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  • The Astley paradox.

    If you ask Rick Astley for his copy of Disney Pixar's Up, he can't give it to you, because he'll never give you Up. But by not doing so, you'd be let down, and he'll never let you down.

    Testing this scenario is ofc incredibly risky to the state of our reality, so the Astley paradox must remain a thought experiment.

  • God clearly can't exist because an omnipotent, omniscient, and just God is a paradox already. Omnipotence and omniscience means that God, if they exist, would have full control of every moment of the universe (even if they only "acted" initially). Some (I'd argue nearly all) people suffer for reasons out of their control. Only deserved suffering is just. Since undeserved suffering exists then God cannot exist (at least omniscient, omnipotent, and just - as we understand those terms). God could be an omniscient, omnipotent asshole or sadist... God could be omniscient and just (aka the martyr God who knows of all suffering but is powerless to prevent it)... or God could be omnipotent and just (aka the naive God who you could liken to a developer running around desperately trying to spot patch problems and just making things worse).

    Alternatively, by omnipotent maybe the scriptures are just hyping them up - "God is so fucking buff - this one time they lifted up this rock that was like this big. Fucking amazing."

    • Ah, the Epicurean Trilemma. This was my answer too. Weirdly attributed to a guy from before monotheism was the predominant belief.

      Alternatively, by omnipotent maybe the scriptures are just hyping them up

      The scriptures don't use that word, and it's notable because the Old Testament didn't believe that to be the case, either. Early Israelites were henotheistic. They believed other gods might exist (hence the need for "thou shalt have no other gods before me"), but only worshipped the one. When multiple gods exist, it is by definition necessary that they cannot be omnipotent.

      It's pretty clear that he is not meant to be omnibenevolent either. The god of the Tanakh is wrathful. Christians later reinterpreted him as omnibenevolent, but this was clearly not the authors' intent. I believe Jewish scholars still don't think he's omnibenevolent today.

      Religious scholars have come up with a number of other proposed solutions to the trilemma. Ones involving free will are quite popular, though not the only ones. I have yet to find any argument that is remotely convincing, however. Saying "free will" just means god either cannot or chooses not to enable people to have a form of free will that does not involve them desiring to do evil. It also ignores the very many evils not created by human action. Child cancer, earthquakes, drought-induced famine (today humans have the technological ability to solve this last one and might simply choose not to, but historically it has been an insurmountable problem not caused by human free will).

      • I recommend you read "Religion of the Apostles" by Stephen De Young. He explains the common misconceptions of the early Israelite beliefs. The "Gods" are lesser divine beings that were meant to protect the 70 tribes after the Tower of Babel fell. The deities rebelled against God and led the nations astray and were worshipped. The tribe of Israel worshipped the God of "Most high" which is the one true God above all divine beings. So they aren't henotheistic because there is only one God. The term "Gods" was used because they were divine beings but they were created whereas God the Father is not. Everything proceeds from him.

        A great podcast that explains evil and suffering is "Whole Counsel of God" with the same guy. In short, suffering is unavoidable because man falls from Eden after sinning and the consequence of sin is death. Making death the consequence is a mercy because man can become sanctified during his life and through death re-enter the kingdom of God. Consequently suffering draws people closer to God than anything else.

        I'm not a theologian and wrote this on my phone but that's my quick recap. The book is way more thorough of course.

    • As you said, that does depend entirely on God having those properties, exactly as you define them.

      Alternatively, if definitive property is "universal consciousness", then God clearly must exist. Either consciousness is an emergent property of sufficiently complex systems, in which case the entire universe is obviously more complex than the human nervous system and consciousness should certainly emerge within it; or, consciousness is some external field, like gravity or electromagnetism, that complex systems can channel. Either way, the existence of your own consciousness implies a universal one.

  • Assuming time travel exists: is it possible to alter the past?

    If an event occurs, and you decide to travel back in time to change/prevent that event: It has no longer occurred in the way that caused you to want to change it; thus you never travel back to change it, and it does occur...

    • The Grandfather Paradox, I'm partial to that one as well.

    • I was playing with this recently. Suppose you are playing rock, paper, scissors with yourself from a few minutes into the future. Your future self “remembers” what you will play and so as long as you play normally, future self always wins. But change the rules a bit and play where future you goes first.

      In a normal game, you should always win because you clearly see how future you played, but future you played to counter what future you remembers present you playing…

      E.g. future you remembers playing paper, and so plays scissors. You see scissors and go go play rock, but that should be impossible because future you doesn’t remember playing rock.

      The weird thing to me is not that the second scenario (where future you goes first fails) but that playing normally (both going at the same time) works. I think the paradox emerges when future knowledge is introduced to the past. In the normal game, future you does not expose future knowledge until the exact moment you play and cause that knowledge to exist in your present, but in the altered game, the introduction of future knowledge creates a feedback loop.

