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The following paragraph seems awkward: One example of incompatible properties is the idea that God has a will, goal, plan or purpose, combined with the idea that God exists outside of time. A will, goal, plan, or purpose (hereinafter referred to as "purpose") implies an inclination or tendency to steer events toward some state that does not exist. That implies a privileged direction, which must be either what we call "time" or the direction of causality. The two are not necessarily identical, but time exists in any world that is not at equilibrium. Since direction is the significant property, we can define "time" as the direction of causality if God is at equilibrium. The choice between two directions may be arbitrary, so select whichever places the goal in the "future." Given this nomenclature, purpose implies time.
I would rewrite along these lines, but wanted to make sure the original meaning was more or less intact before I edited the article: One argument based on incompatible properties rests on a definition of God that includes a will, plan or purpose and an existence outside of time. To say that a being possesses a purpose implies an inclination or tendency to steer events toward some state that does not yet exist. This, in turn, implies a privileged direction, which must be what we call time, the direction of causality or the direction of increasing entropy. While the three are not necessarily identical, time must exist in any world that is not at thermodynamic equilibrium. Since, among the three possibilities, direction seems to be the significant property, we can define time as the direction of causality or the direction of increasing entropy (see arrow of time) and thereby unify all three possibilities. As can be seen, purpose seems to imply the existence of and participation in time.
Here is where I ran into real problems: we can define "time" as the direction of causality if God is at equilibrium. The choice between two directions may be arbitrary, so select whichever places the goal in the "future."
This paragraph just doesn't make sense: In general, God's time would not be related to our time. They must have the same direction only if human activities are relevant to God's purpose or if God affects or is affected by events in our world. Since God is usually assumed to exhibit one or more of those properties, God must experience human time. In a relativistic universe, presumably this means -- at any point in spacetime -- time measured from t=0 at the Big Bang or end of inflation.
This statement is just untrue: In any case, even the actual potential to create all possible worlds would mean God is not inherently "good." Being able to do other than what is good and choosing to do good is what makes someone good. In fact, if a being can do nothing other than good, then it itself is not actually good - only its actions are. Further, there is nothing implicit in any definition of God that I have heard that suggests that God is incapable of evil, just that god is not evil (read: chooses good, as it were).
Now... None of that addresses the point which is that the very essence of goodness is in the capability to do otherwise combined with the choice to do good. To say that God is good doesn't mean that He must always be good because He has no choice, but that His choice is to do good because He is a good being. See the subtle difference?
The final paragraph is similarly obscure: Another pair is simplicity and omniscience. God's memory alone vastly exceeds the terabytes in our computers, and bits (or bytes) are the fundamental mathematical units of information. Information is not "ineffable" and cannot be reduced to something simpler. Furthermore, God must live forever and therefore must have a deterministic processing unit or infinite error correction mechanisms. The simplest implementation is deterministic and quite unconscious, seemingly incompatible with an intelligent being.
SethMahoney
It is standard practice in the field of Philosophy to present the strongest or most popular oppositional views to the one being presented, this is also required by WP:NPOV. This article is biased in that it doesn't discuss other arguments at all and "The text and manner of writing can insinuate that one viewpoint is more correct than another."
This section states: "However, the result' is that a "good" God is incompatible with some possible worlds, thus incapable of creating them without losing the property of being a totally different God." This indicates that philosophers all agree with this and the debate is concluded. This article is both biased and unreferenced. -- Kraftlos ( talk) 21:20, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
Congratulations, you just proved that the universe doesn't exist. Time is an intrinsic part of the universe, just like galaxies and oatmeal. It is not separable. It was not just space that was created in the big bang, but time as well (actually, I think I read somewhere that the symmetry-breaking event which created a "time" dimension happened sometime "after" the big bang, except that until it happened the was no "after", which is really confusing so I'll just set it aside).
This brings me to my point, which is that there is no "prior" for our universe. Whatever process caused our universe to come into existence did not do it in our time line. It may or may not have taken place in some other time line.
