Can God Think?

[clinkernace]

For the purpose of this conversation...

 

By God, I mean the omnipotent, omniscient Creator of traditional Western religions, such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and their derivatives;

 

By "Think," I mean, have a creative thought, that is, have an idea not previously known to the thinker.

 

Imagine that at the instant you finish this sentence, God comes up with a new idea, something He'd not previously considered, such as a DNA modification to peanuts that makes all human beings who eat a peanut become thoughtful and highly intelligent. Five minutes ago, God did not have that particular idea.

 

Therefore, five minutes ago God did not know everything.

 

If God did not know everything five minutes ago, back then He could not have been omniscient.

 

Having had that idea, does God now know everything? If so, then He can never have another new idea, and therefore can no longer think.

 

Clearly, either God can think, or God is omniscient. Pick one.

 

For what it's worth, long ago I opted in favor of thought, and found that the option has interesting consequences.

[cal]

Clearly, either God can think, or God is omniscient. Pick one.

This is an interesting topic, but you've defeated your semantics here.

 

You define the western gods, which are non-deist gods, so by definition, they have to be perfect beings and must be omniscient (along with omnipotent and omnipresent). A western god by the schema you show here is yes, incapable of creative thought, which in turn discounts its ability to be a perfect being. There's been a lot of talk by philosophers about a perfect god, and a good place to start with the fallacy that is a perfect god is the Perfect Island arguments.

 

But that being said, let's look at a deist god. An imperfect god would be very capable if not more so at creative thought than any other being. However, the problem with trying to prove some sort of deist god is that his greatest power is limited to creating the universe. The most powerful thing a deist god can do is create a universe, which means there are humans that are just as powerful, if not more, than a deist god. Stephan Wolfram has created millions of universes algorithmically (which is millions times more than our pathetic deist god, with his single universe topping the list of his power), and Lawrence Krauss (pioneer of quantum mechanics) has proven that if you stretch empty space fast enough, you get a big-bang like effect that would create a new universe. Are you to say the secrets of creating a universe are only creative enough for a god to imagine?

 

Either way we look at this, god is either committing a logical fallacy (something a perfect god should be incapable of) or he is powerless to his creations now. Why am I saying he? I should say "she", only a woman could **** up that much lol. Let the hatestorm begin.

Edited January 21, 2013 by Matthew Garon

[clinkernace]

This is an interesting topic, but you've defeated your semantics here.

 

You define the western gods, which are non-deist gods, so by definition, they have to be perfect beings and must be omniscient (along with omnipotent and omnipresent). A western god by the schema you show here is yes, incapable of creative thought, which in turn discounts its ability to be a perfect being. There's been a lot of talk by philosophers about a perfect god, and a good place to start with the fallacy that is a perfect god is the Perfect Island arguments.

 

But that being said, let's look at a deist god. An imperfect god would be very capable if not more so at creative thought than any other being. However, the problem with trying to prove some sort of deist god is that his greatest power is limited to creating the universe. The most powerful thing a deist god can do is create a universe, which means there are humans that are just as powerful, if not more, than a deist god. Stephan Wolfram has created millions of universes algorithmically (which is millions times more than our pathetic deist god, with his single universe topping the list of his power), and Lawrence Krauss (pioneer of quantum mechanics) has proven that if you stretch empty space fast enough, you get a big-bang like effect that would create a new universe. Are you to say the secrets of creating a universe are only creative enough for a god to imagine?

 

Either way we look at this, god is either committing a logical fallacy (something a perfect god should be incapable of) or he is powerless to his creations now. Why am I saying he? I should say "she", only a woman could **** up that much lol. Let the hatestorm begin.

 

Great comeback, Matthew-- thank you! And I appreciate your choice to give failed beliefs the respect that they deserve.

 

I've been defeated by opponents in the fields of sport, including back alleys. Also by better chess players, luckier bridge players, and way too many females. I've even been defeated by a really stubborn booger when the arm best suited for its extraction was in a cast. But I've never been defeated by a semantic. Didn't know it could be done.

 

All things considered, including your slightly excessive fondness for Ayn Rand, I propose that we have fun with this.

 

My brilliantly chosen semantics were an attempt to narrow the topic, figuring to expand it after the nits weighed in. You jumped in way ahead of me, beating the nits and taking the subject in a fine direction. So let's pursue your choice of direction-- deism.

 

I looked into deism a few decades ago and forgot about it, so to put together a coherent reply I referenced the Wikipedia piece on deism and recall why I ignored it back then. That can be pulled out of a nutshell within the Wiki article-- "Deism does not ascribe any specific qualities to a deity beyond non-intervention (with the function of the natural world)."

