Is Faith impossible? - or - Can God do the impossible?

it is tF, basically, a fairly compelling arguement for 1.)

yet another demonstration that deities have no place in logical thought!

[you might find support for your thesis in Bertrand Russell; i seem to remember something similar, but am far to lazy to look it up. But if you are not familiar with his philosophical writings, you would do well to wade right on in!]

I have read Russell's Histroy of Western Philosophy and 'Why I am an Athiest". I will look deeper that direction though.

Anyone else?

Re: Is Faith impossible? - or - Can God do the impossible?

Why?


Depends on what you mean by "possible."


Depends on what you mean by "truth."


Well, I believe that Leibniz, who thought about these things more deeply then I ever have, held that God could not violate the law of non-contradiction, just as God could not violate other fundamental laws of logic, mathematics, and geometry.


How do you know that?


I'm not sure if these are the only possible outcomes.


That's certainly one view of faith -- but I'm not convinced that this is a logical result of your position.

logic and God is not fully revealed to us and a lot more

Joe,

Possible was defined as logically possible. What some people term 'impossible' is actually 'highly improbable'. I mean concepts such as 'being infinite and never being' or
being all good and all evil".

Truth has many definitions but the Aristotelean version of correspondence is fine. To say that which is and it is - is true.

Your Liebnitz reference is exactly what I am talking about.

Husker,

This is exactly the type of comment my argument seeks to refute. Logic, is the tool set (if you will) that allows us to see simple truths. Greater truths have been revealed to us over time - but the tool of logic has not changed. If Logic has not been fully 'revealed' to us - then our tool to get to the truth is incomplete. There woudl be large gaps in our ability to get to the truth (at best) and at worst we would not be capable at all at getting to any truth.

Again, I am not talking about what is possible for us to do - becoming infinite is simply not something in our power - I am talking about logically possible. God having the ability to do the impossible not only leads to the possibility that we do not have proper rationality - but leads to odd conundrums - like the power for God to be an infinite God - who never was. Or an all loving God who is also all evil. If this were the case God could make it so when I sinned - I actually did good and secured my passage to the afterlife. He could make it so I was punished justly for my sins and never being punished for them - and a million other impossible things he could do.

TTF

In maths there is an elegant field that studies n dimensional fields, generated by n distinct n dimensional vectors.

If you have another m space defined by m vectors and m > n, you can always determine the best mapping function for m onto n and vice versa (the maths isn't too hard).

So I can map a specific 3 dimensional space onto a specific 2 dimensional one, or a specific 30 dimensional space onto say a specific 10 dimensional space - call it our Universe.

Now information is lost going from 30 dimensions down to 10, and information (or vagueness) has to be assumed going from 10 up to 30.

What I getting at is if God exists he might exist in say a 30 dimensional reality containing all possible 10 dimensional membranes in M-Theory, including our 3 dimensional appearing world that theorectical physicsts tell us is actually 10 dimensional with 120 or so specific physical constants defining it.

Well then a part, a small part of God can then map into our 10 dimensional reality, and an imperfect, overbloated image of our 10 dimensional reality maps into God's 30 dimensional existence.

So our relality and truth is a model for our 10 dimensional relaity which we barely understand. To impose its model to the realm of a God is kinda fraught with danger don't you think?

G_day. Wow that is a mind bender - but this is fine within my theory. All I am saying that if does impossible things (as opposed to highly improbable things) we cannot undertand even our ten demensional reality - let alone his 30.

I love your concept though - and plan to use it in my Phil of Rel class.

TF

Your welcome,

Actually I guess my thoughts as a mathematican and amateur physicist give me a more detailed view on God, and his interactions in this domain. It goes like this.

1. God is not of our Universe, he predates it.
2. God possibly exists on multilple membranes and/or can live and travel between at least some membranes
3. God abides by the full laws of a membrane lest he change it which he could
4. God (probably) understands the full laws of a membrane of existence - at least in as much as they can be understood
5. God might not be bound within the flow of time as we are
6. God can be infinte without being all powerful
7. God might be so powerful he has to limit himself careful lest he swamp all creation
8. God acts with purpose and has a plan or end game - and part of it evloves around us for some unfathomable reason we are unbeliveably strategically important to him in his plans

* * *

Let's look at some of them - there's some biggies hidden there.

1. Standard faith stuff - God can create things so I infer a lot of imagination and engineering mindset there. But I see god uses 'godpowers' of uber science - not magic. Across membranes he uses 'uber inter membrane science', within membranes he uses 'uber intra membrane science', the two categories may only slightly overlap.

