donald (04/08/83)
Prima facie, it seems that there are two operational characteristics of
an omnipotent being (there may be more; we leave them unstated).
(1) The ability to bring about any situation (configuration of matter and
energy) desired, instantaneously and without any trouble to self.
(2) Knowledge of all past and future states of any situation.
Colloquially, (1) and (2) mean "can do anything" and "knows everything",
respectively. I think that all of us agree that the Christian god must have
these characteristics.
God created a situation: the universe.
I don't think any Christian can deny that God must know everything that's
going to happen in our universe from now to the end of the current situation,
else he fails (2) and hence is not omnipotent. How can God be ignorant of
something?
My esteemed colleague Ralph of watmath!rtris says god created us with free
will, but we could abuse that free will. Knowing this, god created us --
WE messed things up by abusing our freedom.
How can an omnipotent God create beings with free will? Would he place a
"mental block" on himself so he couldn't predict our actions? Sounds unlikely.
God KNEW that we would mess things up, for he created the initial
conditions that would bring about the current mess, and he must have KNOWN
it too, by omnipotence assumption (2).
Tailored-for-Computer-Science-types analogy: I write an intelligent LISP
program that I know will zero-divide and core dump at location 00000666.
I run it on my PDP-11 and have philosophical discussions with it until it
hits 0000666. Then I reboot it and chastise it for crapping out, threatening
to disconnect it (daisy, daisy...). But since I'm such a nice guy I'll just
take away /usr/games and if it's real good I'll forgive it for dumping core
and port it to a VAX when it finishes executing.
As far as I can see Christians have two choices:
i) Let God be omnipotent.
Then God is the source of all good and evil. Whatever happens happens,
and is his will, due to whatever obscure whims motivate him.
This makes nonsensical all statements about his love for us, etc, and
how lucky we are that he was merciful enough to send Jesus to die for
our sins, etc. How can he forgive the "sins" he himself caused us to do?
ii) Let God be non-omnipotent, i.e. limited in powers or knowledge.
Then most of Christian world-view might be said to be consistent
with itself. And God can love and forgive. HAL's designers could
forgive HAL (I guess the HAL9000 people don't verify their software;
or perhaps it was a hardware failure that did HAL in).
Don Chan, an atheist somewhat mellowed
throughout the years.sher (04/10/83)
Sorry about this but I have to send this message in. In the movie 2001 HAL acted strictly according to programming. It was a computer intended to simulate human type thought patterns (that is intelligent). It was placed in a situation which was unbearably stressful. (this was that it had a very strong desire to promote the success of the mission but it was strongly commanded to conceal the nature of the mission). Naturally it went crazy. This showed how truly exact their simulation was. It was a true triumph of artificial intelligence. -David Sher (ofttimes AI project)