 

What good is an entity who has no definable properties? Non-intervention is not a property, it is a choice-- one that seems to be made by humans in charge of just another bogus concept. Even shmoos are better defined than the "deistic" god. Therefore I blew off deism then, renew that choice now, and recommend that you do the same. This will allow us to move on to even better ideas, and perhaps a Creator-concept that includes a set of real properties, including his relationship to the laws of physics.

__________________

 

An aside before proceeding re: Wolfram and Krauss. A half century ago I was given the job of programming a "stellar atmospheres" model, given a set of formulas and parameters provided by an esteemed astronomer. I developed a suitable algorithm and programmed it on an old CDC 3600 box, but the results it produced did not represent the behavior of our sun. So the professor told me to tweak some constants and modify some formulas, which I did, until after a few dozen runs the "atmospheres" program actually reflected the behavior of our sun. That process taught me all that I need to know about modern physics based upon modeling techniques. It is not physics. Algorithmic modeling is simply a matter of adjusting the story to fit the facts. That's a job for scumbag criminal lawyers, not for legitimate physicists. There is little real physics in modeling. It produces no insights into the "how does this work" category of questions. So much for Wolfram. Anyone who thinks that you can model a universe in a computer is FOS, IMO.

 

Krauss a QM

pioneer

? You must be kidding! Please tell me that your statement was a test. Are you talking about the same Krauss who makes big bucks mouthing drivel on some documentary channels, jerking his head like a dashboard bobble-head doll on a potholed road? IMO, that Krauss is just another brilliant fool trying to take physics in the wrong direction. In an earlier time he'd have been promoting phlogiston theory.

 

Max Planck was

the

QM pioneer, followed by Einstein, Heisenberg, and a few others adding bits and pieces of insight, but mostly getting QM badly wrong, except as a useful mathematical model.

 

If we need to fuss about this, methinks we ought to make a new thread, so as to keep this easily divergent thread more or less on track.

__________________

 

I figure that it will take a few more threads before this topic can be laid to rest, but here is another idea for you to consider:

 

You agreed that a Western-style God would be incapable of creative thought. This implies that you recognize that omniscience and thought are mutually exclusive properties-- but you never got around to stating your preference.

 

Since you either are an intelligent person or have learned to fake it quite well, I'll assume that you would prefer a god who can think. (Ayn Rand would, if she had believed in a creator.) This preference has an interesting implication.

 

Thoughts build upon one another in range, scope, and complexity. We learn to read, then to write, and then learn more to write about. We must learn basic arithmetic before algebra, geometry before trig, and all these tricks before calculus.

 

If you meet someone who knows calculus, you can retrace his learning steps back in time and conclude that there was a point at which he, she, or it could not add 1 and 2, and before that, knew nothing whatsoever. The same logic follows for a thinking god, who at one point in his existence, knew absolutely nothing.

 

The real power of such an entity came from its ability to have any thought whatsoever, at a point in time wherein the universe did not exist. After that awesome achievement, creation of the universe might have been a matter of engineering.

 

What thinkest thou?

[cal]

Great comeback, Matthew-- thank you! And I appreciate your choice to give failed beliefs the respect that they deserve.

Cool, but what failure deserves respect for just that? And what about the belief has failed (aside from the core concept)? What purpose were you hoping the belief would serve besides just being a belief? I hope you don't actually intend to change the way you live your life, and then force change onto other peoples lives (as prescribed by the religion), based on a book of desert tales that was written 1500 years before any modern science.

 

 

I've been defeated by opponents in the fields of sport, including back alleys. Also by better chess players, luckier bridge players, and way too many females. I've even been defeated by a really stubborn booger when the arm best suited for its extraction was in a cast. But I've never been defeated by a semantic. Didn't know it could be done.

Welcome to the science community.

 

 

All things considered, including your slightly excessive fondness for Ayn Rand, I propose that we have fun with this.

Not sure why you say that because I didn't mention her in my previous post in this thread, I'm guessing it's because of my signature. I've actually never read any of Ayn Rand aside from brief excerpts that gave way to a false sense of importance and probably a lot of feminism. There are only two sentences she uttered that I have come across that mattered (because they are politically related), and they're the two I've quoted for my signature. The third is pulling a Ben Franklin because it's a quote of myself (rap-game "MC Ego").

 

 

What good is an entity who has no definable properties?

What good is a book about a magician?

 

It allows the pervaded to define it on his own terms.

 

 

This will allow us to move on to even better ideas, and perhaps a Creator-concept that includes a set of real properties, including his relationship to the laws of physics.

lol, now here's where we're going to have a problem. When you say "real properties" I am left to assume you mean as a part of "reality". A god that is part of reality can't be a non-deistic god. If you want to argue for a non-deistic god, then your god would have to be perfect by definition. A perfect being cannot have a physical form due to the definition of perfection, being "that which excludes nothing". A non-deistic god would have to not retain any "real properties" otherwise it would be real, and deistic.

