[net.religion] time local omniscience? wrt omnipotence

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