      Of course the game isn’t needed. Simply seeing future you conveys the fact that you exist in the future. Should you, for example (and please don’t do this) see near future you then stab your arm with scissors, you will miss or be stopped because future you does not have a wounded arm.

      I wonder what happens if future you’s arm is out of sight. would you be able to stab your arm then only for future you to then reveal a wounded arm?

    • I think that just shows that time travel doesn't exist.

      • Perhaps. Unless you consider multiverse theory: The idea that the act of traveling to the past splits the timeline into two realities. One containing the original (to your perspective) timeline with the event(s) that caused you to travel back, and a second where you've arrived in the past to alter those events and the results there of.

        Not sure I believe it, but it's a theory none the less.

        Or maybe it's only possible to travel forward in time. Closer to our current understanding of the universe.

  • How can you kill a god? What a grand and intoxicating innocence! How could you be so naive? There is no escape. No Recall or Intervention can work in this place. Come. Lay down your weapons. It is not too late for my mercy!

  • Why is "can god kill god" a paradox? They either can or they can't (picking "they" because your particular god might not be a he). If they're all-powerful then the answer is yes, because they can do anything. I don't see how that's paradoxical.

    • If the answer is yes, then it negates "all-powerful" because it cannot withstand it's own power. Similarly, if "no", then it is not strong enough to destroy itself and, thereby, not all-poweful.

      So, it's a paradox because "all-powerful" is typically used as "unkillable", but also carries a connotation of "can-destroy-anything". So, can something that is capable of destroying anything and cannot die kill itself?

      Greek mythology had the dad-god "defeated" by being cut into literal pieces and scattered, but he wasn't really dead. And Zeus' siblings were eaten by his dad so they wouldn't usurp him, but they didn't die and he later puked them up.

      But none of these were touted as all-powerful, biggest than bigger bigly, cannot be killed but can kill everything else.

      A similar question on this line is can an all-powerful god make a rock too big for even said god to lift?

      • If the answer is yes, then it negates “all-powerful” because it cannot withstand it’s own power.

        I disagree. If a god dies when it willingly chooses to die, that's not negating all-powerful. It has the ability to live and the ability to die; choosing one option or the other doesn't mean it never had the ability to do the option it didn't pick. Similarly, if a god chooses to never kill itself, that doesn't negate it being all-powerful, because it may have had the option to kill itself and just not done it.

        A similar question on this line is can an all-powerful god make a rock too big for even said god to lift?

        That's a much better paradox because that actually brings ability into it. Killing yourself only indicates the ability to kill yourself, not any lack of ability to do not-killing-yourself.

  • can god kill god

    It's not a paradox, the words are just incoherent. It's like asking whether God can taste the color blue. The answer isn't yes/no, there is no answer.

    edit: a word

    • An all powerful god couldn't taste the color blue? First, synesthesia exists. Second, the judeo/christain god "smells prayers."

      Also, god died.... in the Bible. Anyway w/e. You don't strike me as someone I want to interact with.

      • The specific example doesn't matter much. Google "category error" or read the comment below where I explain the response in more detail.

        You don’t strike me as someone I want to interact with.

        It's not like I'm trolling. This stuff is philosophy of religion 101. But, you are, of course, always free to ignore information that contradicts your world view.

    • If God exists, and God is a non material, intangible being, then God exists outside of the material world. Objects bound to the material universe are born and in turn die, they have a lifespan. If God does not exist within the material universe, then God was never born, therefore God cannot die. God, if they exist, world have no material or tangible properties that can degrade. Also, if God exists outside of the material universe, then God is not bound to the constant of change, and would then be an immutable, un-movable, fixed object, and since death is dependent on mutability, then God could not change their state of existence, as they would be immutable.

      • I agree with the classical interpretation of an infinitely perfect immaterial God outside of time. But the way out of the paradox is to scrutinize the question itself.

        To illustrate the point, take three paradoxical questions: 1) Can God kill himself?, 2) Can God create a stone that he can't lift?, 3) Can God create a square circle?

        #3 Is obviously a meaningless question. The words individually have meaning, but the "square circle" refers to an impossible object whose properties are self-contradictory. Because we interpret God's power as the ability to do all logically possible things, the inability to create this self-contradictory object is not a limit on his power.

        #2 Seems better on the surface because we can posit increasingly larger stones. But the contradiction here is between the object and the nature of God. Once we accept an infinitely perfect God, there can, by definition, be nothing greater than it. If there was a stone that God couldn't lift, this would contradict the fact of God's existence. Therefore, as we are under the assumption that God exists, the object itself must be impossible.

        #1 Is another form of the omnipotence paradox in #2. Can God do something that contradicts his own properties? This would make God immutable/eternal and yet not immutable/eternal. But an infinitely perfect God is, by definition, immutable/eternal! So any action that would contradict himself is a contradiction in terms and thereby logically impossible. Just like in the case of #3, the answer to the question isn't "no". Rather, the question itself is nonsensical.

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