 

 

There is little real physics in modeling. It produces no insights into the "how does this work" category of questions. So much for Wolfram. Anyone who thinks that you can model a universe in a computer is FOS, IMO.

>There is little real physics in modeling.

Unless you're modeling real physics. I'd read back into wolfram's methods and goal before you dismiss the methods he uses to achieve that goal.

>Anyone who thinks that you can model a universe in a computer is FOS, IMO.

And yet there are teams of physicists right now testing to see if the universe we live in is itself a computer simulation - WELL HOW BOUT DAT ****

 

 

Krauss a QM pioneer? You must be kidding! Please tell me that your statement was a test. Are you talking about the same Krauss who makes big bucks mouthing drivel on some documentary channels, jerking his head like a dashboard bobble-head doll on a potholed road? IMO, that Krauss is just another brilliant fool trying to take physics in the wrong direction. In an earlier time he'd have been promoting phlogiston theory.

Yes, he is a pioneer by definition. If it weren't for him and Niel deGrasse Tyson, I wouldn't even know QM exists, much less be majoring in theoretical physics. Krauss is no fool, he is a professor of physics at Arizona State University and will probably be the person I do grad work under. Simply saying he is a fool does not make him one, and unless you can disprove any of his theories, I'd like you to reconsider your evaluation of him.

 

 

You agreed that a Western-style God would be incapable of creative thought. This implies that you recognize that omniscience and thought are mutually exclusive properties-- but you never got around to stating your preference.

 

Since you either are an intelligent person or have learned to fake it quite well, I'll assume that you would prefer a god who can think. (Ayn Rand would, if she had believed in a creator.) This preference has an interesting implication.

Aren't we all faking it? Also, you are providing a false dichotomy. Between a deistic and non-deistic belief, I hold not. A system of knowledge is greater than a system of belief. Oh there I go quoting myself again. I'd prefer no god, otherwise we're not accountable for ****. What I mean by that- since we'd be his creations, he should have thought out the consequences of his actions, not the actions of his consequences. You can quote me on that too.

 

 

If you meet someone who knows calculus, you can retrace his learning steps back in time and conclude that there was a point at which he, she, or it could not add 1 and 2, and before that, knew nothing whatsoever. The same logic follows for a thinking god, who at one point in his existence, knew absolutely nothing.

 

The real power of such an entity came from its ability to have any thought whatsoever, at a point in time wherein the universe did not exist. After that awesome achievement, creation of the universe might have been a matter of engineering.

A few things wrong here. The first being that you assume there was a point when the universe didn't exist. This is a common fallacy that most people jump to and I'm not sure why they do. Just because there was a big bang that brought matter into the universe does not mean there was no universe before matter. This is also applicable to the idea of a god, and to assume that a non-deistic god, an omniscient god (meaning it is intelligible to everything before and after any sort of creation or acquisition of knowledge), that at one point didn't know something, is a logical fallacy. You cannot be omniscient and not have always known everything there is to know. You also cannot be omniscient and deistic, the definitions defeat themselves. There goes those dirty semantics for you.

 

You also say that an entity's power comes from it's thought. However this is also not true. The measure of power (even for the omnipotence of a non-deistic god) is gauged by it's limitation. An omnipotent god would not be able to bend the rules of the universe, otherwise it would have been illogical to create such rules in the first place, and a non-deistic god cannot commit logical fallacies.

 

 

What thinkest thou?

What thinkest me? I think it's obvious god can't think because he doesn't ****ing exist. That which is not alive does not breath, TRIANGLE DOTS, it also doesn't think.

 

You say you dismiss the idea of a deistic god, and that it's so silly, yet everything you describe is descriptive of a deistic god. Rather than questioning what I think, I think you should question what you think.

 

Watchu thank bout dat?

Edited January 21, 2013 by Matthew Garon

[Guest MacPhee]

For the purpose of this conversation...

 

By God, I mean the omnipotent, omniscient Creator of traditional Western religions, such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and their derivatives;

By "Think," I mean, have a creative thought, that is, have an idea not previously known to the thinker.

 

Imagine that at the instant you finish this sentence, God comes up with a new idea, something He'd not previously considered.

If God did not know everything five minutes ago, back then He could not have been omniscient.

 

Having had that idea, does God know everything? If so, then He can never have another new idea, and therefore can no longer think.

Clearly, either God can think, or God is omniscient. Pick one.

 

 

Is there a confusion here, between two different ideas:

 

1. Thinking

2. Knowledge.

 

For example, you can have a complete knowledge of the rules of chess. You know what the chess-pieces are, and how they move. Like - a Bishop moves any number of squares diagonally, the Rook moves any number of squares horizontally or vertically. The Queen is a kind of combined Bishop and Rook; the King is simililar, but limited to one square at a time, and so on and so forth.

 

But having this knowledge, doesn't mean you don't have to think, when you play a game of chess.

