The problem with forknowledge

[STT]

God is not a “mind,” God is existence itself. YHWH, “I Am Who Am.” Again, God is not just a bigger version of us. You need to move beyond that understanding. That is the nature of Paganism’s false gods and idols, not the Nature of God.

Does everything consciously present to God? Things are mixed and garbled if the answer to this question is yes.

Well, unless you can disprove the philosophical proofs for God’s attributes, such as his omnipotence, omnipresence, and omnibenevolence, what you think doesn’t really matter. You can’t simply discard these qualities because you personally don’t think they’re true. It is not evading the argument because it is the answer to the argument.

How these attributes are related to our discussion?

That’s fine. I understand that you’re busy, and the Summa is a beast of a text. I’m still working my way through it as well.

What I’m saying is that, until you do read and understand the nature of God as it is outlined by Catholic philosophers (which Aquinas’ proofs support), we’re going to be operating from two entirely different perspectives on the nature of God, which is going to make any kind of discussion difficult. You can’t really have a reasoned argument about something if the two parties aren’t talking about the same thing.

Thanks for your concern.

 

[STT]

thinkandmull, if you’re still reading this, I had an additional thought as I was contemplating this topic this morning that I wanted to share with you.

Even if God had chosen differently, and if reality were different, and if God’s knowledge was different from what it actually is, that would still not make Him contingent on us, because the source of that difference would still be God. It is His decision to create differently that would cause the change, not anything we did.

As Gorgias said though, talking about it in terms of “choice” and “change” is really inaccurate, and doesn’t convey the reality of what’s being discussed.

God’s foreknowledge is unique as our decisions are unique. Therefore God cannot decide to create another universe unless our decisions are subjected to the act of creation, which this is contrary to notion of free will.

 

[ProdglArchitect]

Does everything consciously present to God? Things are mixed and garbled if the answer to this question is yes.

Well, if the question is actually “does everything consciously present itself to God” the answer is no. But if your question is “is everything present to God’s consciousness,” then the answer is yes. Things are not mixed and garbled because God’s consciousness is not finite, it is infinite. He can provide infinite focus on an infinite number of things. That is what it means to be omniscience and omnipresent.

How these attributes are related to our discussion?

Because they provide the foundation for HOW God understands and experience things. They are absolutely essential as the foundation for any discussion about God’s interaction with us.

 

[ProdglArchitect]

God’s foreknowledge is unique as our decisions are unique. Therefore God cannot decide to create another universe unless our decisions are subjected to the act of creation, which this is contrary to notion of free will.

It is most certainly not contrary to the notion of free will.

Say I give you twenty dollars. You can chose to go buy… let’s a say a new movie, or a couple of books. The choice is yours.

Now, say that instead of twenty dollars, I give you twenty-thousand. Now you can chose a vastly different set of things to buy, either more things, more expensive things, etc. You could even still decide to buy the same movie or the same books, and ignore the rest of the money.

The possible outcomes may be different, but the choice of what to do with the money remains yours.

 

[Bookcat]

I don’t approach God as a creature in time. It is matter how I form the sentence.

Already answered (you are yes still doing so…)

 

[Bookcat]

What do you mean when you say that God sees thing?

The knowledge and understanding of God is totally independent of things.

Created things are not its object…the understanding of God is its own object.

Things can change - but the knowledge of God remains unchanged. Because it is* God *Who is its object. Not things.

 

[ProdglArchitect]

Things can change - but the knowledge of God remains unchanged. Because it is* God *Who is its object. Not things.

Would you agree that the object of God’s knowledge is Himself, and since God is Being itself, His knowledge encompasses all that is?

I’m trying to think of a way to word the formulation that may help people understand it a little easier.

 

[Bookcat]

Would you agree that the object of God’s knowledge is Himself.

Yes it is *God *Who is its object- not things.

God of course knows all things…but even if they change - or even if there were no things created …his knowledge would remain unchanged (see Maritain).

 

[ProdglArchitect]

Yes it is *God *Who is its object- not things.

God of course knows all things…but even if they change - or even if there were no things created …his knowledge would remain unchanged (see Maritain).

I was wondering more about the second half of the formulation, since it relates more directly to the discussion about the “how” of God’s knowledge, at least as far as STT is concerned.

 

[Gorgias]

Your example is incorrect, deficient.

There are ONLY three categories:1) A being which exists in ALL the possible worlds - necessary.
2) A being which exists in SOME, but not ALL possible worlds - possible (or contingent).
3) A being which does not and cannot exist in ANY possible world - impossible.

I think we’re done, here. You’re continuing to use the terms inaccurately, and then berating me for not following you down that rabbit hole. Sorry. That’s just silly.

The method would be to examine ALL the possible worlds and ascertain that this being is present in all of them.

