RE: Omniscience Argument Revisited
December 7, 2013 at 2:19 pm
(This post was last modified: December 7, 2013 at 2:24 pm by Whateverist.)
I'm liking the presentation of the argument better in this thread. More relaxed, less urgent.
Still I start from the position that the idea of "omniscience" makes more sense as an attribute of a comic book character than it does anything of which we're aware. Look how hard it is to even agree on terms. What little basis you find for dismissing the absurd notion just makes the other side certain that you don't have got a sufficiently robust conception of omniscience. Can either of you be sure you have the correct conception of omniscience? Of course not. There is no template to check it against.
That is why, expositionally, a comic book character would make so much more sense. It would give you the opportunity to explore various ways of looking at it and the possible conflicts which ensue. Separate issues of the comic book could start with different assumptions without the reader worrying about the disparity .. at least once they caught on to your purpose.
But seriously, why would anyone think anyone or anything is or could be omniscient. That falls entirely out of our experience. It is more like Superman for the mind. For both Omniscient Man and Superman, we have to suspend what we know about physics and the real world to make room for the character. But, if not for the entertainment value, why do it?
My own theory, as everyone must by now be tired of hearing, is that the god Christians learn to pray to is but a splinter of their own consciousness albeit one imbued with the awareness of the unconscious mind. So this god that is preyed to surely does know your business to a scary degree .. but of course that's because you aren't distinct from it, you overlap. But if anyone thinks it is possible to pray to this god and learn as yet unknown facts about the physical world or its origins, they are sadly mistaken. The 'god' within had no creative function where the universe is concerned. Although one is free to speculate about the possibility of deistic intentions, I'll leave that to others.
Still I start from the position that the idea of "omniscience" makes more sense as an attribute of a comic book character than it does anything of which we're aware. Look how hard it is to even agree on terms. What little basis you find for dismissing the absurd notion just makes the other side certain that you don't have got a sufficiently robust conception of omniscience. Can either of you be sure you have the correct conception of omniscience? Of course not. There is no template to check it against.
That is why, expositionally, a comic book character would make so much more sense. It would give you the opportunity to explore various ways of looking at it and the possible conflicts which ensue. Separate issues of the comic book could start with different assumptions without the reader worrying about the disparity .. at least once they caught on to your purpose.
But seriously, why would anyone think anyone or anything is or could be omniscient. That falls entirely out of our experience. It is more like Superman for the mind. For both Omniscient Man and Superman, we have to suspend what we know about physics and the real world to make room for the character. But, if not for the entertainment value, why do it?
My own theory, as everyone must by now be tired of hearing, is that the god Christians learn to pray to is but a splinter of their own consciousness albeit one imbued with the awareness of the unconscious mind. So this god that is preyed to surely does know your business to a scary degree .. but of course that's because you aren't distinct from it, you overlap. But if anyone thinks it is possible to pray to this god and learn as yet unknown facts about the physical world or its origins, they are sadly mistaken. The 'god' within had no creative function where the universe is concerned. Although one is free to speculate about the possibility of deistic intentions, I'll leave that to others.
