Immortality

[Malchik]

A truth can only be truth when there is an alternative otherwise it just is. But judgement of good, evil etc. can only be done by an external observer. In your 'universe' there is no external entity to make that judgement so all words of comparison and evaluation are meaningless. However omnipotent you are SAYING they have a meaning cannot give them meaning. It is a paradox that one cannot use the human language to comprehend or describe the full experience of omnipotence.

 

What a damn good job such a thing doesn't exist! (Although there are a couple of world leaders who seem to think they have it!)

[draighox]

Oh, come on, if you are omnipotent, you can give them any meaning you want, and they'll have that meaning. You can make evil disapear and good stay even without evil. Yes, we can't understand this, but if you're omnipotent, you can do it.

[Malchik]

You miss my point. Of course you can call something good but it cannot be good as defined externally. You can make it compulsory that mothers strangle every second child at birth and call it good. In your world it is good because you are omnipotent and made it so. Omnipotence means you can do what you like. It does not remove the corollary that words become meaningless without anything to compare them with.

 

You seem to want to have your cake and eat it. You would like to see the word 'good' taken to mean what is by and large considered good in our current society where choice and therefore comparison is allowed and imagine that it keeps that meaning in a society where you are omnipotent.

 

It can't happen. Use logic rather than emotion and you'll see what I'm getting at.

[draighox]

Omnipotence means you can do what you like. It does not remove the corollary that words become meaningless without anything to compare them with.

This is the point we disagree on. I believe, if you are omnipotent, you can remove that corollary.

[Malchik]

No. You can only say it. Comparative words can have no meaning without anything to compare them with. You are welcome to disagree but it won't make you right.

[draighox]

Well, you can't be omnipotent then, because to be omnipotent, you must be able to do anything, even make comparative words function normally without anything to compare them with.

[Malchik]

Omnipotence can be brought about in two ways. First you create your own world and everything in it. Alternatively you are so respected by a group pf people that they will believe and do everything you say.

 

Take the second case first. You are walking around the hill of crosses in Siauliai, surrounded by tatty rosaries, broken crosses and the decaying wooden construction where the late Pope once stood. You see a small hole and after digging for a week you discover an unknown race of troglodytes.

 

Strangely they take you to be their god Oogle-Boogle-Woogle.

 

They see you are carrying a water bottle and ask what it is. You tell them it is a Vilnius and it's capital. So it is a Vilnius. You tell them it is good and they agree it is good. They may then ask what good means. Any attempt to define it must lead the concept 'bad' which you cannot allow. So you say, you don't need to know what it means just accept that it is. They do. However it has no meaning.

 

You see a very beautiful girl and they offer her to you. This is good. So they offer you a very beautiful boy. Now what do you say? If you cannot allow the concept of bad, evil, wrong etc. to enter your world then that has to be good too.

 

Indeed anything they do has to be good. Hence the word means everything and therefore nothing.

 

Alternatively in case 1 you set up your world where people only do that which is good. But they can only do what you allow. You tell them that everything they do is good and instill in them an understanding that this makes them happy (not that happy means anything either because you have no unhappiness) still in your world you have created a word good and given it a meaning. But it actually has no meaning to the people you have created, even though you have made them believe it does. It will appear to have a meaning to you.

 

Now I am omnipotent and I decide that all eighteen year old Lithuanians with strange views on communist ideology have to be hung upside down by their toes and drained of blood. In my world this is good and everybody agrees because anything I say or do is good. And since I can say and do everything then everything is good and good has no meaning.

 

The only way I can make it have a meaning is to create 'evil' in the same way as the Christian god had to.

[draighox]

A very nice story, really :) , but you miss one point. You use human logic here. Sure, it is impossible to define good without defining evil, I completely agree, but only using human logic. An omnipotent being must be able to do it, because it is in his definition: omnipotent being - a being, who can do anything, even if it seems impossible with human logic.

 

First, we have to agree, what an omnipotent being is. Do you agree with my definition?

[Malchik]

I thought I had already posted that the human mind cannot properly conceive of or describe omnipotence. Omnipotence may have its own logical paradigm but isn't it more likely it has no logical paradigm at all. Is logic essential to creation?

 

The point is that in order to debate the issue we have to do so 'externally' in the form 'if I become omnipotent then I will...'. Therefore we are discussing it using our limited human understanding and imagination.

 

Good as roughly understood by most people means nothing without the possibility of 'not good'. In a world where everything is good (in human terms) the word has no meaning. If everything in your world was yellow, yellow would have no meaning either.

 

You could design a world populated by mobile books with no human beings and have a discussion of the meaning of 'good' in that environment.

 

Your world can be as you want using whatever system of logic you wish. Even so, the term good cannot be transferred to your world with the same meaning it has to us because the concept of 'not good' does not exist.

[draighox]

So you agree on the definition "An omnipotent being - a being, who can do anything, even if it seems impossible with human logic."? If so, this statement doesn't make sense:

Your world can be as you want using whatever system of logic you wish. Even so, the term good cannot be transferred to your world with the same meaning it has to us because the concept of 'not good' does not exist.

Because transferring the term "good" with the same meaning into the world with no evil falls into "anything".