It really isn’t. But, I get that you refuse to admit it, since that would cause the house of cards you’ve built to come crashing down. So… have fun with your construct. Just don’t get upset when we remind you that *that *emperor has no clothes…

 

[Bookcat]

I was wondering more about the second half of the formulation, since it relates more directly to the discussion about the “how” of God’s knowledge, at least as far as STT is concerned.

STT is approaching God as if God were a creature knowing things as the object of his knowledge. Tis not how God knows. It is God Who is the object of his knowledge - not things. Once one realizes that - that God knows very differently than do we creatures - that can be a good step into further understanding (which can then take place in the study of such as Maritain on this matter…rather than posts in a forum which are by nature limited).

 

[Vera_Ljuba]

I think we’re done, here. You’re continuing to use the terms inaccurately, and then berating me for not following you down that rabbit hole. Sorry. That’s just silly.

This was quite predictable. The terms I used are precisely the same as you used. And precisely the same as all the philosophers use. They logically prove that the concept of “necessary existence” is an empty assertion. But that cuts to the jugular, so you try to avoid it.

It really isn’t. But, I get that you refuse to admit it, since that would cause the house of cards you’ve built to come crashing down. So… have fun with your construct. Just don’t get upset when we remind you that *that *emperor has no clothes…

I can again foresee that next time this problem will be discussed, you will claim that you already “dismantled” the argument. Just like last time. You did nothing of the kind back then, and you could not do it this time.

It might have been a fruitful discussion, if you actually presented some arguments. But your empty expression that I use the terms inaccurately, and not point out what the accurate usage might have been is just a usual cop-out when the apologist runs out of arguments. And here I thought that you are a much more rational person than the others. Oh well. Live and learn.

 

[Gorgias]

This was quite predictable. The terms I used are precisely the same as you used.

You used the same terms, alright, but… you are using them in ways that are inaccurate.

Look – you claim that a contingent being must exist in at least one possible world, but not all. That’s simply not true. The term just means that existence is possible. If that being exists in all worlds, it may still be ‘contingent.’ If it exists in none, again – ‘contingent.’

You also make the rather absurd claim that a necessary being must exist in all possible worlds. That, too, is untenable. As you’ve demonstrated for us, it’s quite possible to posit a world that’s hostile to all beings, and therefore, to defeat the notion. It’s cute, but quite transparent.

If I had to pin down the source of your error, it’s the attempt to use “multiple worlds” as the basis for the definition. Contextually, ‘contingency’ and ‘necessity’ apply to a given world (normatively, the universe in which we actually live). The discussion, then, isn’t whether God exists in any mentally-constructed, putatively plausible universe: it’s whether He exists in ours. And, in that context, we will conclude that He is ‘necessary’ and we are ‘contingent.’

Anything short of that, and I’m afraid you’re tilting at windmills.

I can again foresee that next time this problem will be discussed, you will claim that you already “dismantled” the argument. Just like last time. You did nothing of the kind back then, and you could not do it this time.

True. I cannot do it because your grasp of the concepts involved is somewhat tenuous. It’s difficult to play football with someone dressed up in hockey gear. Especially if the hockey-kit-wearer doesn’t realize it.

It might have been a fruitful discussion, if you actually presented some arguments. But your empty expression that I use the terms inaccurately, and not point out what the accurate usage might have been is just a usual cop-out when the apologist runs out of arguments.

Actually, I have been doing so. And continue to do so in this post.

 

[ProdglArchitect]

STT is approaching God as if God were a creature knowing things as the object of his knowledge. Tis not how God knows. It is God Who is the object of his knowledge - not things. Once one realizes that - that God knows very differently than do we creatures - that can be a good step into further understanding (which can then take place in the study of such as Maritain on this matter…rather than posts in a forum which are by nature limited).

Oh, I agree with you completely. I’m just trying to help him understand.

 

[goout]

It might have been a fruitful discussion, if you actually presented some arguments. But your empty expression that I use the terms inaccurately, and not point out what the accurate usage might have been is just a usual cop-out when the apologist runs out of arguments. And here I thought that you are a much more rational person than the others. Oh well. Live and learn.

You have a well documented history here of aggressively debating straw men.
You demonstrably don’t understand Christianity, and so I wonder why you even come here. What’s the point?
It’s like going to a dinner party and speaking Spanish when everyone else speaks French, and then telling the others how they don’t speak properly.

Don’t you have more productive things to do?

 

[Vera_Ljuba]

You used the same terms, alright, but… you are using them in ways that are inaccurate.

Look – you claim that a contingent being must exist in at least one possible world, but not all. That’s simply not true. The term just means that existence is possible. If that being exists in all worlds, it may still be ‘contingent.’ If it exists in none, again – ‘contingent.’

You also make the rather absurd claim that a necessary being must exist in all possible worlds. That, too, is untenable. As you’ve demonstrated for us, it’s quite possible to posit a world that’s hostile to all beings, and therefore, to defeat the notion. It’s cute, but quite transparent.

