The Christian God is NOT simple.

[Anomalocaris]

What does divine simplicity address? Material origins of the cosmos? A point of first cause? Are we talking about the primordeal soup at the beginning of the cosmos? Do we have to insist on a linear God to put him at the beginning? What about the God that 'just is'? How does timelessness fit together with complexity/ simplicity?

I define WAAAAA to be a thing which has no attributes, and yet is capable of anything. Contains no information, and yet knows all information, I further define WAAAA's ability to do anything to include the ability to transcend all contradiction in his own definition and exist be anything and all things I care to insist on in any argument. His origin lies in "Just is".

What can I not explain with WAAAAAA? Fr0d0?

But to explain anything with so nebulous ly all encompassing an imaginary entity is trivial. Can I predict, even probablistically, anything about what it will do? If not, why bother with it?

[fr0d0]

"Just is" ...sorry, more accurately : "I am" = timeless.

Those are not nebulous but contradictory attributes. God is predictable. He is love and cannot be not love. He will love us and draw us to him. He is just, and cannot be unjust....

[Epimethean]

Sometimes, I swear Fr0d0 is an undercover atheist doing a sort of Al Jolson to religion.

[Anomalocaris]

"Just is" ...sorry, more accurately : "I am" = timeless.

Those are not nebulous but contradictory attributes. God is predictable. He is love and cannot be not love. He will love us and draw us to him. He is just, and cannot be unjust....

Make a specific prediction about what god, or love, which you say is the same thing, will do, explain how that would not be done were it not for his love.

[theVOID]

Actually, a omnipotent being must be able to change that which omniscience had allowed him to unerringly know.

I disagree, they are necessarily the same thing, there are several lines of reasoning for this;

1. For a being to be able to do everything, he must know everything that can be done.

2. Knowing is a thing than can be done, if you can do everything, you must know everything that can be known.

Yes VOID I cringe when using the term 'attribute' as it doesn't fit. I was hoping you'd see past that tho', as that was the term you were using.

I think you're being too simplistic. For example, trying to force the statement 'God is love' to mean 'God is exclusively love' (as does Plato), isn't honestly addressing the problem as presented. Likewise the elimination of a plan. All we have in Genesis is a functional ontology that sets God as arranger and ongoing controller of the cosmos. It would contradict the basis of Christianity to deny the plan.

It was not I who suggested the term, it was present on the link you provided me with. The precise way you formulated your idea, with God = Omnipotence + omniscience + love etc, whether or not you call them 'attributes', still completely defeats the purpose of divine simplicity.

The idea is not that 'God is exclusively love', I never suggested anything remotely like it, the idea is that God does not have omniscience, God is omniscience, he is omnipotence and that implies that omnipotence and omniscience are identical - Up to that point I agree, Omniscience and omnipotence are necessarily the same thing, you simply cannot have one without the other. However, when theists try and amalgamate "love", "justice", "personal" etc to the mix it all falls apart.

And as you should have noticed, even when directly discussing the doctrine of divine simplicity we haven't even come close to addressing information and how it is precisely a measure of complexity, thus your response to my argument, that I have misunderstood divine simplicity, is completely false.

It seems to me that while the word 'simplicity' is in common, the meaning of the word is not. DDS, if it is a legitimate argument at all, simply shows that God = omnipotence = omniscience = love = personal, it attempts to refute the idea that he is 'composite' which does make him more simple than a composite being, but it also means that a "Simple God" with a plan is only more simple relative to a "Composite God" with a plan.

So, for the sake of argument I am willing to completely overlook that the arguments for DDS fall apart after God=Omniscience=Omnipotence and accept that he is identical to his attributes, this still says nothing about information.

What does divine simplicity address? Material origins of the cosmos? A point of first cause? Are we talking about the primordeal soup at the beginning of the cosmos? Do we have to insist on a linear God to put him at the beginning? What about the God that 'just is'? How does timelessness fit together with complexity/ simplicity?

This makes it fairly obvious to me that I'm not the one who doesn't understand the concept....

DDS addresses the claim that God is a composite of independent properties or attributes, that Omniscience, omnipotence, love, personhood, truth and existence are things that combine to create God - their response attempts to show that these things are all one-in-the-same.

I don't see the original information as the actual word of God. That would be Allah and Islam. I see that information as people discerning the nature of God. What can simply defined as positive force disseminates into miriad conclusions and propositions aimed at that simple goal.

