I think you’ve mischaracterized Ian’s argument. He seems to be arguing that because everything in his empirical experience behaves in particular ways and appears incapable of behaving arbitrarily, that this is strong evidence to suggest that no other being could exist which is capable of behaving arbitrarily.
I think the real weakness of this argument is that the characterization of things as behaving in particular ways is way too simplistic. Balls may roll as well as bounce. They can deflate or inflate, or crumple or explode, or any of a thousand other things. As you get more complex than balls, the range of options get wider and wider. For semi-intelligent animals the range is already spectacularly wide, and for sentient creatures, the array of possibility is literally terrifying to behold.
We see this vast range in our experience of things, and the range of behaviors and powers that they have, that it seems doubtful we can circumscribe too closely what some unknown being would be able to do. Now, complete omnipotence poses huge philosophical and mathematical problems not unlike infinite sets or probabilities of 1. Intuitively I can see that the same arguments rendering probabilities of 1 impossible (or at least impossible to prove) would seem to work equally well against total ominipotence.
But what if omnipotence, like the normal use of “certainty”, doesn’t have to mean the absolute ability to do anything at all, but merely so much power and range of use of power that it can do anything we could practically conceive for it to do. This is probably the sense in which early writers mean to claim that God is all-powerful, but the lack of precision in language tripped them up.
I suggest we don’t have any strong evidence to suggest that such a being could never exist. In fact, anyone who doesn’t consider interest in a potential singularity a complete load of horse manure must agree with me that it’s entirely possible that some of us will either become create such beings.
In my mind, either this is no argument against religions with omnipotent gods or it’s a damning argument against the singularity. Which is it?
I think you’ve mischaracterized Ian’s argument. He seems to be arguing that because everything in his empirical experience behaves in particular ways and appears incapable of behaving arbitrarily, that this is strong evidence to suggest that no other being could exist which is capable of behaving arbitrarily.
I think the real weakness of this argument is that the characterization of things as behaving in particular ways is way too simplistic. Balls may roll as well as bounce. They can deflate or inflate, or crumple or explode, or any of a thousand other things. As you get more complex than balls, the range of options get wider and wider. For semi-intelligent animals the range is already spectacularly wide, and for sentient creatures, the array of possibility is literally terrifying to behold.
We see this vast range in our experience of things, and the range of behaviors and powers that they have, that it seems doubtful we can circumscribe too closely what some unknown being would be able to do. Now, complete omnipotence poses huge philosophical and mathematical problems not unlike infinite sets or probabilities of 1. Intuitively I can see that the same arguments rendering probabilities of 1 impossible (or at least impossible to prove) would seem to work equally well against total ominipotence.
But what if omnipotence, like the normal use of “certainty”, doesn’t have to mean the absolute ability to do anything at all, but merely so much power and range of use of power that it can do anything we could practically conceive for it to do. This is probably the sense in which early writers mean to claim that God is all-powerful, but the lack of precision in language tripped them up.
I suggest we don’t have any strong evidence to suggest that such a being could never exist. In fact, anyone who doesn’t consider interest in a potential singularity a complete load of horse manure must agree with me that it’s entirely possible that some of us will either become create such beings.
In my mind, either this is no argument against religions with omnipotent gods or it’s a damning argument against the singularity. Which is it?