 

You can't say: "I have a full knowledge of the rules of chess, therefore I am omniscient! I can win any chess-game."

 

It's not that simple. Just knowing the rules, isn't enough. You have to think about the consequences of every move. And the consequences are not always fully predictable. Because you don't know what moves your opponent - the other feller - will choose to make (except in certain "forced" positions).

 

So you have to think all the time. Even if you see an obvious move that your opponent "ought" to play, you can't be sure he'll play it. Perhaps he'll do something different, out of ignorance, or sheer perversity.

 

Might not God be in a similar situation? He may have created the Universe. And designed the "pieces", the quarks, electrons, neutrinos etc, and decided how they "move". So He started with a full knowledge of the rules of the game, so to speak.

 

But then He created humans. Humans have free-will, and can choose what to do - what move to make. So they confront God with an unpredictable player, who obliges God to ruminate and ponder, and perhaps even get angry, like in Genesis, and have regrets.

 

The point is - we humans must make God think!

[clinkernace]

Cool, but what failure deserves respect for just that? And what about the belief has failed (aside from the core concept)? What purpose were you hoping the belief would serve besides just being a belief? I hope you don't actually intend to change the way you live your life, and then force change onto other peoples lives (as prescribed by the religion), based on a book of desert tales that was written 1500 years before any modern science.

 

 

 

Welcome to the science community.

 

 

 

Not sure why you say that because I didn't mention her in my previous post in this thread, I'm guessing it's because of my signature. I've actually never read any of Ayn Rand aside from brief excerpts that gave way to a false sense of importance and probably a lot of feminism. There are only two sentences she uttered that I have come across that mattered (because they are politically related), and they're the two I've quoted for my signature. The third is pulling a Ben Franklin because it's a quote of myself (rap-game "MC Ego").

 

 

 

What good is a book about a magician?

 

It allows the pervaded to define it on his own terms.

 

 

 

lol, now here's where we're going to have a problem. When you say "real properties" I am left to assume you mean as a part of "reality". A god that is part of reality can't be a non-deistic god. If you want to argue for a non-deistic god, then your god would have to be perfect by definition. A perfect being cannot have a physical form due to the definition of perfection, being "that which excludes nothing". A non-deistic god would have to not retain any "real properties" otherwise it would be real, and deistic.

 

 

 

>There is little real physics in modeling.

Unless you're modeling real physics. I'd read back into wolfram's methods and goal before you dismiss the methods he uses to achieve that goal.

>Anyone who thinks that you can model a universe in a computer is FOS, IMO.

And yet there are teams of physicists right now testing to see if the universe we live in is itself a computer simulation - WELL HOW BOUT DAT ****

 

 

 

Yes, he is a pioneer by definition. If it weren't for him and Niel deGrasse Tyson, I wouldn't even know QM exists, much less be majoring in theoretical physics. Krauss is no fool, he is a professor of physics at Arizona State University and will probably be the person I do grad work under. Simply saying he is a fool does not make him one, and unless you can disprove any of his theories, I'd like you to reconsider your evaluation of him.

 

 

 

Aren't we all faking it? Also, you are providing a false dichotomy. Between a deistic and non-deistic belief, I hold not. A system of knowledge is greater than a system of belief. Oh there I go quoting myself again. I'd prefer no god, otherwise we're not accountable for ****. What I mean by that- since we'd be his creations, he should have thought out the consequences of his actions, not the actions of his consequences. You can quote me on that too.

 

 

 

A few things wrong here. The first being that you assume there was a point when the universe didn't exist. This is a common fallacy that most people jump to and I'm not sure why they do. Just because there was a big bang that brought matter into the universe does not mean there was no universe before matter. This is also applicable to the idea of a god, and to assume that a non-deistic god, an omniscient god (meaning it is intelligible to everything before and after any sort of creation or acquisition of knowledge), that at one point didn't know something, is a logical fallacy. You cannot be omniscient and not have always known everything there is to know. You also cannot be omniscient and deistic, the definitions defeat themselves. There goes those dirty semantics for you.

 

You also say that an entity's power comes from it's thought. However this is also not true. The measure of power (even for the omnipotence of a non-deistic god) is gauged by it's limitation. An omnipotent god would not be able to bend the rules of the universe, otherwise it would have been illogical to create such rules in the first place, and a non-deistic god cannot commit logical fallacies.

 

 

 

What thinkest me? I think it's obvious god can't think because he doesn't ****ing exist. That which is not alive does not breath, TRIANGLE DOTS, it also doesn't think.

 

You say you dismiss the idea of a deistic god, and that it's so silly, yet everything you describe is descriptive of a deistic god. Rather than questioning what I think, I think you should question what you think.

 

Watchu thank bout dat?