'Word of God' is meaningless if you aren't talking about information, words are variable components in a language that represent concepts. If you want to say it's some "abstract non-information words" then you might as well not use the term Word at all, it's mere obfuscation and should be avoided.

A plan is not a positive force, you agreed above that God has a plan. A plan is information describing a goal state of affairs and causal mechanisms for transitioning between states of affairs tending towards this goal state of affairs - this plan requires information to describe and the amount of information used to describe any given state of affairs is a direct representation of the complexity of the state of affairs.

God's plan involved creating a universe, planet earth, water, trees, animals, angels, humans, heaven, hell (plus whatever is specific in an individuals theology, such as the flood, forbidden fruit, satan etc) and then creating a situation where he had to impregnate a virgin to give birth to himself in human form so he could save us from our sins against him, be crucified, resurrected, inspire people to write it all down and then send himself/Jesus back at a later point in time to rapture the world...

What we are interested in knowing is "what was the state of affairs that caused the universe", the state of affairs you propose contained a non-composite god and a plan, this is a much more complex state of affairs than the vast majority of non-theistic state of affairs.

And you've misunderstood my example above, so let me try and clarify - Take a specific part of the bible that you believe is an accurate representation of God; God has an 'idea', he communicated this idea to one of the biblical authors by creating patterns of neural activity in his brain, this person communicated this idea to other people by using written or spoken language - The amount of information needed to describe this idea is a direct measure of it's complexity. If there was no miscommunication between God and Man then whatever we can say about the complexity of the idea is true, independent of any possible medium.

[Anomalocaris]

Actually, a omnipotent being must be able to change that which omniscience had allowed him to unerringly know.

I disagree, they are necessarily the same thing, there are several lines of reasoning for this;

1. For a being to be able to do everything, he must know everything that can be done.

2. Knowing is a thing than can be done, if you can do everything, you must know everything that can be known.

They can not be the something since each implies a capacity to place an constraint on the other when the other by definition must be unconstrained in that respect.

1. For a being to be able to do everything, he must be able to alter what he has already known would happen, thus doing everything must include negating omniscience.

2. Knowing is a thing that can be done, but so is unknowing. If you can do everything, you must be able to also deprive yourself of your own omniscience.

[theVOID]

They can not be the something since each implies a capacity to place an constraint on the other when the other by definition must be unconstrained in that respect.

1. For a being to be able to do everything, he must be able to alter what he has already known would happen, thus doing everything must include negating omniscience.

You might be onto something here, but it's still a bit vague to me, can you expand on this?

2. Knowing is a thing that can be done, but so is unknowing. If you can do everything, you must be able to also deprive yourself of your own omniscience.

This one seems perfectly legit, good point.

[fr0d0]

Omniscience and omnipotence are necessarily the same thing, you simply cannot have one without the other. However, when theists try and amalgamate "love", "justice", "personal" etc to the mix it all falls apart.

I think you're mixing apples with oranges here. Either you're addressing Divine Simplicity or you're including a wider expression of human belief.

And as you should have noticed, even when directly discussing the doctrine of divine simplicity we haven't even come close to addressing information and how it is precisely a measure of complexity, thus your response to my argument, that I have misunderstood divine simplicity, is completely false.

Divine Simplicity isn't a doctrine as far as I'm aware. It's a proposition.
I simply don't think that you're addressing the subject accurately. Your summations don't relate to any known hypothesis, apart from your own. I am powerless to comment on an argument of your own making.

What does divine simplicity address? Material origins of the cosmos? A point of first cause? Are we talking about the primordeal soup at the beginning of the cosmos? Do we have to insist on a linear God to put him at the beginning? What about the God that 'just is'? How does timelessness fit together with complexity/ simplicity?

This makes it fairly obvious to me that I'm not the one who doesn't understand the concept....

I was attempting to widen the scope away from DS.

A plan is not a positive force, you agreed above that God has a plan. A plan is information describing a goal state of affairs and causal mechanisms for transitioning between states of affairs tending towards this goal state of affairs - this plan requires information to describe and the amount of information used to describe any given state of affairs is a direct representation of the complexity of the state of affairs.

If God is 1st cause, then he can't be composed of more than one part. He is the first part. He's dependant on nothing. God is uncaused, so nothing could cause anything to unite.
white = red = yellow = blue = green
~or~
white = all colours together?

What we are interested in knowing is "what was the state of affairs that caused the universe", the state of affairs you propose contained a non-composite god and a plan, this is a much more complex state of affairs than the vast majority of non-theistic state of affairs.

Only in your construction which I think is innacurate.

