exists and wants to change it. But if they do not, which must be because they are not capable of changing it, so they are not omnipotent.
This proves fairly simply that God as commonly interpreted by modern Christians cannot exist. Early Christians and Jews had no problem here, because their god was simply not meant to be omnibenevolent. Go even further back in time and he was not omnipotent, and possibly not omniscient, either. “Thou shalt have no gods before me” comes from a time when proto-Jews were henotheists, people who believed in the existence of multiple deities while only worshipping a single one.
God is not Omnibenevolent would be my take.
The Christian explanation for this is that god doesn’t do evil, people do.
And god created people with free will to do evil. If he made people stop doing evil deeds, they would be his puppets, not free-willed humans. So he has the power to end all evil but chooses not to.Now as for why god allows natural disasters, diseases and other tragedies to befall his creation – again, that’s just the consequence of our actions, cause a woman gave an apple to her man in the past.
The Christian god created every aspect of the universe and how it works. He therefore could have created a universe in which there was no such thing as evil or suffering, and given people in that universe free will. So even that doesn’t hold up.
I think that’s their point; they’re saying that’s what God did. He “created a universe in which there was no such thing as evil or suffering and [gave] people in that universe free will.”
And humans screwed it up.
I’m not saying that, mind you. I’m saying I think you just agreed with the person you’re debating as a proof that they were wrong.
It doesn’t matter what you tack on, it doesn’t change my point — the only way humans could “screw it up” is if God made all the negative and horrible shit part of the universe. All you are saying is that God made a universe where there was no evil or suffering actively happening, but the concepts existed and were possible — because they ultimately happened and only possible things happen. And God chose to make them possible things as omnipotent creator of everything that exists.
Wait, so this God gives me true free will, and then places me in a world where I can’t change anything? Everything is fixed, immovable? Or where I only have “good” choices available? Is that what you think God should have done? Like, how does your version even work?
Or does God give us fake free will, and keep our minds from thinking “bad” thoughts?
If I’m free, I can screw up. Otherwise, I’m not free.
No. You aren’t getting it. The Christian god created every aspect of the universe. Light and dark. Up and down. You are still thinking about our universe, in which these negative things are possible, and how you would have to be restricted in what you do in our universe in order to prevent you from doing certain things. But god could have set all the parameters of the universe differently such that they just didn’t exist at all. You wouldn’t miss them or be prevented from doing them. It would be like if there were a fifth cardinal direction in an alternate universe, and someone in that universe thought “if god prevented me from going in that direction, I wouldn’t have free will anymore”. But here we are, with only four cardinal directions, and free will. We aren’t being stopped from doing anything, it just isn’t part of our universe and doesn’t even make sense in it.
If your options are “do as I say” or “suffer for all eternity” you aren’t really capable of exercising free will.
It’s worse than that. It’s “believe that you must do as I say, despite my complete refusal to create worthwhile evidence of my existence, and then do what I say” or “suffer for all eternity”.
And god created people with free will
Frankly, I don’t buy this as an explanation even for human-created evil. It is still evidence that god cannot be tri-omni. Because it is still a situation in which god is able to remove evil and is aware of the evil, and yet he chooses to permit evil. Even evil done by one human against another, when the other is entirely innocent. And that cannot be omnibenevolent.
From how you phrased it I suspect you agree with me here, but the natural disasters argument is even more ludicrous. It doesn’t even come close to working as a refutation of the Epicurian Trilemma.
Christian here, don’t agree with your “biblical” interpretation
But we don’t have free will. The bible makes that perfectly clear in Romans 9.
The Christian explanation for this is that god doesn’t do evil, people do.
And god created people with free will to do evil. If he made people stop doing evil deeds, they would be his puppets, not free-willed humans.I never understood this argument. If he’s all-powerful, he would have the ability to eliminate all evil without affecting free will.
A simple way I’ve been touching on this for a while is what I call “The problem of existence”: why would god create a non-divine existence such as our selves?
Put aside evil. If God is all three omnis, why make something that is lesser? I figure that the answer is they themselves must also be lesser than the three omnis.
Idk people like being in charge of stuff and not being bored maybe God would be the same way
Just leaving God’s wife Ashera here. Yes, he was married once. Look it up.
