sher (04/09/83)
From: David.Sher I should be incoherent in this message so those of you who are picky need not read any further. Consider God as a being who is omnipotent and omniscient within a particular interval of time. That is, God has perfect knowledge of the present and all things within the present. This god would have many of the characteristics we often ascribe to the standard generic monotheistic god. This would however allow for the existence of evil (god guessed wrong about the results of a particular action). And his tolerance of evil (not sure what course will both eliminate the evil and not result in the creation of something worse). It might result in a god who was generally reluctant to engage in drastic activity. Note we are in a similar situation with regard to our programs. We can look at every byte of memory at any point of time but we still can't solve the halting problem. incoherently yours -David Sher (ofttimes AI project) seismo!rochester!sher