 

Matthew,

 

I only quote people whose works I've actually read, lest I mistakenly appear to agree with the wrong person. I incorrectly assumed that you'd read Ayn Rand. My I recommend Atlas Shrugged? I was your age and idealistic when "the universe" invited me to read it. She told a good story and expressed her ideas effectively in the process. If you prefer non-fiction, she condenses her ideas in The Virtue of Selfishness.

 

Your replies suggest that either I did a piss poor job of expressing myself, or that you only read my post once and filtered it through some preconceptions. That happens. It seems time to clear up the preconceptions.

 

I am neither a theist nor a deist. I'm a physicist at heart, not by trade, and my focus is upon the nature and origin of human consciousness.

 

You are IMO correct to disbelieve in God, as are other atheists. However, you disbelieve in the wrong god. I do not believe in the incompetently defined God of Abrahamic religions, nor do I care for the undefined, unmotivated gods of deistic thinkers. I propose that there is a creator-- actually, a consortium of creators that humans refer to as if they were a single entity because humans are pretty ignorant, a convention that I follow to make communications simpler-- who are limited by the laws of thermodynamics.

 

Subject to these restrictions, the properties I attribute to this God-concept are quite simple.

 

God had a natural origin, and did not come into existence as a conscious entity.

 

God is subject to the First and Third laws of Thermodynamics, but not the Second Law. IOW, God is the quintessential Maxwellian Daemon.

 

Those are the only important primary properties of God. Given your understanding of physics, surely I do not need to elaborate and explain his physical relationship to the universe with more detail. His (think "Their") motivational relationship to the universe is a bit more complex, and not obvious.

 

If you want details, perhaps you should read my book.

 

The most important component of these ideas is that this extended God is not responsible for human consciousness. Put simply, your body is created-- well, engineered, at his behest, but the component of yourself that is conscious had an entirely different origin.

 

Please realize that these ideas do not fit either theistic or deistic concepts. Not a Bible thumper, I accept the physical universe as the only bible that is absolutely certain to have been written by any creator, and mathematics its universal language. If you were looking for arguments with a religious nut, you picked the wrong antagonist. I'm a physics nut, and if you are genuinely interested in understanding the natural laws and the the reason for your personal existence, I am your protagonist.

 

You mentioned, "A perfect being cannot have a physical form..." and I would agree with you if not for the feeling that you are making a mistake common to non-physicists, that of treating the words "physical" and "material" as if they were synonyms. Were you to substitute "material" in place of "physical," I would agree completely.

 

Physical means, as you well know, those components of the universe that are capable of interacting with matter, or with one another. Dark Energy is obviously physical, as is Dark Matter. Who are we to say that there cannot be a perfect energy being, or a perfect dark matter being?

 

Actually, I would be the first to say that. My theories do not give a horse turd's worth of credibility to the notion of perfection. This goes back to my OP. A perfect creator would know all things, leaving no room for creative thought. I like creative thought.

 

Why am I so fond of creative thought? Figured you'd never ask. I live amid a planet full of mindless, unimaginative dolts. The occasional bit of love I can feel comes from encounters with individuals who think for themselves, whether I agree with them or not. The most dreadfully boring of people are those who speak from their bibles and textbooks.

 

While I love physics, I've come to know a diverse number of physicists and other doctorate holders during the course of my career, and found most of them to be dreadfully unimaginative. Among that crowd are the turkeys who are pursuing the absurd notion that the universe is a computer simulation, without first bothering to determine the nature of the computer, the properties of its designers, or their motivations.

 

You are young, and you will become appropriately cynical in time, I hope. At your age, coming from a spirit of promise and idealism, I too trusted the authority figures. Now, with experience and a broader knowledge of science history, I distrust the lot of them.

 

Good that you might get to study under Krauss, so that you will have a first hand opportunity to learn how to to bullshit effectively. We'll be almost neighbors. If you come to visit, I can explain Greylorn's Third Law: The relationship between a scientist's appearances on TV and his/hers contributions to science, are inverse.

 

Re: you comment, "I'd read back into wolfram's methods and goal before you dismiss the methods he uses to achieve that goal."

 

First off, I pioneered his methods, and have no interest in playing that game again. Have you actually performed algorithmic modeling? Perhaps you are the one who needs to employ, rather than merely read, Wolfram's methods. And since we are supposedly discussing science, not politics or grant-garnering, goals are irrelevant. In fact, as you may get the opportunity to learn, goals are the bane of honest science. There are more phony scientific theses that were designed to promote a dubious theory than there are molecules in tomorrow's first turd.

 

I propose that as an honest doctoral thesis you consider trying to prove a relationship between modeling and real physics. You will learn much and may transform what is fast becoming just another pseudo-science.