He had a sister too, super evil but it’s ok because a human dude talked her out of destroying everything since God couldn’t stop her.
Carry on…
“Oh dear,” says God, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
Does the set of all sets that are not members of themselves, contain itself?
Russel’s Paradox lit a fire under mathematics, leading to all sorts of good things (and a few bad).
In gridiron football, if a penalty is committed close enough to the end zone, instead of the normal penalty yardage, the ball is spotted half the distance to the goal (i.e. if a defender holds an offensive player and the offense is 8 yards away from the end zone, instead of being penalized the normal 10 yards they would be penalized 4). In theory, there can be an infinite amount of penalties to the point where penalties would move the ball micrometers or even shorter without the ball ever crossing the end zone.
There’s probably a name for this phenomenon, but I can’t think of it.
Zeno’s paradox. Although in reality you’ll run into problems when you need to move the ball 1/2 the Planck distance
Something like Zeno’s paradox.
In classical logic, trichotomy on the reals (any given numbers is either >0, <0 or =0) is provably true; in intuitionistic logic it is probably false. Thanks to Godel’s incompleteness theorem, we’ll never know which is right!
I don’t understand, where’s the problem here? If course every number is either greater than zero, less than zero, or zero. That’s highly intuitive.
Ok, so let’s start with the following number, I need you to tell me if it is greater than, or equal to, 0:
0.0000000000000000000000000000…
Do you know yet? Ok, let’s keep going:
…000000000000000000000000000000…
How about now?
Will a non-zero digit ever appear?
The Platonist (classical mathematician) would argue “we can know”, as all numbers are completed objects to them; if a non-zero digit were to turn up they’d know by some oracular power. The intuitionist argues that we can only decide when the number is complete (which it may never be, it could be 0s forever), or when a non-zero digit appears (which may or may not happen); so they must wait ever onwards to decide.
Such numbers do exist beyond me just chanting “0”.
A fun number to consider is a number whose nth decimal digit is 0 if n isn’t an odd perfect number, and 1 of it is. This number being greater than 0 is contingent upon the existance of an odd perfect number (and we still don’t know if they exist). The classical mathematician asserts we “discover mathematics”, so the question is already decided (i.e. we can definitely say it must be one or the other, but we do not know which until we find it). The intuitionist, on the other hand, sees mathematics as a series of mental constructs (i.e. we “create” mathematics), to them the question is only decided once the construct has been made. Given that some problems can be proven unsolvable (axiomatic), it isn’t too far fetched to assert some numbers contingent upon results like this may well not be 0 or >0!
It’s a really deep rabbit hole to explore, and one which has consumed a large chunk of my life XD
I’m gonna be honest, I just don’t see how a non-Platonic interpretation makes sense. The number exists, either way. Our knowledge about it is immaterial to the question of what its value is.
Exactly my reasoning. Even if we can’t know if it’s <0, =0, or >0, we can say that it MUST be one of those three possibilities.
Ah, and therein lies the heart of the matter!
To the Platonist, the number exists in a complete state “somewhere”. From this your argument follows naturally, as we simply look at the complete number and can easily spot a non-zero digit.
To the intuitionist, the number is still being created, and thus exists only as far as it has been created. Here your argument doesn’t work since the number that exists at that point in the construction is indeterminate as we cannot survey the “whole thing”.
Both points of view are valid, my bias is to the latter - Browser’s conception of mathematics as a tool based on human perception, rather than some notion of divine truth, just felt more accurate.
Actually I’ve done some more reading and frankly, the more I read the dumber this idea sounds.
If a statement P is provable, then P certainly cannot be refutable. But even if it can be shown that P cannot be refuted, this does not constitute a proof of P. Thus P is a stronger statement than not-not-P.
This reads like utter deranged nonsense. P ∨ ¬P is a tautology. To assert otherwise should not be done without done extraordinary evidence, and it certainly should not be done in a system called “intuitionist”. Basic human intuition says “either I have an apple or I do not have an apple”. It cannot be a third option. Whether you believe maths is an inherent universal property or something humans invented to aid their intuitionistic understanding of the world, that fact holds.