I use the terms as they are being used in modern philosophy - as logical necessity. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysical_necessity) Actually, it is you, who uses the terms in a restricted matter. Contingent does not mean that there is another entity whose existence is necessary for the contingent being to exist.

It is much wider than saying: “the existence of the father is necessary for the son to exist, and therefore the son’s existence is contingent upon the father’s existence”. While the existence of the father was contingent upon the existence of the grandfather. In this sense, every entity is BOTH necessary AND contingent depending upon the placement on the causal chain.

This would be “factual necessity”, and it is not what I am talking about.

This is not the same as the abstract logical necessity. The logical necessity is MUCH wider than the factual necessity. To clarify one more time: “I am talking about LOGICAL necessity, LOGICAL contingency and LOGICAL impossibility”.

Using simple words: “a necessary being cannot not exist”; “a contingent being may or may not exist”; “an impossible being cannot exist”. That is what I used and that is what you used, too.

Using the terminology of “possible worlds”: a possible world is one that differs from our existing world in SOME respect. Obviously our world is possible, since it exists. If an entity exists in all the possible worlds, then it cannot non-exist. Now we can consider ALL the possible worlds, which are obviously infinite. There can be some entities which exist in some of these worlds, but not all of them. In my back yard there is a cherry tree. It could be some other tree, so it is not logically necessary that it should be there. So that is a contingent being. It is also contingent in another sense: it grew because there was a cherry-pit there. But this is a much more restricted use of the word “contingent”. It describes physical contingency.

And finally, there are entities, which cannot exist in any logically possible world, because they contain a logical contradiction.

If I had to pin down the source of your error, it’s the attempt to use “multiple worlds” as the basis for the definition.

This not an error, it is how some philosophers attempted to prove God’s existence. (Plantinga is one of them.) They came up with the idea of multiple worlds in their attempt to show that God’s existence would be a LOGICAL necessity. It is a standard method to conduct hypothetical philosophical thought experiments.

Contextually, ‘contingency’ and ‘necessity’ apply to a given world (normatively, the universe in which we actually live). The discussion, then, isn’t whether God exists in any mentally-constructed, putatively plausible universe: it’s whether He exists in ours. And, in that context, we will conclude that He is ‘necessary’ and we are ‘contingent.’

This is not a good approach. You would need to PROVE that God’s alleged existence is LOGICALLY necessary for our world to exist. And you cannot even PROVE that God actually exists.

Of all the different “necessities” the logical one is the strongest. The “factual necessity” and the “metaphysical necessity” are much weaker propositions. If something is “logically necessary”, then it cannot not exist (your words, too). But if something is not logically necessary, then it may of may not exist. If you could show that God’s alleged existence is logically necessary, you could win a Nobel price.

Of course this is impossible, since one of the logically possible worlds is the “null-world”, which is logically possible and does not contain any entities.

 

[ProdglArchitect]

This is not a good approach. You would need to PROVE that God’s alleged existence is LOGICALLY necessary for our world to exist. And you cannot even PROVE that God actually exists.

A: There is existence
B: Existence is not, in and of itself, necessary.
C: Something cannot create itself.

From A and B:
D: If Existence is not necessary, and yet is; and if it cannot be its own creator (per C), there must be a necessary cause external to existence to explain it.

We know A because we are experiencing it.
We know B because we know that existence had a beginning, and so there was a point at which it did not exist.
We know C because all of the sciences tell us this is true, as do our own observations and experiences.

As such, D flows LOGICALLY from A, B, and C.

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We could also address the fact that nothing is capable of creating itself. Given that basic fact, we can surmise that existence could not have created itself, and therefore requires an external creator. In order to avoid the irrational “necessity” of an infinite regression of creators, creating each lower creator, it is necessary that there be a First and Primary creator which exists out of necessity, or, whose nature it is to exist.

---

Both of these are solid proofs which address your requirement for a logical proof for the necessity of God to facilitate our existence.

I’ve heard several variations on three possible loopholes used to try to get around this.

1: The universe is the result of another universe which either existed before, or exists besides, our current universe.

Firstly, this is as large a leap of faith as the belief in God, given that there isn’t even a philosophical proof for this position, let alone a scientific proof. Secondly, this does not circumvent the need for an external creating force, it only pushes it up a level. You may claim that perhaps that other universe is itself necessary, but again, that is a literally-baseless assumption, and not a good foundation for making any argument.

2: The universe is in a loop, and creates itself after each successive iteration.

This position holds the same issues as the one above, with the addition of a temporal paradox. In order for any sequence to occur, it had to have a starting point. A temporal loop cannot do away with that paradox because no matter what, something had to set the loop in motion (i.e., and initial instance)

3: Something can come from nothing, based on observations in the big particle collider, who’s name I have completely forgotten…

Those particles did not come from nothing, they came form a low level energy field. Energy is something, and therefore necessitates a creator for reasons given above.

