If we assume that consciousness is the brain modeling itself, then something omniscient would not be conscious. Also, to be scient, that involves calculation. And it takes more than an atom to calculate an atom. I know there have been great advances in computing, but this is a limit that cannot be breached except for quantumness, which is a lot like saying “except for magik”. Therefore, to calculate the universe, god would have to be bigger than the universe, and exist outside of the universe IF it was composed of particles in the same way our universe is composed of particles.
I am not saying our universe is composed of particles, I don’t know what the “true atom” is, or even if space and time are infinitely divisible, or what “space” and “time” are…
But if god exists outside the universe but is composed of the same stuff as we see in the universe, then god cannot be omniscient. It could be able to direct-process the universe, but god could not direct-process itself, thus god cannot be omniscient.
Take any material, wave, string, space, time, or whatever weirdness out there exists itself in whatever it exists in. Maybe it doesn’t take up any space or any time, is just disembodied “information”, whatever. Whatever can be thought of or can be. That “stuff” cannot calculate itself UNLESS you equate calculate with being. That is a rock calculates itself by being itself. And the universe calculates itself by being itself, and so the universe is god! This is obviously silly. So when dealing with “stuff”, the concept of “calculation” is revealed as notional. Lets look at some definitions of calculate:
“To ascertain by computation; reckon: calculating the area of a circle; calculated their probable time of arrival.”
“To make an estimate of; evaluate: calculating the team’s chances of winning.”
“To make for a deliberate purpose; design: a sturdy car that is calculated to last for years; a choice that was calculated to please.”
“To perform a mathematical process; figure: We must measure and calculate to determine how much paint will be needed.”
“To predict consequences.”
Stuff cannot predict its own consequences with apodictic certainty as omniscience implies. If an immaterial hypercube behaves in a manner that can be modeled, that’s not calculation by any of these definitions. Other “stuff” would have to be arranged in a way that they can predict all of the non-material “stuff” that makes up the hypercube with apodictic certainty. The definition of “calculate” implies the usage of more “stuff” than is being calculated, be it material or not. And if being something counts as calculation of that thing, then the universe is omniscient, which is just bastardizing the meaning of calculate to form a tautology.
Because of this calculation problem, I am a hard atheist.I’m not so sure. First of all, I would never make the assumption that “consciousness” is the brain modelling itself. So starting from a sketchy premise, it’s hard to accept the rest, which I also have some problems with.
This thesis makes all the classic mistakes of trying to re-create God within the confines of our own very limited view of reality. I’m not sure you could hold a “god” to the standards of our reality (i.e. if he [or ‘she’ - or ‘it’] is omnipotent can he make a stone so big, etc.). No thoughtful Christian takes these arguments seriously.
That said, I believe nothing that I don’t experience for myself. I would call myself a skeptical agnostic (though I’m much closer to being an atheist than I am to being a believer). I would never accept anything on “faith”. That in itself is the beginning of a con. And I can’t help but feeling (though I’m reserving final judgement) that religion in all of its forms is just one massive con.
However. At the end of the day, if we’re honest, we have to admit that what we don’t know absolutely dwarfs that which we know.
I think you do a very good job of elucidating paradox and the limits of science, but as for God, it doesn’t convince me even in the slightest.
I presented this argument to my friend Neal, who is much better at articulating these things than I am, here’s his input:
Neal Jansons Hmm…interesting argument. It reminds me of Burroughs talking about God…that it would be a fundamentally thermodynamic entity, which nothing could oppose and nothing could be contrasted with, hence it’s a contradictory notion. This is the same concept, but applied to self-awareness concept.
My esteemed colleague, Jeff, points out the questionable premise that consciousness is the process of the brain modeling itself. With this I agree…neither philosophy of mind nor neuroscience has even clearly defined consciousness, much less conclusively found anything to be true or false about the issue. The current love of neuroscientific explanations of every aspect of mind and behavior has superseded the cultural/anthropological fad. “True Believers” exist in any such paradigm, and the Churchlands (Sorry, Paul and Patricia) are among them.
I wish to add to this the questionable premise of property-definitional metaphysics. It is by no means clearly argued in metaphysics or ontology that particulars are clusters of properties…just because cluster-theory/trope-theor y is both intuitively pleasing and functions well with set theory does not privilege it. (I say this with full knowledge that I am apparently contradicting my own positions, but wish to again explain that, despite my own writings in the past, I am not a trope-theorist. I wrote a detailed theory of tropes that solved the set-theoretical problems (swapping, piling, etc) which plague trope theory, and attempted to resolve the ontological conundrums with an appeal to epistemological pragmatism—this was not a statement of my own metaphysical positions on objects, properties, and relations, this was an attempt to apply my specialized knowledge of set theory to a problem encountered in general philosophy.)
Thus, to say that God (because this is obviously a monotheistic god) is essentially defined as a list of properties, and that these properties exhaustively explain themselves via relations such as we understand them (such as knowledge, form, structure, etc) is unfounded. We do not even know if we, or indeed a block of wood, exist as an essence defined via properties, how can we say God does?
A second problem: a definition of omniscience that would both include a theory of knowledge and include a direct experience of knowledge. Let us say that God exists, and let us say that He possesses all knowledge. How does he gain this knowledge? In the same way we do? But this cannot be the case…we arrive at knowledge through deliberation, observation, and reason. God would not have to deliberate to come to knowledge, because any God worth the name doesn’t have the epistemological limitations we do…He does not have to consider, He knows. He does not (and in a sense, cannot) observe, because He is omniscient…He already knows, and time/space is meaningless to Him, thus since observations both happen at a place and time and can vary in truth values based on incidents, the notion of observation is also meaningless. Finally, we reason because we do not know…we compare things, make connections, and abstract patterns — none of this would be necessary for God.
Since everything about our epistemology is essentially based on our limitations, and we can’t (since we are limited) conceive of a feasible epistemology without limits, we can’t conceive of an epistemological position about the knowledge of God. Since we can’t do that, to attempt any sort of approach to what it would mean to be omniscient is meaningless.Thus, to say that God (because this is obviously a monotheistic god) is essentially defined as a list of properties, and that these properties exhaustively explain themselves via relations such as we understand them (such as knowledge, form, structure, etc) is unfounded. We do not even know if we, or indeed a block of wood, exist as an essence defined via properties, how can we say God does?