Pardon the slow reply!
Actually, AvA’ is an axiom or a consequence of admitting A’'=>A. It’s only a tautology if you accept this axiom. Otherwise it cannot be proven or disproven. Excluded middle is, in reality, an axiom rather than a theorem.
The question lies not in the third option, but in what it means for there to be an option. To the intuitionist, existance of a disjunct requires a construct that allocates objects to the disjunct. A disjunct is, in essence, decidable to the intuitionist.
The classical mathematician states “it’s one or the other, it is not my job to say which”.
You have an apple or you don’t, god exists or it doesn’t, you have a number greater than 0 or you don’t. Trouble is, you don’t know which, and you may never know (decidability is not a condition for classical disjuncts), and that rather defeats the purpose! Yes we can divide the universe into having an apple or not, but unless you can decide between the two, what is the point?
So, obviously there’s a big overlap between maths and philosophy, but this conversation feels very solidly more on the side of philosophy than actual maths, to me. Which isn’t to say that there’s anything wrong with it. I love philosophy as a field. But when trying to look at it mathematically, ¬¬P⇒P is an axiom so basic that even if you can’t prove it, I just can’t accept working in a mathematical model that doesn’t include it. It would be like one where 1+1≠2 in the reals.
But on the philosophy, I still also come back to the issue of the name. You say this point of view is called “intuitionist”, but it runs completely counter to basic human intuition. Intuition says “I might not know if you have an apple, but for sure either you do, or you don’t. Only one of those two is possible.” And I think where feasible, any good approach to philosophy should aim to match human intuition, unless there is something very beneficial to be gained by moving away from intuition, or some serious cost to sticking with it. And I don’t see what could possibly be gained by going against intuition in this instance.
It might be an interesting space to explore for the sake of exploring, but even then, what actually comes out of it? (I mean this sincerely: are there any interesting insights that have come from exploring in this space?)
Trick question; Lemmy is god!
How can you kill a god? What a grand and intoxicating innocence! How could you be so naive? There is no escape. No Recall or Intervention can work in this place. Come. Lay down your weapons. It is not too late for my mercy!
Zeno’s Paradox, even though it’s pretty much resolved. If you fire an arrow at an apple, before it can get all the way there, it must get halfway there. But before it can get halfway there, it’s gotta get a quarter of the way there. But before it can get a fourth of the way, it’s gotta get an eighth… etc, etc. The arrow never runs out of new subdivisions it must cross. Therefore motion is actually impossible QED lol.
Obviously motion is possible, but it’s neat to see what ways people intuitively try to counter this, because it’s not super obvious. The tortoise race one is better but seemed more tedious to try and get across.
Came to say the same thing. Zeno’s paradoxes are fun. 😄
Zeno’s Paradox, even though it’s pretty much resolved
Lol. It pretty much just decreases the time span you look at so that you never get to the point in time the arrow reaches the apple. Nothing there to be “solved” IMHO
Turns out the resolution to that paradox is that our universe is quantized, which means there’s a minimum “step” that once you reach will probabilistically round up or down to the nearest step. It’s kind of like how Super Mario at extreme float values will snap to a grid.
Wait, isn’t space and time infinitely divisible? (I’m assuming you’re referencing quantum mechanics, which I don’t understand, and so I’m genuinely asking.)
Disclaimer: not a physicist, and I never went beyond the equivalent to a BA in physics in my formal education (after that I “fell” into comp sci, which funnily enough I find was a great pepper for wrapping my head around quantum mechanics).
So space and time per se might be continuous, but the energy levels of the various fields that inhabit spacetime are not.
And since, to the best of our current understanding, everything “inside” the universe is made up of those different fields, including our eyes and any instrument we might use to measure, there is a limit below which we just can’t “see” more detail - be it in terms of size, mass, energy, spin, electrical potential, etc.
This limit varies depending on the physical quantity you are considering, and are collectively called Planck units.
