Infinity and God!

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wittgenstein

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“In the famous game of chicken, two drivers hurtle their cars toward each other, and the one who turns away at the last minute loses. Or they collide, and both lose even bigger, or they both swerve and have reciprocal embarrassment. Before you play this game, you might make a matrix of your actions (stay the course vs. swerve) against the opponent’s actions (same two choices), and see what happens with the four different possible outcomes. But then imagine that your opponent is omniscient. He knows just what you are going to do. Surprisingly, this restricts the results of the game in unexpected ways so that you cannot lose. If your opponent is omniscient, all you have to do is to stay the course. He will know that you are not going to swerve, and (assuming that he does not want a collision), he will have to be the one to do the swerving himself. You win whenever you play chicken with an omniscient being!”
FROM
amazon.com/Paradox-God-Science-Omniscience/dp/1403964572
The above shows that in some cases having less then perfect knowledge is superior to being all-knowing. By definition God is all powerful. Therefore, he must include the power of finite ( less then omniscient) understanding. Perhaps, that is why he became a man?
Please don’t answer, “Well God being all powerful could simply change the rules” or “God is immortal so would not care if he crashed.” Those objections are en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring s because my point is that God would always lose the game of chicken because one of the rules of the game is that a crash is the worst possible outcome. To say that God does not have to follow the rules is similar to saying that God would always beat me at chess because he could always zap me with a thunderbolt. The fact is that that would not really be winning the game of chess.
God being infinite continually surprises us finite minds!
youtube.com/watch?v=BRn_GNcglKo *
Imagine a number line. Let “1,000,000,000,000” ( or even infinity, see above video) represent our most sophisticated concept of God. Let “2” represent an incredibly primitive concept of God, for example a giant hominid with a huge white beard and wearing a toga. 2 is just as close to infinity as 1,000,000,000,000! In other words our intellects get us no closer to God!
*
biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+14%3A2&version=KJV
Mansions are bigger that houses. A reference to the weird math of infinity?
 
This just shows to what ridiculous extent people will go to say they are some how “better” than God.

I’m afraid you’ve missed an obvious and the most wise choice God might make and in accordance to your rules. Not to play with death by your rules.
 
If God knows you’re going to call His bluff in a game of chicken, He’ll probably turn up in a tank.

You lose.
 
the difference between God and man is that God is already in heaven and man is going to play chicken?
 
I already answered all those objections in the OP. Bringing a tank to the game is the same as throwing a thunderbolt. God’s invulnerabilty is not related to winning or losing the game.* Also, I did not say that man is superior to God. God is omniscient and ALSO has the power of finite understanding because he became human. Please read a post before criticizing it.
I actually appreciate constructive criticism. However,criticism from someone that did not even bother to read the post is rude.
  • I simply said that crashing (one of the rules of the game)is the worst possible outcome. If God survives is superfluous (in the context of winning or losing the game.).
 
wittgenstein said:
I already answered all those objections in the OP. Bringing a tank to the game is the same as throwing a thunderbolt. God’s invulnerabilty is not related to winning or losing the game. Also, I did not say that man is superior to God. God is omniscient and ALSO has the power of finite understanding because he became human. Please read a post before criticizing it.
I actually appreciate constructive criticism. However,criticism from someone that did not even bother to read the post is rude.
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i don’t know who you were responding to, but. if the objective is heaven, and i do not know what your objective is, then playing chicken is foolish. unless you assume there is no hell and you must be saved in the end. omniscience is all-knowledge not necessarily final-knowledge only. an omniscient being knows all the possible outcomes and hopes you chose the correct one.
 
The objective is to win the game. Like when I play chess I am not playing to gain points to become a grandmaster or humiliate my opponent. Asking what the person’s motives are is a red herring.
 
And yes an omniscient being does know all possible outcomes. That is why an omniscient being will always lose at chicken.
 
wmw said:
This just shows to what ridiculous extent people will go to say they are some how “better” than God.

I’m afraid you’ve missed an obvious and the most wise choice God might make and in accordance to your rules. Not to play with death by your rules.
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That’s the ticket, right there.
 