Obviously this contradicts our normal intuitive understanding of creation, but the big bang was like that. Very very weird. -- Specrat ( talk) 06:24, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, I was wrong. Some theories for the creation of the universe involve it expanding from a bubble in another universe, from which it presumably inherits the time dimension. How this is supposed to work in practice I really don't know, but it does provide a "prior" for the big bang. -- Specrat ( talk) 05:06, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
![]() | This article was nominated for deletion on 5 November 2016. The result of the discussion was no consensus. |
![]() | This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The following paragraph seems awkward: One example of incompatible properties is the idea that God has a will, goal, plan or purpose, combined with the idea that God exists outside of time. A will, goal, plan, or purpose (hereinafter referred to as "purpose") implies an inclination or tendency to steer events toward some state that does not exist. That implies a privileged direction, which must be either what we call "time" or the direction of causality. The two are not necessarily identical, but time exists in any world that is not at equilibrium. Since direction is the significant property, we can define "time" as the direction of causality if God is at equilibrium. The choice between two directions may be arbitrary, so select whichever places the goal in the "future." Given this nomenclature, purpose implies time.
I would rewrite along these lines, but wanted to make sure the original meaning was more or less intact before I edited the article: One argument based on incompatible properties rests on a definition of God that includes a will, plan or purpose and an existence outside of time. To say that a being possesses a purpose implies an inclination or tendency to steer events toward some state that does not yet exist. This, in turn, implies a privileged direction, which must be what we call time, the direction of causality or the direction of increasing entropy. While the three are not necessarily identical, time must exist in any world that is not at thermodynamic equilibrium. Since, among the three possibilities, direction seems to be the significant property, we can define time as the direction of causality or the direction of increasing entropy (see arrow of time) and thereby unify all three possibilities. As can be seen, purpose seems to imply the existence of and participation in time.
Here is where I ran into real problems: we can define "time" as the direction of causality if God is at equilibrium. The choice between two directions may be arbitrary, so select whichever places the goal in the "future."
This paragraph just doesn't make sense: In general, God's time would not be related to our time. They must have the same direction only if human activities are relevant to God's purpose or if God affects or is affected by events in our world. Since God is usually assumed to exhibit one or more of those properties, God must experience human time. In a relativistic universe, presumably this means -- at any point in spacetime -- time measured from t=0 at the Big Bang or end of inflation.
This statement is just untrue: In any case, even the actual potential to create all possible worlds would mean God is not inherently "good." Being able to do other than what is good and choosing to do good is what makes someone good. In fact, if a being can do nothing other than good, then it itself is not actually good - only its actions are. Further, there is nothing implicit in any definition of God that I have heard that suggests that God is incapable of evil, just that god is not evil (read: chooses good, as it were).
Now... None of that addresses the point which is that the very essence of goodness is in the capability to do otherwise combined with the choice to do good. To say that God is good doesn't mean that He must always be good because He has no choice, but that His choice is to do good because He is a good being. See the subtle difference?
The final paragraph is similarly obscure: Another pair is simplicity and omniscience. God's memory alone vastly exceeds the terabytes in our computers, and bits (or bytes) are the fundamental mathematical units of information. Information is not "ineffable" and cannot be reduced to something simpler. Furthermore, God must live forever and therefore must have a deterministic processing unit or infinite error correction mechanisms. The simplest implementation is deterministic and quite unconscious, seemingly incompatible with an intelligent being.
SethMahoney
It is standard practice in the field of Philosophy to present the strongest or most popular oppositional views to the one being presented, this is also required by WP:NPOV. This article is biased in that it doesn't discuss other arguments at all and "The text and manner of writing can insinuate that one viewpoint is more correct than another."
This section states: "However, the result' is that a "good" God is incompatible with some possible worlds, thus incapable of creating them without losing the property of being a totally different God." This indicates that philosophers all agree with this and the debate is concluded. This article is both biased and unreferenced. -- Kraftlos ( talk) 21:20, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
Congratulations, you just proved that the universe doesn't exist. Time is an intrinsic part of the universe, just like galaxies and oatmeal. It is not separable. It was not just space that was created in the big bang, but time as well (actually, I think I read somewhere that the symmetry-breaking event which created a "time" dimension happened sometime "after" the big bang, except that until it happened the was no "after", which is really confusing so I'll just set it aside).
This brings me to my point, which is that there is no "prior" for our universe. Whatever process caused our universe to come into existence did not do it in our time line. It may or may not have taken place in some other time line.
Obviously this contradicts our normal intuitive understanding of creation, but the big bang was like that. Very very weird. -- Specrat ( talk) 06:24, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, I was wrong. Some theories for the creation of the universe involve it expanding from a bubble in another universe, from which it presumably inherits the time dimension. How this is supposed to work in practice I really don't know, but it does provide a "prior" for the big bang. -- Specrat ( talk) 05:06, 30 September 2010 (UTC)