Note that this is a hand wavy explanation I’m giving that attempts to give you a feeling for what the implications of quantum mechanics are like. The wikipédia article I linked in the previous paragraph gives a more precise definition, notably that the Planck “scale” for a physical quantity (mass, length, charge, etc) is the scale at which you cannot reasonably ignore the effects of quantum gravity. Sadly (for the purpose of providing you with a good explanation) we still don’t know exactly how to take quantum gravity into account. So the Planck scale is effectively the “minimum size limit” beyond which you kinda have to throw your existing understanding of physics out of the window.
This is why I began this comment with “space and time might be continuous per se”; we just don’t conclusively know yet what “really” goes on as you keep on considering smaller and smaller subdivisions.
I had success talking about the tortoise one with imaginary time stamps.
I think it gets more understandable that this pseudo paradox just uses smaller and smaller steps for no real reason.
If you just go one second at a time you can clearly see exactly when the tortoise gets overtaken.So the resolution lies in the secret that a decreasing trend up to infinity adds up to a finite value. This is well explained by Gabriel’s horn area and volume paradox: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZOi9HH5ueU
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If I remember my series analysis math classes correctly: technically, summing a decreasing trend up to infinity will give you a finite value if and only if the trend decreases faster than the function/curve
x -> 1/x.Great. Can you give me example of decreasing trend slower than that function curve?, where summation doesn’t give finite value? A simple example please, I am not math scholar.
So, for starters, any exponentiation “greater than 1” is a valid candidate, in the sense that 1/(n^2), 1/(n^3), etc will all give a finite sum over infinite values of n.
From that, inverting the exponentiation “rule” gives us the “simple” examples you are looking for: 1/√n, 1/√(√n), etc.
Knowing that
√n = n^(1/2), and so that 1/√n can be written as 1/(n^(1/2)), might help make these examples more obvious.Hang on, that’s not a decreasing trend. 1/√4 is not smaller, but larger than 1/4…?
can god kill god
It’s not a paradox, the words are just incoherent. It’s like asking whether God taste the color blue. The answer isn’t yes/no, there is no answer.
An all powerful god couldn’t taste the color blue? First, synesthesia exists. Second, the judeo/christain god “smells prayers.”
Also, god died… in the Bible. Anyway w/e. You don’t strike me as someone I want to interact with.
The specific example doesn’t matter much. Google “category error” or read the comment below where I explain the response in more detail.
You don’t strike me as someone I want to interact with.
It’s not like I’m trolling. This stuff is philosophy of religion 101. But, you are, of course, always free to ignore information that contradicts your world view.
This stuff is not philosophy of religion 101, though it might be one seminary professor’s lesson notes in systematic theology for christianity. Specific religions will typically have mental gymnastics or say things like, “It’s just too complicated to understand with our limited capacity as mortals.”
Given a being exists outside of this reality, the laws of this reality do not apply to it. And given a being created this reality, that being can do whatever it wants, regardless of this reality and it’s laws. So the paradox still stands.
Given a being exists outside of this reality, the laws of this reality do not apply to it.
When we assume a contradiction is true (e.g., God is immutable and God is not immutable: P ^ -P), then we can derive any proposition and it’s negation from that contradiction.
- P ∧ -P
- P (1)
- -P (1)
- P ∨ X (2)
- X (3, 4)
- P ∨ -X (2)
- -X (3, 6)
If God can make a contradiction true, then every other proposition whatsoever can be proven true and false at the same time. We can infer the following: 1) All questions about God are useless because God is now beyond reason/logic and 2) Reason itself would lose all applicability as logic, necessity, mathematics, etc. can no longer be taken for granted. These seem like untenable consequences. We have, however, an alternate conception of God’s omnipotence that doesn’t force us to abandon reason/logic.
So, what you’re saying is, if it doesn’t fit our logic, we have to make up a logic so it fits our logic?
There are different logics that account for temporality, modality (e.g., necessity), degrees of true, etc. But I doubt there’s any logic we could construct that can account for the inconceivable and the impossible being possible. Human reason throws up its hands and sits in the corner.
So, we’re back to a paradox.
Thanks.
And… blocked.
If God exists, and God is a non material, intangible being, then God exists outside of the material world. Objects bound to the material universe are born and in turn die, they have a lifespan. If God does not exist within the material universe, then God was never born, therefore God cannot die. God, if they exist, world have no material or tangible properties that can degrade. Also, if God exists outside of the material universe, then God is not bound to the constant of change, and would then be an immutable, un-movable, fixed object, and since death is dependent on mutability, then God could not change their state of existence, as they would be immutable.
