Video: the incoherence of omnipotence

[Subsymbolic]

Lion, Learner, Tigers- have any of you heard of Fideism?

Yes
https://talkfreethought.org/showthr...s-not-is-too-)&p=366729&viewfull=1#post366729

That’s Fedeism, when you are an evangelical who ignores all the FBI evidence and gives Trump a mulligan in the hope he’ll ban gay folk, pack the Supreme Court with fundies and overturn Roe V Wade or Tennessee v Scopes...

It’s almost the same...

 

[jab]

Where does it say that move was NOT allowed at any time during the game? Or that God changed the rules?
The scenario merely shows that God knows the rules better than the other player.

Duh, show me where that rule is a rule of chess. Give me a link. If it's not a rule of Chess, then either the player doing it is cheating, or is changing the rules during the game.
Sorry, Subsymbolic assumed you were capable of (or willing to) suss out the logical inferences of a situation. Evidently you are not.

 

[Tigers!]

Lion, Learner, Tigers- have any of you heard of  Fideism?

Those who hold their beliefs fideistically basically say that reason and logic have naught to do with their beliefs, and no argument pro or con matters at all. There have been some well respected scientists and philosophers who considered themselves fideists; probably the best known in recent times was  Martin Gardner, who wrote the "Mathematical Games" columns, which appeared for twenty-five years in Scientific American. You should check out the 'theism and religion' section of his Wiki article.

Penn and Teller once did one of their "Bullshit!" shows on religion; at the end, Penn talked about fideism, and how we who argue against theistic beliefs can't touch fideists. But he also points out that fideism and evangelism are mutually exclusive, and that fideists ought to admit their faith is not held as a rational proposition.

I should add that the Roman Catholic Church considers fideism a heresy.

I had not heard of that. I was thinking of Fidelism.
Upon reading the Wikipaedia article I am not a fideist.
Reason and faith for me work together. A bit like Galileo I think that if God gave me both he expects me to use both as appropriate.

 

[Learner]

What an honest individual....you must be Christian!

(I had to look it up too ... not a usual word I come across).

Reason and faith for me work together.

yep

 

[Subsymbolic]

What an honest individual....you must be Christian!

(I had to look it up too ... not a usual word I come across).

Reason and faith for me work together.

yep

And here's the problem. That option simply isn't available to you. Reason and faith can't work together when you believe in an omnimax God and accept the Christology that you accept.

Thus, a bit like Galileo, you are, and I quote from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's judgement on him: 'vehemently suspect of heresy'. I assume if the Church finds out, you will be forced to recant on pain of burning, put under house arrest for the rest of your life and have everything you have written and may write banned forever.

No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!

But I'm surprised you'd pick one of the more embarrassing moments in the history of Christianity trying, Cnut like, (I'm Dyslexic) to deny reality when it's in front of their eyes. At least he was smart enough to back down on the third attempt and didn't get burned ... like some.

 

[Copernicus]

I suspect that reason and faith do work together in just the same sense that a slave works together with the master. One informs the other of its limits. If God can override logic, then it isn't reason that does the informing.

 

[Atheos]

Getting a bit off topic here but the problem as I see it is that the word "faith" is not well defined either. It's a slippery devil. I once argued that it took the same kind of faith to eat a meal prepared by one's mother that it took to trust in the promises of God. The meal could be poisoned and kill you, but you are certain that it is safe. In the same way you can be certain that God can and will keep his promises.

As a skeptic I've come to understand that while they sound similar they are very different things. Substitute "Santa Claus" for "God" and the distinction becomes obvious. There are many who believe in Santa Claus for the exact same reason many believe in one God or another: Someone they trust made the claim. This claim is reinforced though confirmation bias when presents seem to be the direct work of this person known as Santa Claus.

The irony to me is that all of us who have been through the process of learning the truth about Santa Claus have already developed the tools necessary to learn the truth about the god or gods they believe in.

