So “omnipotence” is not absolute? There are certain laws of Nature or of Logic that even God is subject to? Or did God make Nature and Logic as well? (In which case the programmer analogy kind of breaks down and I still don’t understand what “omnipotent” could mean.)
Nature component doesn’t really break the analogy and there are ways for which in can be made sense for part of the logic. If my program handles data a certain way as a programmer I would be free to alter that. I could for example go from using sets to using fuzzy sets. As I don’t want to position myself as a crux party I will refrain from wanting what omnipotence should mean in this conversation.
By “laws of nature that even God is subject to”, I mean whatever laws of physics apply to the Programmer’s world, even if they are different from ours. But notice that these are not entirely independent, as the Programmer’s computer is built on the Programmer’s physics, and the apparent universe is running on that computer. Even the Programmer is limited by his computer system. You are not totally free to handle data in any way you like. There are hardware constraints. Time in our universe would also take up time in the Programmer’s universe, for example. The number of available bits in the Programmer’s universe would be an upper bound on the number of available bits in ours.
It could be entirely consistent that the programmer made nature_1 within the constraints of nature_2 and “laws of nature” referring to nature_2 laws is unstandard and surprising. it would be an assumption that nature_2 has time. Sure there are hardware constraints but their exact shape is hard to argue (I could come up with examples how simulated time takes simulator space and not time).
So “omnipotence” is not absolute? There are certain laws of Nature or of Logic that even God is subject to? Or did God make Nature and Logic as well? (In which case the programmer analogy kind of breaks down and I still don’t understand what “omnipotent” could mean.)
Nature component doesn’t really break the analogy and there are ways for which in can be made sense for part of the logic. If my program handles data a certain way as a programmer I would be free to alter that. I could for example go from using sets to using fuzzy sets. As I don’t want to position myself as a crux party I will refrain from wanting what omnipotence should mean in this conversation.
By “laws of nature that even God is subject to”, I mean whatever laws of physics apply to the Programmer’s world, even if they are different from ours. But notice that these are not entirely independent, as the Programmer’s computer is built on the Programmer’s physics, and the apparent universe is running on that computer. Even the Programmer is limited by his computer system. You are not totally free to handle data in any way you like. There are hardware constraints. Time in our universe would also take up time in the Programmer’s universe, for example. The number of available bits in the Programmer’s universe would be an upper bound on the number of available bits in ours.
It could be entirely consistent that the programmer made nature_1 within the constraints of nature_2 and “laws of nature” referring to nature_2 laws is unstandard and surprising. it would be an assumption that nature_2 has time. Sure there are hardware constraints but their exact shape is hard to argue (I could come up with examples how simulated time takes simulator space and not time).