I agree with the classical interpretation of an infinitely perfect immaterial God outside of time. But the way out of the paradox is to scrutinize the question itself.
To illustrate the point, take three paradoxical questions: 1) Can God kill himself?, 2) Can God create a stone that he can’t lift?, 3) Can God create a square circle?
#3 Is obviously a meaningless question. The words individually have meaning, but the “square circle” refers to an impossible object whose properties are self-contradictory. Because we interpret God’s power as the ability to do all logically possible things, the inability to create this self-contradictory object is not a limit on his power.
#2 Seems better on the surface because we can posit increasingly larger stones. But the contradiction here is between the object and the nature of God. Once we accept an infinitely perfect God, there can, by definition, be nothing greater than it. If there was a stone that God couldn’t lift, this would contradict the fact of God’s existence. Therefore, as we are under the assumption that God exists, the object itself must be impossible.
#1 Is another form of the omnipotence paradox in #2. Can God do something that contradicts his own properties? This would make God immutable/eternal and yet not immutable/eternal. But an infinitely perfect God is, by definition, immutable/eternal! So any action that would contradict himself is a contradiction in terms and thereby logically impossible. Just like in the case of #3, the answer to the question isn’t “no”. Rather, the question itself is nonsensical.
Idk why people were down voting you I enjoyed your posts
For #1 "Can God kill Himself.?"This presumes God is a physical and material being. If God is a non material being, not consisting of matter, then God was never born, as no material substance was brought into being, therefore God cannot die. So the answer would be no, because God was never born.
For #2 “Can God create a stone he cannot lift?” No. If God is a non material being, that creates the potential for material objects, then God would presumably create the potential of the material stone, and then the potential for a material being, that God could then animate through consciousness. God would then be both a non material being, and a material being in which he animates, that has the potential to lift the stone. Now if you belive that every material object has consciousness, then God would be the being lifting the stone, and the stone itself, so in essence God would be lifting Himself.
For #3 “Can God create a square circle?” Yes. God is a non material being that creates the potential for material objects, form and shape. The measurement of these shapes are arbitrary, measured by material beings, of form and shape. The circle and the square are the same object, a shape, only differentiated by a distribution of points, where one object can configure itself to be the same shape as the other object, by redistributing each objects respective points. So can God create the potential of a shape that can reconfigure itself into another shape, Yes.
Think of it like this, say you have a group of nanobots that are positioned in such a way that they form a shape that we label a circle. Then those nanobots reposition themselves into a shape, that we label as a square. Now did those nanobots create 2 different shapes, or a single shape that reconfigures itself? If it’s just a shape that reconfigured itself, then the shape is neither a square nor a circle, it’s just simply a shape, that is arbitrarily measured, whose measurement does not change the fact that what is being measured is still just a shape.
Can God kill Himself.?" This presumes God is a physical and material being. I’m afraid I don’t see why being non-physical entails being eternal. For example, couldn’t God create an angel and then destroy it later? If angels are non-physical beings that can be created and destroyed, then immateriality doesn’t entail eternality. Moreover, you’re right that God cannot die, but it doesn’t follow that the answer to question #1 is “no”. If there was something that God couldn’t do, then God wouldn’t be omnipotent. So the question asks can God commit a logically contradictory action.
God would then be both a non material being, and a material being in which he animates, that has the potential to lift the stone. Now if you belive that every material object has consciousness… I think our starting assumptions are somewhat far apart.
It’s only nonsensical if you have the additional assumption that God cannot do things that are logically impossible. Granted, if they can, that kind of throws all logical explorations of this sort out the window.
Agreed. And if God can do things outside of logic/reason, then we can’t understand him. Then the answer to the paradox would be: it is both impossible and possible. Which doesn’t make sense, but now we’re supposing God doesn’t follow the law of non-contradiction.
You’re right it’s not a paradox but rather it is a statement that is self-contradictory or logically untenable, though based on a valid deduction from acceptable premises.
Movement of any kind is a paradox if measured