 

It is interesting that you seem to have adopted TV personalities, Tyson and Krauss, as your mentors. You can do so much better, and I believe that you will. Go your way. Remember that much of our life experiences are about learning what does not work, and who we do not want in our lives. Study some science history, and some original papers from Planck and Einstein, just like an honest student of American History would first study the Federalist Papers.

 

I always keep my mind open to the occasional glimpses of intelligence that appear, and if Krauss comes up with an intelligent comment I will be delighted and surprised. I invite you to keep your mind open to my claim that he parrots conventional physics BS. That way, you leave your own mind open to imaginative thinking.

 

Here is another comment from you that I will deal with: "I'd prefer no god, otherwise we're not accountable for ****. What I mean by that- since we'd be his creations,..."

 

Who says that we would be his creations? Not me. Please do not parrot conventional religious dogma and attribute it to me. That is unfair.

 

And last I learned about the measurement of power, P = E/t. There are no limits in this simple equation. Have you a better formulation?

 

Finally, Matthew, given that you are clearly intelligent, articulate, well-spoken, and no more confused than others who have bought into conventional belief systems, what's with the "Watchu thank bout dat?" Are you practicing dialect for a small movie role in which you wear shoe polish?

[Rade]

By "Think," I mean, have a creative thought, that is, have an idea not previously known to the thinker.

To think is the process of defining identity and discovering causal connection. To know is to have a grasp of the facts of reality. Thus, using these definitions, God is the ultimate omniscient thinker because 5 minutes ago he decided he would make known to humans the causal connection of DNA to peanuts, with the goal that humans would define its identity as already known to God.

[clinkernace]

Is there a confusion here, between two different ideas:

 

1. Thinking

2. Knowledge.

 

For example, you can have a complete knowledge of the rules of chess. You know what the chess-pieces are, and how they move. Like - a Bishop moves any number of squares diagonally, the Rook moves any number of squares horizontally or vertically. The Queen is a kind of combined Bishop and Rook; the King is simililar, but limited to one square at a time, and so on and so forth.

 

But having this knowledge, doesn't mean you don't have to think, when you play a game of chess.

 

You can't say: "I have a full knowledge of the rules of chess, therefore I am omniscient! I can win any chess-game."

 

It's not that simple. Just knowing the rules, isn't enough. You have to think about the consequences of every move. And the consequences are not always fully predictable. Because you don't know what moves your opponent - the other feller - will choose to make (except in certain "forced" positions).

 

So you have to think all the time. Even if you see an obvious move that your opponent "ought" to play, you can't be sure he'll play it. Perhaps he'll do something different, out of ignorance, or sheer perversity.

 

Might not God be in a similar situation? He may have created the Universe. And designed the "pieces", the quarks, electrons, neutrinos etc, and decided how they "move". So He started with a full knowledge of the rules of the game, so to speak.

 

But then He created humans. Humans have free-will, and can choose what to do - what move to make. So they confront God with an unpredictable player, who obliges God to ruminate and ponder, and perhaps even get angry, like in Genesis, and have regrets.

 

The point is - we humans must make God think!

 

MacPhee--

 

Whatever confusion there might be between thought and knowledge is on your end, not mine. I know way too many people whose brains are full of data, but who cannot do anything with it except to spout it. I'm not accusing you of this at all. Moreover, I fully accept your well posed distinction between knowledge and thought.

 

Chess play was a great example, and also serves to introduce the notion that there are different kinds of information processing that we commonly refer to as "thought."

 

For example, there are books full of famous chess moves. I detest memorization, so returned my copies to the library long ago. Playing against players who had bought and studied the books, I could win more often than not, if I was paying attention. For those opponents, their version of thought was very much about recalling other players' moves that had worked in a similar situation. My game depended upon on-site analysis and planning. Effective or not, it originated within whatever passed in me for mind.

 

Your statement about God creating the rules of the game (most of them, anyway) works for me.

 

However, you have adopted a belief from conventional religions with which I disagree, because it is completely illogical and nonsensical-- the notion that God created mankind.

 

Would you consider another possibility?

 

God created the universe-- galaxies, stars, planets and critters, including the human brain-body system-- but did not create the component of intelligence and personality commonly referred to as "soul."

 

Where did the "soul" come from? The same process that created God. However, while God developed self-awareness without assistance, ordinary "souls" could not. God then developed complex brain-body systems in order to bring "souls" into conscious self-awareness.

 

In the context of that somewhat unusual hypothesis, your conclusion, "The point is - we humans must make God think!" becomes, God has taken on the job of making us think.

[Eclogite]

For the purpose of this conversation...

 

By God, I mean the omnipotent, omniscient Creator of traditional Western religions, such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and their derivatives;

 

By "Think," I mean, have a creative thought, that is, have an idea not previously known to the thinker.

You have contrived, consciously or unconsciously, to constrain the possible answers by the unrequired and inappropriate temporal restrictions in your definition of thinking.