Faith gave us barbaric gods who must be appeased with blood sacrifice along with alchemy, astrology and snake oil. Reason brings us chemistry, astrophysics and Magnetic Resonance Imaging among other impressive advancements that work. The distinction is the basis of the scientific method: I may not go to the trouble of proving for myself every claim upon which I am building my next discovery, but I could do so if I chose. The promises of pure faith never stand up to testing. Any that do move from "faith" to "science."

Getting back to the discussion of omnipotence and its incoherence I have come to the realization that it is possible for something to be omnipotent yet be powerless to harness its power for any intended purpose. In fact the universe fits that description. The universe contains all power, and therefore could be the only thing to which the term "omnipotent" really applies. Yet the universe does not appear to be capable of deciding to do ... well ... anything. Galaxies spin, quasars emit, black holes suck and pulsars pulse. And human beings, in what has to be the most mind-numbing display of hubris possible, imagine themselves to be besties with some magic dude who owns it all and yet still gets pissy about what said humans do with their wee-wees. But the universe just contains it all and exhibits no inclination to do anything else.

 

[Jobar]

I linked to the Wiki article on Martin Gardner in #399. Here's a quote from him, re faith-

I am a philosophical theist. I believe in a personal God, and I believe in an afterlife, and I believe in prayer, but I don’t believe in any established religion. This is called philosophical theism.... Philosophical theism is entirely emotional. As Kant said, he destroyed pure reason to make room for faith.

I suppose that I agree with the Roman Catholics that fideism is heretical, as it renders theism entirely an emotional response, no more justifiable than any random feeling that anyone might have.

 

[Learner]

And here's the problem. That option simply isn't available to you. Reason and faith can't work together when you believe in an omnimax God and accept the Christology that you accept.
......
Thus, a bit like Galileo, you are, and I quote from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's judgement on him: 'vehemently suspect of heresy'. I assume if the Church finds out, you will be forced to recant on pain of burning, put under house arrest for the rest of your life and have everything you have written and may write banned forever.

No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!

Different strokes for different Christian folk, I guess I should say. I used one and discovered the other i.e. Logic came first then came faith (with all its varying degrees, all at once) to the bible , like many others I'm sure.

Now I have both in use ... which is not really problematic .... really.

 

[Underseer]

A thing can't be P and not P at the same time no matter what changes are made to reality.

Tell that to Schrödinger's Cat.

Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment meant to move the Copenhagen interpretation.

 

[Underseer]

Lion, Learner, Tigers- have any of you heard of  Fideism?

Those who hold their beliefs fideistically basically say that reason and logic have naught to do with their beliefs, and no argument pro or con matters at all. There have been some well respected scientists and philosophers who considered themselves fideists; probably the best known in recent times was  Martin Gardner, who wrote the "Mathematical Games" columns, which appeared for twenty-five years in Scientific American. You should check out the 'theism and religion' section of his Wiki article.

Penn and Teller once did one of their "Bullshit!" shows on religion; at the end, Penn talked about fideism, and how we who argue against theistic beliefs can't touch fideists. But he also points out that fideism and evangelism are mutually exclusive, and that fideists ought to admit their faith is not held as a rational proposition.

I should add that the Roman Catholic Church considers fideism a heresy.

I had not heard of that. I was thinking of Fidelism.
Upon reading the Wikipaedia article I am not a fideist.
Reason and faith for me work together. A bit like Galileo I think that if God gave me both he expects me to use both as appropriate.

Faith is accepting conclusions when you don't have a good reason to do so.

Reason is waiting until you have a good reason to accept a conclusion before doing so.

By definition they are mutually exclusive. Do you think it's a good idea to accept conclusions without good reason or not?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Faith is accepting conclusions when you don't have a good reason to do so.

Reason is waiting until you have a good reason to accept a conclusion before doing so.

By definition they are mutually exclusive. Do you think it's a good idea to accept conclusions without good reason or not?

I think it's a good idea to only accept conclusions you have a good reason for. However, my reasons for having that position are entirely faith based.

 

[James Brown]

If there ever is something that I can't know through reason, I use faith. And if I'm not sure about what I discover through faith, I apply more faith until I feel better.

 

[Learner]

won't argue with that ...different strokes for different folks.