Which has nothing to do with the OP. Please read and respond to the OP and not some uninformed guess as to what the OP is saying.
 
wittgenstein said:
The objective is to win the game. Like when I play chess I am not playing to gain points to become a grandmaster or humiliate my opponent. Asking what the person’s motives are is a red herring.
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the worst possible outcome must be to see your car spinning into hell backwards in a ball of flames. but strangely enough this would not happen because of a collision, it would be because he let you stay your course and stepped aside, in your parlance - you won. so the worst possible outcome is not a collision. the best possible outcome in that case is in fact a collision with him as he will stop you. that is, of course, if you were on the wrong course to begin with. if you were on the right course then there would be no collision.
 
wittgenstein said:
Which has nothing to do with the OP. Please read and respond to the OP and not some uninformed guess as to what the OP is saying.
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What is your point in this thread? Are you trying to prove that man is somehow superior to God? This is a favorite hobby of atheists, so I am wondering why you are posting it on a Catholic forum.

Things like this are interesting mind tricks, which may seem to work but really are irrelevant. God’s omniscience does not limit Him in any way, and He is outside of our realm of understanding.
 
Response to post 12. Please, read posts before responding to them. No I am not saying man is superior to God. See post 5. What is the point of me responding to your posts when you do not read my posts?
Obviously, you are responding emotionally and not rationally. Curb your anger and read my posts without the distorting effect of emotion. Perhaps then you will understand the OP and realize that it is not anti-God.
 
Response to post 11. To change the rules of the game is to form another game and so has nothing to do with the OP.
 
wittgenstein said:
Response to post 12. Please, read posts before responding to them. No I am not saying man is superior to God. See post 5. What is the point of me responding to your posts when you do not read my posts?
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I had already read your entire post. In fact, I read it twice. And what I saw was a first part making the case that omniscience causes the omniscient to be limited in certain ways, and then the tone changed and you began talking about infinity and how the number two is no closer to infinity than 1,000,000,000,000.

I agree with your second half, but the first half does not seem relevant to the second, and it seemed that you missed the point in that part of it.

Since the two halves were completely unrelated, I did not bother to respond to the second half but only to the first, which I took issue with.

Perhaps I misunderstood, but as I am still looking at your post and have no clue how the points are relevant to each other, or what the edifying part of your post is, I beg for you to clarify your position.
 
Why did God become a man? There must have been a reason. I guess it is possible but I intensely doubt that he did it for just the heck of it. The chicken paradox shows one possible reason. There is power in being finite that the infinite lacks. God being all powerful must also include that finite power. Similarly, only mortals can be brave because bravery involves the risk of suffering and losing. An infinite being ( that never took a mortal form) can never be courageous ( because courage requires risk and an infinite being will always win) or even altruistic (true altruism involves sacrifice).
That I believe is the true message of the incarnation. That God so loved the world that he wanted to understand suffering on a first person basis ( google "qualia stanford encyclopedia of philosophy), which is the only way pain can be understood.
 
wittgenstein said:
Why did God become a man? There must have been a reason. I guess it is possible but I intensely doubt that he did it for just the heck of it. The chicken paradox shows one possible reason. There is power in being finite that the infinite lacks. God being all powerful must also include that finite power. Similarly, only mortals can be brave because bravery involves the risk of suffering and losing. An infinite being ( that never took a mortal form) can never be courageous ( because courage requires risk and an infimite being will always win) or even altruistic (true altruism involves sacrifice).
That I believe is the true message of the incarnation. That God so loved the world that he wanted to understand suffering on a first person basis ( google "qualia stanford encyclopedia of philosophy), which is the only way pain can be understood.
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Very interesting, thanks for clarifying.

God became man, not so as to experience being finite (since He is all-knowing, he wouldn’t need to do anything for the purpose of finding out what it was) but rather to Redeem us. He became man so that He could pay man’s debt.

God isn’t limited, so He wouldn’t need to become man to find out what it’s like to be man.
 
But qualia is ( by definition) first person knowledge. Yes, I can understand your pain intellectually but I do not truly know it because I am not experiencing it. Similarly, an infinte being can intellectually understand our pain but not where it really counts, subjectively. Only by becoming human (even if only temporarily ) can he be said to actually understand it.
 
Also google, “Mary’s room Frank Jackson” and “Searle Chinese room”
 
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