RE: Atheism: The Case Against God - George H. Smith
August 17, 2019 at 2:09 am
(This post was last modified: August 17, 2019 at 2:28 am by GrandizerII.)
Yeah, it's unfortunate he's a big fan of Ayn Rand, and you see a hint of that in the book. It's also disappointing that he doesn't address the ontological arguments (if what I just read in the review is correct, since I haven't finished the whole book yet), but still the book is more respectful of philosophy than any of the books written by Dawkins, Hitchens, Krauss,
From the review:
Yeah, sorry, but this doesn't seem right to me. A human being cannot know (in an infallible sense) whether they will be alive a minute from now or no. You can intuit that you will be alive, but that's not really the same as knowing (in the infallible sense).
From the review:
Quote:The argument proposing to show the incompatibility of omnipotence and omniscience is not obviously valid either. First of all, it is not clear in what sense it is logically possible to change the future. So, if God could not change the future this would hardly be a limitation of His power. But even if it was logically possible in some sense to change the future, it is unclear why this would mean that God could not know the future. Suppose that it is possible to change the future by some action A. Suppose that this means merely that if action A were to be done now, some true proposition P about the future would be false and action A could be done now. Clearly I could know a certain proposition about the future, e.g., that I will be alive one minute from now, and yet it is possible that I could change the future in the above sense by an act of suicide. If this is possible for a mere mortal, it is certainly possible for God.
Yeah, sorry, but this doesn't seem right to me. A human being cannot know (in an infallible sense) whether they will be alive a minute from now or no. You can intuit that you will be alive, but that's not really the same as knowing (in the infallible sense).