 

[Underseer]

Faith is accepting conclusions when you don't have a good reason to do so.

Reason is waiting until you have a good reason to accept a conclusion before doing so.

By definition they are mutually exclusive. Do you think it's a good idea to accept conclusions without good reason or not?

I think it's a good idea to only accept conclusions you have a good reason for. However, my reasons for having that position are entirely faith based.

Faith isn't supporting evidence for a conclusion, it's the decision that you don't need supporting evidence in order to accept a conclusion.

- - - Updated - - -

If there ever is something that I can't know through reason, I use faith. And if I'm not sure about what I discover through faith, I apply more faith until I feel better.

I assume that's sarcasm?

If I don't have enough evidence to support a conclusion one way or the other, I refrain from accepting and conclusions about that topic.

 

[Underseer]

The only people who will tell you that it is virtuous to accept conclusions without evidence are people who want you to believe something that isn't true.

 

[Tigers!]

Faith is accepting conclusions when you don't have a good reason to do so.

I am so glad you have a definition of that that you like. Fortunately I am under no obligation accept it.

Reason is waiting until you have a good reason to accept a conclusion before doing so.

I note you are using the word reason in 2 different ways here. Could you clear up exactly what you mean?

By definition they are mutually exclusive. Do you think it's a good idea to accept conclusions without good reason or not?

When you fix up the your use of 'reason' we can talk further.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

What I like about faith is how arguments regarding reason and "God" often edge towards the, 'Belief means nothing without faith'. I call that the Christian Faith Pivot (actually I just made up that name). It comes about when a Christian is using 'science to prove god' (or at least their understanding of science), but after a while it doesn't work and they do this transition where originally they are trying to prove their god via "science", therefore indisputable because that is all the atheist cares about, the science. But it gets complicated, as proving God via science isn't really possible, forget the terribly misunderstood version of science being used by a theist.

So once the person gets schooled with their "science", they make the pivot. "Belief means nothing without faith". IE, my inability to demonstrate the presence of god is what makes my belief in god so wonderful, because of faith! I don't need science to demonstrate god because it wouldn't be as good.

The faith argument is like selling a product by praising its largest inadequacy or short coming. This cell phone might not be able to receive phone calls, but that just means fewer distractions!

 

[Underseer]

I am so glad you have a definition of that that you like. Fortunately I am under no obligation accept it.

The other definition is "hope."

When Christians say that they have faith that Jesus died for their sins, they are not saying that they "hope Jesus died for our sins," they are saying that they know this to be true. Thus, they are using the definition I provided, which is the same definition used by the Bible ("sight of things unseen" and all that).

Please don't try playing word games.

If you have evidence, you don't need faith.

If you doubt that the Sun rises in the East, no one talks about faith, they just show you the evidence.

If you doubt the Germ Theory of Disease, no one talks about faith, they just show you the evidence.

If you doubt that elephants exist, no one talks about faith, they just show you the evidence.

If you doubt that the moon is round, no one talks about faith, they just show you the evidence.

If you doubt gravity, no one talks about faith, they just show you the evidence.

The only time people talk about faith with respect to conclusions is when they don't have evidence (or more likely, don't have any good evidence) supporting said conclusion.

I note you are using the word reason in 2 different ways here. Could you clear up exactly what you mean?

By definition they are mutually exclusive. Do you think it's a good idea to accept conclusions without good reason or not?

When you fix up the your use of 'reason' we can talk further.

Are you confused about the two different uses of the word "reason" in this part?

Faith is accepting conclusions when you don't have a good reason to do so.

Reason is waiting until you have a good reason to accept a conclusion before doing so.

If so, yes, I am using two different definitions of the word. I don't understand what is confusing about it.

 

[Underseer]

Here, let's try to rephrase that to make it clearer:

Faith is accepting conclusions when you don't have a good reason sufficient support for the conclusion* to do so.

Reason is waiting until you have a good reason sufficient support for the conclusion to accept a conclusion before doing so.

* in this case, "evidence" can include valid arguments

I'm sorry if that was confusing for you.