Friday, January 18, 2008

Evidence based theology?

As a thought experiment, let's assume we know nothing of what a deity is, and then try to derive some properties. I feel, along with many other intelligent people, that there is a way to be spiritual and yet be consistent with logic and reason, so this could be a worthwhile experiment. One of the first difficulties we encounter is that there is no good definition of "God." If one goes the simplistic route and defines God to be an omnipotent being, one gets into trouble since omnipotence is a logically inconsistent concept. (If God can do anything, he can make a rock so heavy he can't lift it.) Notice how I used "he" to describe God. This shows a lot of preconceptions that people have: that God is an intentional agent, and moreover, can be assigned a human gender! In any event, this simple argument shows that God, should one exist, is not all-powerful in the most simplistic sense. Indeed, if that were the case, he would snap his fingers and dissolve the suffering of the world in an instant. But the force of God evidently cannot instantaneously dissolve the suffering of the world. (I don't believe there is a difference here between "cannot" and "doesn't choose to." Aside from the problem of assigning intention to an unknown quantity, there is also the conundrum of whether one can ever choose to do act in a way differently than one actually acts. ) This solves a lot of the questions people have, and the reasons that are frequently given about why faith is not an option. But notice that it does not prove or even, to my current way of thinking, make a dent in the possibility of a spiritual force that can dissolve suffering, just not instantaneously. In fact, I believe that one need to be open to help from a spiritual force, in order to receive help, at least efficiently. We are more powerful than that spiritual force, in a gross sense, because we can choose to ignore it. It cannot control us like automatons. Yet, in a subtle sense, we are not more powerful than it, and in fact, I believe it is our innermost nature.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

'If God is all-powerful, he can make a rock so heavy that he can't lift it' is one of many self-referencing paradoxes that show that logic is not all powerful -- as Godel proved!

How about a God who is so powerful that he made himself weak and even puny for our sakes as part of his plan for redemption?--s29

vacuous said...

If God found it necessary to go through such a complicated process to "redeem" people, then it seems he is not all-powerful. It makes more sense to me that suffering was not created by a loving all-powerful deity, and that one can draw on a spiritual force to overcome one's suffering. It is infinitely willing to help, but in the end the suffering was of our own creation.

As for logic and Godel, Godel never proved that logic was invalid. Rather he proved that formalized systems are insufficient to capture all truth. However, statements that can be proven false within the formal system are considered actually false. It's just that you can't prove every true statement.

Very closely related to this is Russell's paradox which proves that the "set of all sets" doesn't exist. But set theorists came up with an alternate consistent framework. Similarly, an omnipotent entity can't exist, but one can posit entities which have many of the same properties and are logically consistent.

Anonymous said...

Well, if God is all powerful, maybe his reasoning is not immediately comprehensible to our limited minds.

Did I say Godel proved logic invalid?

Anyway, Russell did away with his paradox in Principia, and set theorists eliminated it along with Cantor's power set paradox with Zermelo-Frankel axioms plus the axiom of choice (equivalent to the well-ordering principle).

But what Godel showed was that adding axioms merely shifts the self-referencing difficulty such that either a sufficiently rich logic system is inconsistent or incomplete: there is always an axiom 'missing.' So, logic is not all-powerful.

vacuous said...

I didn't claim logic was all powerful myself, just that it is valid.

Anonymous said...

Anyway. I don't wish to be overly contentious. I enjoy your stimulating ideas.

Did you notice my about-face on the shroud, based on evidence new to me?