tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-577854004423770643.post7947422037697374815..comments2024-02-05T03:41:39.101-05:00Comments on Agenty Duck: Rationalism Precludes TheismBriennehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17354968365123237971noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-577854004423770643.post-12761196610124605372013-05-06T15:59:27.757-04:002013-05-06T15:59:27.757-04:00Suppose you ask God to perform a random ten action...Suppose you ask God to perform a random ten actions - like "move the stars in the sky", "flip Britain along the north-south axis", and "factor a 100 digit prime number" - and He does.<br /><br />After a certain number of these, it's <i>more</i> plausible that God has complete power (omnipotence) than that by coincidence you just happen to have chosen the few areas He has power over.<br /><br />So the argument that "since we can only put God through a finite number of tests, we can never prove He's omnipotent" is true on the "proof" level but fails on the probabilistic level.<br /><br />The same might be true even if we grant God can affect your subjective experience. Any being that, for example, can teleport you to China and then simulate your life in China for a year in high-fidelity, show you an elegant proof of an unproven mathematical theorem (even if it has to fudge your mental processes to make you believe it) and show you breathtakingly beautiful art beyond what you could have conceived possible has just satisfied three independent tests for being really impressive (if only in mental manipulation). <br /><br />Past a certain level, believing it is all-around impressive is simpler than believing it is impressive in only the ways it has shown you, and so you at least have high probability evidence for God or for something that you should probably call God since no conceivable test could possibly differentiate it from God (including the test of it being able to send you to Hell if you don't call it God).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com