Thought Experiment: Omnipotence and Creation

[YoungMasterGold]

As consciousness reveals its intricacies, we tend to alienate ourselves from Yahuah. Should this be the case? Since we are created in Yahuah's image and it is documented that He has emotional concepts such as love, faith, trust, hate, jealousy, vengeance, can we extrapolate the thought process of God?

Imagine you are an omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient being who wanted to create a world full of beings such as yourself. What would the process be? what rules must exist in order for the world to work? What drawbacks would come into play with creation?

would you want the beings in your world to be like you, to have the ability to love and to love you back? what process would create a being of love, wisdom, intelligence? would your world eventually mimic the world we have? or would it be different?

the rules:
following the biblical directive free will is required for created beings.

free will implies that good and evil must exist....

Well, if I were to be an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent being, the first thing I'd do would be to get rid of the illogical contradictions in the characteristics I supposedly possess. It's logically inconsistent to be all those omnis and be capable of jealousy. Omnipotence and omniscience should preclude the feelings of insecurity that are a necessary conduit to jealousy. More so, hate, love, trust and faith. Of course, you could put forth that old argument that any deity with omnipotence will have the ability to mute their omniscience so they can experience petty emotions, but that's always struck me as an illogical argument.

 

[Chez Lopez]

While we tend to think of Yahuah as a being not at all involved or concerned with the affairs of humanity, our own psychological make up would point towards a different conclusion. The bible, and other religious book/events, points to the Creator as being very involved and emotionally attached to His creations. This makes more sense than a God that is 'too busy to care' or 'too intelligent to waste His time'. There is evidence for the opposite, as if we are His creations, we are His children, so if you were to put yourself in His shoes, would you throw your children away? no.

 

[Chez Lopez]

Well, if I were to be an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent being, the first thing I'd do would be to get rid of the illogical contradictions in the characteristics I supposedly possess. It's logically inconsistent to be all those omnis and be capable of jealousy. Omnipotence and omniscience should preclude the feelings of insecurity that are a necessary conduit to jealousy. More so, hate, love, trust and faith. Of course, you could put forth that old argument that any deity with omnipotence will have the ability to mute their omniscience so they can experience petty emotions, but that's always struck me as an illogical argument.

I think you way be describing a robot god, a non emotional sentient being. Sentience itself indicates a higher grade of thought process than pure logic. equating concepts like jealousy or faith with weakness may be short sighted, for instance what differentiates human logic from machine logic now? and we would agree the human is the more complex being

 

[YoungMasterGold]

There is evidence for the opposite, as if we are His creations, we are His children, so if you were to put yourself in His shoes, would you throw your children away? no.

If you're a Calvinist (to name but one), then, yes.

I think you way be describing a robot god, a non emotional sentient being. Sentience itself indicates a higher grade of thought process than pure logic. equating concepts like jealousy or faith with weakness may be short sighted, for instance what differentiates human logic from machine logic now? and we would agree the human is the more complex being

No, not a robot God, just a coherent one. I wan't equating any of those characteristics with weakness; instead, I'm saying an omni-max being shouldn't need, or, in fact, have those traits. Let's take the easiest of those: jealousy. In order for one to experience jealousy, you'd have to be insecure about losing something or a person to another. However, there would be no room for insecurity about loss if you knew the future absolutely. More so if you had the power to ... well ... do all things. It devalues the ability to know all things before hand.

 

[Chez Lopez]

If you're a Calvinist (to name but one), then, yes.



No, not a robot God, just a coherent one. I wan't equating any of those characteristics with weakness; instead, I'm saying an omni-max being shouldn't need, or, in fact, have those traits. Let's take the easiest of those: jealousy. In order for one to experience jealousy, you'd have to be insecure about losing something or a person to another. However, there would be no room for insecurity about loss if you knew the future absolutely. More so if you had the power to ... well ... do all things. It devalues the ability to know all things before hand.

do you think correlating insecurity with jealousy is appropriate here? they are mutually exclusive, depending on the consciousness in question. the omniscient being would be aware there was no fault in His reasoning, but with the created being, therefore externalizing the jealousy instead of internalizing it. this still would not negate the emotion of loss, even knowing that it is not His fault, but the product of free will. coming from a human perspective, a imperfect individual may assume there was some internal failure that caused the loss, instead of the loss being flawed. Imputing insecurity onto omniscience due to jealousy, for this reason, is a logical fallacy.

equating emotions with pettiness is a concept that must be examined. what is the more complex concept love or logic? we can be sure love is.