And you've misunderstood my example above, so let me try and clarify - Take a specific part of the bible that you believe is an accurate representation of God; God has an 'idea', he communicated this idea to one of the biblical authors

Not in my understanding. I may be wrong. But that's how I understand it.

[Anomalocaris]

1. For a being to be able to do everything, he must be able to alter what he has already known would happen, thus doing everything must include negating omniscience.

You might be onto something here, but it's still a bit vague to me, can you expand on this?

For a being to be omniscient, he must unerringly see what will and would not happen. For a being to be omnipotent, he must be able to make happen what could happen but would not otherwise happen. So if omniscience lets him see what could happen but will not happen, then his omnipotence must allow him to make it happen anyway, thus negating his omniscience. So if omnipotence stands, omniscience can not.
The reverse is also true. If omniscience stands, than the being is mechanistic and unable to make anything which otherwise would happen not happen, nor anything which would otherwise happen not happen. His power to influence things on your behalf is zero.

So the concept of a being that is both omniscient and omnipotent is nonsensical and insisted upon by the faithful only to bluff the unthinking.
.

[theVOID]

I think you're mixing apples with oranges here. Either you're addressing Divine Simplicity or you're including a wider expression of human belief.

Now I'm CERTAIN that you don't understand what you claim to believe, but I'd love to see you prove me wrong, so;

In your own words, describe the concept of divine simplicity, in detail.

Divine Simplicity isn't a doctrine as far as I'm aware. It's a proposition.

It's both... All doctrines are propositions, necessarily. Aquinas was the one who devised the term as far as I know, and he referred to it as the 'doctrine of divine simplicity'. Seeing as you specifically raised Aquinas as representing your views you should accept his label, no? In either case it's not important whether or not you want to call it a doctrine.

I simply don't think that you're addressing the subject accurately. Your summations don't relate to any known hypothesis, apart from your own. I am powerless to comment on an argument of your own making.

The majority of my summations were taken directly from resources on the matter, as I demonstrated when I presented you quote after quote showing that what you descibed as DDS was EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what DDS is intended to convey.

Like I asked above, define the concept yourself and I will address that, I'm genuinely not concerned about whether or not your concept is the same as the general idea. Define it yourself and then we can see whether or not your conception of DDS is in any way a refutation of my initial claim, that the nature of information contradicts the notion and if God has a plan he is necessarily not 'simple'.

I was attempting to widen the scope away from DS.

Which is completely off topic. Can you please stick to addressing the argument at hand?

If God is 1st cause, then he can't be composed of more than one part. He is the first part. He's dependant on nothing. God is uncaused, so nothing could cause anything to unite.
white = red = yellow = blue = green
~or~
white = all colours together?

White is a composite by definition, you do not have white without the merger of quantifiable and independent wavelengths - In order to see white you must be looking at a surface that reflects all other colours in roughly equal amounts - Analogy fail, I'm afraid.

By 1st cause I assume you are referring to the first state-of-affairs to exist? To say he 'can't be composed of more than one part' is I believe easily demonstrated to be false - That is the entire purpose of my argument addressing information - You are still back where you were at the beginning of this discussion, Asserting divine simplicity without addressing the refutation presented - You need to show not only that it is logically possible for information to be reduced to a singular but also that this singular is identical to God (to avoid making him composite).

Take one of the ideas in the bible you believe was communicated by God such as John 3:16, 'For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life' , given his omniscience he necessarily had this idea in the first state-of-affairs - If you can demonstrate that this information, which I maintain necessarily has parts, can be reduced to a singular 'entity' and this singular is identical to God then you have refuted my argument.

Not in my understanding. I may be wrong. But that's how I understand it.

So God does not communicate ideas? BRILLIANT you've just destroyed your entire worldview! If God does not communicate ideas then the Bible contains no information coming from God, it is simply a book of what people claimed to know - You must therefore concede that you believe in all this Christian nonsense simply because it is in a book written by people who claimed to know something. It also means that any ideas that Jesus communicated were just words by a man, after all if God didn't communicate any ideas then nothing Jesus said came from God - So you essentially worship a man who claimed to know something, you believe in eternal life because some dude claimed to know something - None of it at all came from a God because he doesn't communicate ideas.

If you accept that God communicates ideas then your God cannot be simple because he has a plan that takes a great deal of information to describe, the amount of information needed to describe an object/entity or state of affairs is a direct representation of it's complexity meaning the chances of the first state-of-affairs being a God is extremely low relative to the alternative hypotheses!

Either way, you're fucked.