---

I don’t really have time to get drawn back into this debate, so I don’t know that I’ll be able to respond to you if you chose to respond to me. I just wanted to point out that there are two very viable and rational proofs for the necessity of an external creator.

 

[goout]

…
We could also address the fact that nothing is capable of creating itself. Given that basic fact, we can surmise that existence could not have created itself, and therefore requires an external creator. In order to avoid the irrational “necessity” of an infinite regression of creators, creating each lower creator, it is necessary that there be a First and Primary creator which exists out of necessity, or, who’s nature is existence itself.

Addressed pretty succinctly by scripture:
“I Am Who Am”
and approachable by the employment of reason, as you did above.

 

[Vera_Ljuba]

A: There is existence
B: Existence is not, in and of itself, necessary.

Hold it right there. “Existence” is just a concept. In a possible world without any sapient beings the concept would not exist. In other words: “Existence as an ontological entity does not exist. Existence as a concept exists if there are sapient entities who are able to conceptualize it.”

From A and B:
C: If Existence is not necessary, and yet is, there must be a necessary cause external to existence to explain it.

The explanation is simple. The reality simply “IS”. It is impossible that reality would not exist, since that would make the proposition “Nothing exists” true. And if “nothing” existed, it would be "something. This is not a semantic game. “Nothing”, just like “existence” is an abstract concept. It does not and cannot exist as an “ontological entity”. Therefore the universe MUST exist - and no outside creator is needed.

We know A because we are experiencing it.
We know B because we know that existence had a beginning, and so there was a point in which it did not exist.

Nope. The “null-world” is just a logical abstraction, it cannot exist as an ontological entity. Time is a physical property of the STEM, it does not exist apart from the physical reality. So it is nonsensical to speak of a “beginning”. There are some nincompoops who assert that the Big Bang is the “beginning” of the universe. They are wrong. All they can say that the Big Bang was the beginning of THIS FORM of the universe.

As such, C flows LOGICALLY from A and B.

It does not.

We could also address the fact that nothing is capable of creating itself. Given that basic fact, we can surmise that existence could not have created itself, and therefore requires an external creator. In order to avoid the irrational “necessity” of an infinite regression of creators, creating each lower creator, it is necessary that there be a First and Primary creator which exists out of necessity, or, who’s nature is existence itself.

---

Both of these are solid proofs which address your requirement for a logical proof for the necessity of God to facilitate our existence.

Funny that these “solid” proofs are not convincing for those who do not a-priori stipulate God’s existence.

 

[ProdglArchitect]

Hold it right there. “Existence” is just a concept. In a possible world without any sapient beings the concept would not exist. In other words: “Existence as an ontological entity does not exist. Existence as a concept exists if there are sapient entities who are able to conceptualize it.”

This isn’t even remotely rational. Existence is. The word may be the conception of the people contemplating the reality, but if there is something, existence is real, regardless of whether or not someone can contemplate it. If you can’t even acknowledge this basic fact then there’s absolutely no point in trying to argue with you at all, as you are operating from a purely irrational basis.

The explanation is simple. The reality simply “IS”. It is impossible that reality would not exist, since that would make the proposition “Nothing exists” true. And if “nothing” existed, it would be "something. This is not a semantic game. “Nothing”, just like “existence” is an abstract concept. It does not and cannot exist as an “ontological entity”. Therefore the universe MUST exist - and no outside creator is needed.

Nothing is not something, nothing is nothing. It is the absence of something. If there is nothing, then there cannot be something… The absence of something is not itself something, that is irrational.

Nope. The “null-world” is just a logical abstraction, it cannot exist as an ontological entity. Time is a physical property of the STEM, it does not exist apart from the physical reality. So it is nonsensical to speak of a “beginning”. There are some nincompoops who assert that the Big Bang is the “beginning” of the universe. They are wrong. All they can say that the Big Bang was the beginning of THIS FORM of the universe.

I agree that there is no conception of “time” prior to the universe, but that does not change the fact that the universe has a demonstrable point at which all the chain of cause and effect started. Your argument of a different form of the universe is meaningless, and only pushes the question up a level. I address that quite clearly in my post.

Funny that these “solid” proofs are not convincing for those who do not a-priori stipulate God’s existence.

Funny, how these solid proofs were developed without any sort of starting point in God, and are based purely on observations of the physical universe; specifically because the philosophers who developed them explicitly wanted to start at a null position.

But of course, someone with an a-priori stipulation that God does not exist would never be able to recognize that fact, as it would require them to acknowledge that God does in fact exist.

Gorgias is right, it’s useless debating with you. Have fun with your self-inflicted ignorance.