21st-century Christian Philosopher

Lamar got back to me, and he raises a good point at first:

[T]his is a truism. There might always be something I don’t know. The clencher is that you have not solved the problem of evil until you give us that reason.

My problem is with the formation. There are two general theories of “truth”. One is the Verification Theory, the other is the Correspondence Theory. What in this formulation is “verifiable”? What is corresponds to anything?

Now it does have a shot at *correspondence. But, if there are things that correspond to these properties, then whatever has them, is close enough to “God” that I suspect that the atheists already don’t believe in it. That’s not a matter, though: correspondence is true regardless of verification; verification just helps us understand it.

The problem comes that this can often be used in a verificationistic manner.

Sure, whatever it is, is not exactly the theists’ God. But as atheist are often at odds with a Creator God as “unnecessary”, in practice, they don’t expose themselves as much more yielding to any deistic ideas either.

Now, the Unmoved Mover (UM) at least had Aristotle fooled into thinking he was standing on bedrock. Because, a God of power has the capability to make whatever seems improbable to us manifest. A universal observer would be even less evident and as result, less necessary. The Divine Couch Potato (DCP) may exist, but it hardly seems more reasonable from the argument of atheists.

At least the UM would manifest itself in the cosmos, or even provide the basis of “Being”. The DCP doesn’t even do that. Now truly, “Creation” is in the realm of the Omnipotent Being. Being the “Necessary Being” also makes sense from that role.

But the more we talk about the guy that can “do everything” the more we get closer to a guy that atheists don’t think is any more reasonable to consider. If such a being does not exist, it is doubtful that there is anything that corresponds to “omnipotence” to observe.

What is “doing everything”? Well, here again, I’m going to throw a little more knowledge and speculation at it: To some degree, we increase our power with the elimination of prior barriers. Rayguns and faster-than-light drives are about as far as I can follow it out around the bend of my world (perhaps Dyson spheres). All “solve problems” all reduce barriers. Further out, we have that conjecture from Arthur C. Clarke that any technology sufficiently advanced will appear as magic. So now, we’re talking “magic” in a phenomenal sense.

But if it appears to us, only a projection that says “it’s technology”. It’s only a belief that only technology can be the proper answer despite knowing of the correct construction that makes it “just technology”. Until we can understand it, it’s hard to “verify”. It would have to just “correspond” until we knew better, if possible.

Quantum-tachyonic, seemingly-magic, egg timers don’t immediately spring to mind as that bit of “sufficiently advanced technology”. No, it makes sense to say that it would do more–i.e. things that cannot be done with spring tension or gravity and friction. So I think I’m consistent.

Now we’re in the territory of titans. Extra-dimensional beings with power to create worlds. You can almost see the Marvel Comic red and purple cosmic fizzing power-streams bristling across the field of stars, if you’re so inclined. Power to retriangulate the variance and modulate the polarity of the very fabric of SPACE! (Or perhaps you could see William Blake’s illustration of his “Four Zoas”.)

From our standpoint, it’s hard to say what stumbling blocks can be cleared away. We might accept that some seeming bedrock of our world is actually contingent in the unseen picture. As such it can be mitigated by sufficient power, unbeknownst to us. From our inkling, it might seem impossible. Thus God can do some of the “impossible”. We might scratch our heads and say, we can’t imagine how a seeming bedrock can be negotiated. But then again, it doesn’t necessarily follow that all frames of knowledge can be intuited from lesser frames.

Given that idea, it might be a hollow academic idea of eliminating the barrier of having any barriers in the first place. What about the barrier between knowing and power? Well then omnipotence and omniscience are the same thing.

But in this Marvel-ous cosmos, any linear projection is doubtful. Let’s look at the phenomal idea of trajectory, an analogy that we’ve been leveraging for a while now. Fire a bullet in space, and the idea is that it continues in a straight line forever. The trajectory won’t change the bullet has mass and inertia. But what happens to the bullet when it passes by the asteroid of these godz? Could they curve space? If it’s possible, yes. Can they anul inertia? Why not! These are godz.

Switching to categorical terms, the matrix gives shape to the trajectory. And to some extent if the matrix can be greatly altered in ways we do not understand, the trajectory is unpredictable. Which is why Clarke’s principle has an absurdist corollary: any sufficiently dependable magic would be “technology”. It means about the same thing.

Next up is “all-loving”.