 

[YoungMasterGold]

do you think correlating insecurity with jealousy is appropriate here?

Well, they are intricately linked, by logical extension. It is a lack of surety that leads towards a jealous disposition. That is, irrespective of how one chooses to define jealousy.

they are mutually exclusive, depending on the consciousness in question. the omniscient being would be aware there was no fault in His reasoning, but with the created being, therefore externalizing the jealousy instead of internalizing it. this still would not negate the emotion of loss, even knowing that it is not His fault, but the product of free will. coming from a human perspective, a imperfect individual may assume there was some internal failure that caused the loss, instead of the loss being flawed. Imputing insecurity onto omniscience due to jealousy, for this reason, is a logical fallacy.

Not quite. It isn't how the omni-max being chooses to reason away its jealousy that's the contradiction, it's that the omniscient being is caught unawares in such a way by its creation - of whom it should know the details of all its actions before inception - as to result in an emotion built on a lack of foreshadowing. The same applies even if one decides that the jealousy of the omniscient and omnipotent being isn't one of emotional negativity, but of protection of its assets.

Furthermore, emotion of loss? This is a being that supposedly knows everything beforehand. It knows these things before its creations are allegedly built. How do you feel loss about a creation, if you know that the thing you're creating is going to be lost at a specific time?

Finally, I wasn't imputing insecurity into omniscience, etc, I was arguing that jealousy - to use but one emotion - is logically at odds with omniscience. That is, it's a logically incoherent argument to assign emotions like jealousy to an omniscient, omnipotent being.

equating emotions with pettiness is a concept that must be examined. what is the more complex concept love or logic? we can be sure love is.

Why? Why can we be sure love is more complex than logic. I'd argue that love is petty, but not in a negative way. It's in such a way as to be a wonder for those of us humans without omni-powers. The argument can be followed in a different way: if a being is omniscient and omnipotent, would we then expect it to have the capability to hate its creations?

 

[Chez Lopez]

good response!

Well, they are intricately linked, by logical extension. It is a lack of surety that leads towards a jealous disposition. That is, irrespective of how one chooses to define jealousy.

Why? Why can we be sure love is more complex than logic. I'd argue that love is petty, but not in a negative way. It's in such a way as to be a wonder for those of us humans without omni-powers. The argument can be followed in a different way: if a being is omniscient and omnipotent, would we then expect it to have the capability to hate its creations?

I disagree that love is less complex than logic. In fact, we have logical creations already, algorithms that decipher and decide based on propability are essentially logic based already. A sentient being, whose decision making process is purely logical, would essentially be as simple as a computer program. This is not an advanced being, it is a simple one. Conversely a being whose actions are weighed on emotion and judgement, must perform much higher and more complex operations for decision making, as the logical decision, opposed to the humane or moral decision, will be much easier and require less energy.

Proof of this is that humans haven created the 'love machine'. lol

Would an omnipotent being be able to hate His own creations? YES. Hate is also a complex emotion that does not neccissarily center on action, like killing the thing you hate, or punishing the thing you hate. as was stated an omniscient being would be aware of all time at once, thus the reason for hatred would be understood beforehand, but being understood beforehand does not eliminate the emotion. Foreknowledge just implies the ability to react appropriately, aside from how the all powerful consciousness feels abt the situation. If the being created has free will, then the Creator must also. So the ability to hate is present in both, reaction to the hate would be the difference

Jealousy is not necessarily initiated by internal insecurity. It can be, but it is not limited to an internal displeasure or lack of surety. It is completely possible, with free will, for the created being to reject the omnipotent being, with no fault in the omnipotent being at all. Thus the jealousy, stemmed from rejection has nothing to do with the omnipotent being, rather the created beings perception of the omnipotent being. Thus jealousy without insecurity.