Permanent omnipotence?

[SpecUVdust]

And surely our considerably bigger brain size would have had something to do with that. I doubt that that's just neutral genes. It could have just been a coincidence but it would have to be a pretty big one. It seems much more likely to me that natural selection favored a bigger brain in our case.

Most, if not all philosophers, would argue that there are no coincidences. I would agree that natural selection "selects" precisely what "it" needs.

[Edwardo Piet]

Yes, but I guess despite it still technically being delusional because it's not the "actual" truth, it would still be a rational model of reality in that it is functional.

So it seems to me that intelligence and logic and rationality could be useful for a rationally functional model of reality... but it need not be the "actual" truth. But besides mathematics and tautology.... what is the actual truth? True observations are different depending on the observer. Evidence is valid for logically inductive reasons but it is experienced differently by different people. Just as no two people may see the same colour in exactly the same way.

[The Grand Nudger]

@ UV

There were two species of single celled organisms perched under a rocky outcropping. When the rocky outcropping fell, it fell on one population and not the other, unfortunately burying and suffocating it. Subsequently the other species is all that remains represented by life. It would seem that natural selection selected for the species that did not get hit by a falling rock..in this hypothetical.

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roughly 2935000000 years later a rock fell on two populations of organisms, only this time it was the ones hiding under other rocks that survived

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[Edwardo Piet]

Not only do neutral genes survive, even negative ones can... it is just harder for them to. They just have to be good enough - or lucky enough - to replicate.

Natural selection is about the process of elimination. Usually the fittest survives but ultimately it's simply: Whatever survives, survives. For whatever reason.

[The Grand Nudger]

Just as no two people may see the same colour in exactly the same way.

One of my favorite examples of this btw. It's true, you and I may see different blue, but whichever blue we see it will be objectively represented on the spectrum and identified by wavelength -even though our biological equipment is faulty in this regard-. So, to "see blue" is useful, but to have a factually accurate idea of what constitutes any given shade of blue is, apparently, not - at least for us. So to know that something is there may be favored, but knowing the specifics, the "truth of the matter", doesn't seem to get much of a nod eh (lets not ignore that our optics are woefully inadequate for this one..of course)? Nevertheless we were able to figure out the whole wavelength bit...and that happened long after anatomical modernity. So our ability to determine what a wavelength is was not something we could have been selected for...though what we -were- selected for does seem to have left us in a position to determine what a wavelength is.

[Edwardo Piet]

Yes, evolutionary-wise our interpretation of reality is more important than actual reality it seems.

But then, actual reality? What makes objective reality more real than subjective reality? The imagination still exists in the sense that we have it. We have an imagination.

I'd prefer to just say that objectivity is a different ball game to subjectivity. Both are part of reality. Our subjectivity is attached to the objective world. Our imagination is not separate from the universe... it really is in our brain. It has to be somewhere at least.

Another example of a confusion between what's real and not real is the concept of 'real magic'. Apparently real magic is the kind of magic where you can actually do magic spells and such and such, rather than simply tricks. But that's the kind of magic that's not real because it can't actually be done. The kind of magic that can actually be done, magic tricks, is apparently not real magic.

[The Grand Nudger]

Similarly, what is logically possible for an omnipotent being isn't "real magic"..because "real magic" would be shit like resurrection and intervention. Leaving our omnipotent whats-it a decidedly impotent peddler of tricks.

[Edwardo Piet]

Although resurrection and intervention are logically possible.

[The Grand Nudger]

Well, you could definitely "help the other side out" if you could make -that- argument stick.

[Cinjin]

RE OP:

Maybe god died.
Maybe he died a very long time ago. That seems far more likely than a god who just slowly lost his powers. (Not that I'm endorsing either idea)





I must admit though, I do like the idea of a god dying.
It seems that any being would want to die after living hundreds of millions of years. Something that the Christians might want to consider before they so eagerly sign up for an eternity praising a carpenter turned self-proclaimed messiah.

A trillion years is a long time in heaven ... especially when you realize that that duration could be considered only the first second of eternity.