 

You seem to have assumed that for an Abrahamic style God that time is linear. In that case your subsequent logic is apparently flawless. However time need not be linear, but all things may be occuring simultaneously for such a God, so that they have all thoughts as new thoughts continuously.

[clinkernace]

You have contrived, consciously or unconsciously, to constrain the possible answers by the unrequired and inappropriate temporal restrictions in your definition of thinking.

 

 

 

Eclogite,

 

Thank you for contributing to this little conversation. Each paragraph expresses a different issue, so I'll address your arguments indepently.

 

I do not see how the time parameter is implied in my definition of thinking. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, of all the different kinds of information processing casually referred to a "thought," creative thought is the only one that seems to be time-independent.

 

Like most of us on this site, I make my living with my mind, and have done my best to distinguish its various modes of operation, as have serious researchers whose careers are dedicated to the subject. The brain has short-term, mid-term, and long-term memories, all of which seem to me to be clearly time dependent. Deductive problem analysis always takes time, often years-- for me at least. But inductive "reasoning" is another thing entirely.

 

I'd not even call this kind of thought "reasoning," and do not believe that it is a property of the brain. I and everyone with whom I've discussed this (and I'll bet a buck that this applies to you as well) agrees that creative thought appears in an instant, fully formed within the mind, and completely independent of language.

 

Retaining such ideas does require time. They must be installed in the brain via concentrated focus, written down, expressed in conversation-- anything that brings the idea from the core mind into conventional brain-based understanding.

 

This cannot always be accomplished. The brain must be suitably prepared to retain the thought, else it will evaporate. My personal insights into the nature of time have mostly returned to the aether for lack of any language into which they might be put.

 

My opinion is that true thought, the generation of new ideas, is what you might call a "soul-level" operation, and is entirely non-temporal.

 

I did not actually propose a "definition" of thinking, but merely isolated one well-known aspect of human thought for the point of discussion. IMO that particular aspect is, to the absolute best of my knowledge, time-independent.

 

Let's look at your second paragraph.

You seem to have assumed that for an Abrahamic style God that time is linear. In that case your subsequent logic is apparently flawless. However time need not be linear, but all things may be occuring simultaneously for such a God, so that they have all thoughts as new thoughts continuously.

 

I considered this issue decades ago, using this example: An omnipotent God must be able to "see" in the same way that humans do, i.e. by focusing the information in an e/m wavefront. No doubt God would have other modes of observation, plus access to a wider e/m bandwidth, but he must at least be able to duplicate our limited method of observation.

 

Moreover, God must have the option to observe from any point in space-time. So consider this example:

 

God can observe the surface of the sun directly at the surface, or from the perspective of an earth-based observer. God can also observe the solar surface from any point in between. Because he is observing e/m radiation restricted by the speed of light, each of the infinite positions he might take between earth and sun will produce a different image. Since the classic God can, or does, exist everywhere in space-time, he would be observing all these images simultaneously. This would produce a blur of information, rather than distinct images.

 

The effect would be analogous to you or I watching a movie displayed by a faulty projector, one that ran the film between lamp and lens, but without a functional shutter or film-stop mechanism. Instead of a rapid series of discrete images, we would see a blur of light.

 

Put more succinctly, allowing an entity to make an observation from any point in time as well as space produces a horrid problem in 4-dimensional resolution.

 

Obviously, every believer will resolve this argument in the traditional manner, by declaring that an omnipotent God can do anything. That is one reason why I do not believe in such a God, preferring the concept of creators limited by the rules of logic and two laws of thermodynamics.

 

Consider this final illogical, subjective point. Any God capable of simultaneously resolving all possible observations from all possible space-time points would know the entire history of the universe in an instant. Every event will be a rerun.

 

I enjoy watching Green Bay Packer games. The enjoyment comes from the process of the game, the interactions between players, coaches, fans, and often the weather. The 1967 Ice Bowl was the best game ever, for me, because I froze my *** off in a -35 degree wind chill watching the ups and downs, feeling certainty of outcome turn to despair, sitting on frozen pins and needles up to the final score.

 

Could I have observed that game in an instant by hooking myself up to a machine that compressed the entire space-time experience, I'd not have bothered with it. Therefore I have adopted the notion that God, whatever he or they might be, is also entitled to enjoy the processes, if not the outcomes. Clearly, God could not have been a Dallas Cowboy fan.

[Eclogite]

I shall respond in more detail to your thesis, but for the moment I make two observations

 

1) You owe me a buck.

2) Creative thought emerges after extensive subconscious processing and that takes time

3) Your entire 'thoughts' on this matter are restricted to the universe and its contents being a thing that 'moves' from the past to the future via the present. That's the constraint you have applied.

[clinkernace]

I shall respond in more detail to your thesis, but for the moment I make two observations

 

1) You owe me a buck.