2. Possible a unique characteristic of God - a multidimensional being.

3. A BIG LAW! Observing an event changes it, so God has to intuit and observe events like us. The Uncertainity principle and relativity effects his observation similarly to ours. Hawkings and Bell showed God can't know the position and velocity of an electron - God is as bound by the Uncertainity principle as we are! Hidden variable (God can do things we can't) doesn't solve this for him (Bell's contribution). Now I see this as a God accepted limit on himself to maintain the intergity of the Universe and its laws he created. For instance God has infinte energy which by e=mc^2 means infinte mass, which means he creates black holes of infinite radius that totally close spacetime and dilate time passing to 0. God stops clocks! All I am saying is the fullness of inter-dimensional God can't even barely enter our reality - not even a trillionth part of him can. So mapping
a function God(godspace) -> supreme_being(Our Universe) really limits alot of his powers to preserve our reality!

4. Probably - there are some things that can't be understood, maths shows this clearly. Any truly complex and powerful system of logic or reality must have holes in it, places you can't go, things you can't do by definition even. God can't make 2 = 1. A finite part of God can manifest in our Universe, but it then must obey relativity and interact with energy and spacetime according to the laws of this existence - else it can't see us and interact. So God's finite projection into our reality can't travel faster than lightspeed. God probably can project as many finite parts of himself into this universe as he needs - trillions if he needs. But these all suffer the same limitations. If they are light years seperated - they can only communicate faster than light speed by sending knowledge out of our reality back to godspace and echo it back in.

5. Other dimensions - other rules, some of the dimensions God inhabits may have two or more dimensional time. If God alone can travel across membranes of existence maybe time, matter and space affect him not at all - he is the ultimate string in string theory then.

6. As per 4. above, God has to infinitely limit himself to do useful and very finite interactions with the finite universes he causes to be. If he cheats - reality unwinds. He promised us free will - means all sorts of good and bad can happen in this world. Its not do it or else get a lightning bolt up your arse - that's not free will - its true free will he's gifted us with.

7. Should be clear by now why.

8. My faith says we are an experiment for him to understand himself and creation better. Perhaps we have the potential to become mini - gods and he is birthing us as we evolve. Perhaps he is lonely and wants to create a super race one day that values compassion and creation too, and can one day handle almost infinite power responsibly?

* * *

There's some of my exotic thoughts, hope this helps!

Re: Is Faith impossible? - or - Can God do the impossible?
Okay, I'm not one to get that complicated so here- thinkfactorysaid "If Faith is believe - it must be belief in the rationally possible."

Well, the definition of "faith" is "firm belief without logical proof". So if it was rationally possible, then you would KNOW, as opposed to having FAITH in it.

Does that make sense?

You know what I don't understand Bogo....that you offend all that believe in something, are you insecure about your unbelief. Can't you accept people for who they are or are you so scared to be alone and firm in your belief or the lack there of, that you must try to make people see the world the way you see it? Cmon man, just relax, remove that pole up your ass and just let people be. Why do we always have to try to impose our ways on other people? It's primitive and not necessary, just let it be man, let it be....

"Why can't we be friends, why can't we be friends, why can't we be friends why can't we be frieeeennnddds?" *in that little catchy tune*

Smartsux:

Just because it is rationally possible - does not mean we 'know' it. I can say it is rationally possible to drop a penny on its edge from 4 feet. God could do this every time - and we would have know way of knowing how he did it.

G_Day:

Hawking and other have admitted (Hawking as late as Universe in a nutshell) that God does not have to be held to the uncertainty principle - as long as he does not use eyes (or anthropomorphic eye like things) to 'see' things. He could know the position and travel path of a particle if he used different devices for his knowledge.

TF

BoGoWo - because my list had redundancy in it!

Place an infinite inside a finite and you'll get squashed! I thought I'd covered it alreay in points 4. 6. and 8. so it was getting heavily repititive.

Remember these are my thoughts - not fact or religious fevour talking - just my musings!

thethinkfactory - In the Universe in a Nutshell, page 107 Hawking still holds God bound by the laws governing the reality of our universe, and alludes to John Bell's famous proof of hidden variable theory some 20 years ago. Note Bell is in my book NOT an exhaustive proof! http://physicsweb.org/article/world/11/12/8

God can only know these things that invalidate uncertainity if 1) there is a deeper law of science already structured into our reality that we are yet to discover and exploit, so if we too knew this law and had the appropriate resources at hand we could do the same or 2) information leaks from our dimension into other/God's dimensions with greater information available to it then to us in this reality (but this is a form of hidden varaible thinking) or 3) there is a mystic or holy unknown acting here that I am totally uncapable of fathoming or thinking about even.

Call mine a thought experiment, rather than a statement "God in our universe must fit into this small bottle I call logic!" rant. I am sayng for my models of reality to be consistent these rules seem to apply and they infer this about God. That's as far as I sanely go and its alot further into process than the church steps, for I am curtailing God's knowledge in my thought experiment, not knowing what I am constraining so trivially.

So I have an infinite God in Godspace, capable of actions and observations in our reality and ponder the mechanisms used and presume they deploy finite resources and means to avoid swamping our reality.

If God alone swims through multiple membranes and interacts with them he is a new force capable of linking membranes meaning our science must account for membrane <-> membrane interactions when we consider quantum physics, string theory and relavitity. This is entirely possible and a HUGE complicating factor. M-theory brings us 10 dimensional realities and now God means a factor causing unknown interactions amongst them - how richer and more colourful and complex our reality just became!

G-Day:

I looked fror your reference in 'Nutshell' and could not find it. I would like to see what your talking about.

Here is what I was referring to:

"We could still imagine that there is a set of laws that determines events completely for some supernatural being, who could observe the present state of the universe without distrubing it. - p. 72 "The Illustrated - A Brief History of Time" 1988

I am not sure if this fits into #1 in your post above - but I think what Hawking is saying here is that God, if he did not need light to see particles, could make accurate predictions about the universe.

Furthermore, I think Hawking is saying that because of the uncertainty principle - Man is having a tough time going further in finding a theory that unites Newtonian Physics and Quantum Physics.

Do you have a quote you can share with me form Universe in a Nutshell - Hawking is rather known for changing his mind and I want to see if he has done it here - since Nutshell was later than History of time.

Thanks for your post - I really think I am about to the end of my mental rope understanding Quantum Physics - but you make it easier!

TTF

That's because I stuffed the reference sorry - now corrected to page 107

"We now realize that the wave function is all that can be well defined. We cannot even suppose that the particle has a position and velocity that are known to God but are hidden from us. Such 'hidden-variable' theories predict results that are not in agreement with observation. Even God is bound by the uncertainity principle and cannot know the position and velocity; He can only know wave the function."

Also http://www.hawking.org.uk/lectures/dice.html

"Einstein was very unhappy about this apparent randomness in nature. His views were summed up in his famous phrase, 'God does not play dice'. He seemed to have felt that the uncertainty was only provisional: but that there was an underlying reality, in which particles would have well defined positions and speeds, and would evolve according to deterministic laws, in the spirit of Laplace. This reality might be known to God, but the quantum nature of light would prevent us seeing it, except through a glass darkly.

Einstein's view was what would now be called, a hidden variable theory. Hidden variable theories might seem to be the most obvious way to incorporate the Uncertainty Principle into physics. They form the basis of the mental picture of the universe, held by many scientists, and almost all philosophers of science. But these hidden variable theories are wrong. The British physicist, John Bell, who died recently, devised an experimental test that would distinguish hidden variable theories. When the experiment was carried out carefully, the results were inconsistent with hidden variables. Thus it seems that even God is bound by the Uncertainty Principle, and can not know both the position, and the speed, of a particle. So God does play dice with the universe. All the evidence points to him being an inveterate gambler, who throws the dice on every possible occasion."

In a discussion of religion, a "belief is simply a guess about the unknown.

"Faith" is the insistance that the guess is correct.



"Faith" in that context makes precious little sense.

But, if the only thing you have is a guess....and insistance that the guess is correct...

...I guess the best thing to do is to put the best face on "faith" that you can.

This "Can God do the impossible?" question is really over done!

If "impossible" means..."it cannot be done"...

...then no god can do the impossible.

If a god can do something...by definition, it is not impossible.

If the question actually is "Can gods do things that are impossible for humans?"...

...then the question becomes simplistic.

To me the more interesting delta has to be where is a God more than an uber scientist with alot of resources at his command.

The realm where humans can't ever go but something else can is the realm of the very interesting.

And Frank many religions have historic past, questionably understood and recorded. So perhaps this gives them a platform of big unknowns, not total unknowns to launch religions off.

In many areas religious scholars and theoretical scientists have alot in common. They both push the frontiers of their domains looking for clues into existence. The scholars research ancient texts and artefacts trying to clue together the past, theoretical physicsts use white boards, computers and super colliders to test hypothesises about our reality and future.

Its a search for truth and meaning. The end of the journey is a long way off, so maybe its the journey, and having an open and analytical mind that's the important factor.

g-day. Thanks, I swear I was going nuts looking for yor quote. Time to re-read 'nutshell'.

Here is the interesting thing that I think about the wave function is that certain types of universes must obtain. If the universe does not have life preserving attributes - it is not one that will obtain - either it will expand to slowly and thus be returned to the singularity by the gravitational force of the singularity - or it will expand too quickly and galaxies would never form - and have so little matter as to be insignificant.

It seems that the only observable universe - a universe with things to observe - are universes like ours.

So how is this dice throwing if the wave function virtually guarantees life.

Frank -

I think what I was trying to distinguish by convoluting the issue - was the issue of impossibility. Some will say that god can do the 'impossible' to us. But they don't mean it in the sense of what is possible to us they mean it in the sense of what is rational to us.

I agree that it is simple - but you have presuposed that our rationality (what is logically possible) is the same kinds that God's is.

TTF