2) Creative thought emerges after extensive subconscious processing and that takes time

3) Your entire 'thoughts' on this matter are restricted to the universe and its contents being a thing that 'moves' from the past to the future via the present. That's the constraint you have applied.

 

Eclogite,

 

1) The buck is your call, of course. You'll need to PM with a suitable address, else I'll be stuck owing you for the rest of my life instead of doing you out of it. I will put the money in the mail, whining and sniveling the entire time. Naturally, I anticipate that you will return it when you eventually realize that I was right all along.

 

 

2) Again you are right. I find that creative thought emerges after consciously worrying about a problem, even if just now and then. I don't know if is subconscious or "soul" that does the behind-scenes processing, but my best studies of the subconscious conclude that it is too stupid to come up with elegant ideas. My longest gestation time for a new idea is 40 years.

 

Nonetheless, the actual thought that arises from the process appears in an instant, as if between the clock ticks of normal time.

 

Moreover, I have had some simple ideas which, to the best of my knowledge, arose out of nowhere. They were not solutions to problems I'd been working on. I have found that almost everyone shares these experiences with creative thought. The only exceptions I've found are those who have made some measure of formal study of the mysterious human thought process and have adopted the beliefs/opinions of academics.

 

 

3) We may want to kick that notion around a little more. I do not actually believe in time in the usual sense, as something that can exist independently of events. I regard the universe as an asynchronous state-machine, in which each component maintains its own clock. Physical events create time.

 

By analogy, consider movies. The time frame of a film is determined entirely by the frame rate, subject to resolution issues of course. Were a movie to be projected at 24.2 frames per second instead of the usual 24, few viewers would notice the difference. Voices might sound a tad shrill, but some sort of audio compensator should fix that.

[granpa]

God is always knowing

 

I would think its going to rain today

but God would know that it might rain today.

[Moontanman]

Clearly, either God can think, or God is omniscient. Pick one.

 

I prefer the null hypothesis... there is no god... no need of a god, no evidence of a god, but if you think about the third possibility, then it is obvious that god can think since god only exists as apart of your own thoughts...

[clinkernace]

I prefer the null hypothesis... there is no god... no need of a god, no evidence of a god, but if you think about the third possibility, then it is obvious that god can think since god only exists as apart of your own thoughts...

 

While true enough, your statement does not mean much. Everything that exists, except our thoughts, exists apart from those thoughts-- even our bodies.

 

I submit that if you truly opine that there is no evidence of creation in our universe, you have been poorly served by whatever you have read. If you base your opinions upon childhood Bible studies, that explains your feelings. You might consider looking into your personal conscious experiences and see if they are well-explained by conventional science before fixing your opinions about the fundamental causes of those experiences.

 

Or, spend a year reading the current research about the colors of butterfly wings, and the "scientific" explanations for these exotic mechanisms. If you get some good, balanced data, your mind will sort it out.

[Moontanman]

While true enough, your statement does not mean much. Everything that exists, except our thoughts, exists apart from those thoughts-- even our bodies.

 

Circular reasoning, you assume god exists then go on to show that his existence shows that he exists... total fail...

 

I submit that if you truly opine that there is no evidence of creation in our universe, you have been poorly served by whatever you have read. If you base your opinions upon childhood Bible studies, that explains your feelings. You might consider looking into your personal conscious experiences and see if they are well-explained by conventional science before fixing your opinions about the fundamental causes of those experiences.

 

I suggest that next you insult my mother, you have no more evidence of who she is than you have about what I have or have not read. It is incredibly insulting and not to mention more than a bit of hubris to assume that anyone who does not agree with just hasn't done enough study of the subject.

 

Or, spend a year reading the current research about the colors of butterfly wings, and the "scientific" explanations for these exotic mechanisms. If you get some good, balanced data, your mind will sort it out.

 

Again, you have already demonstrated your own ignorance in this forum by claiming the old "how incredibly unlikely life is" trying to hang some improbable odds on the formation of life when if you had any real knowledge of the subject you would know the odds have noting to do with it. Life and the chemistry of life is not by chance, chemistry doesn't happen by chance, it is deterministic. The exotic mechanisms you speak of came about by evolutionary process, evolution is a fact...

 

If you are going to use butterfly wings as an argument for god I suggest you elaborate on why that would be evidence of god...

 

I also suggest you take your own advice... I put it in bold type just in case you didn't understand...

[summerspa]

As your initial statement set limits I will limit my reply.

Historic attributes of GOD (the Judeo-Christian one) are:

Omniscience (all knowing)

Omnipotence (all powerful)

Omnipresence (everywhere [and btw everyWHEN])

 

As omniscience is one of the defining attributes I would have to pick it before thinking.

 

But you limited thinking to having a novel thought, not that process by which we continue our existence and interaction with our surroundings.

 

If GOD is omniscient there is no new thought left to 'think'.