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More Philosophy and Religion

Tedd raises the possibility of a non-deterministic universe controlled by non-deterministic god. Obviously this then makes our universe actually deterministic, although appearing otherwise to us. This gives us a picture of a rather busy god making decisions about the positions of electrons to keep us fooled.

The obvious question is whether this Busy Fellow is himself deterministic or not. A deterministic god (locked in a preordained pattern of his own making) still makes us deterministic, but we have a problem if this god is free to make decisions (non-deterministic).

If he has free will, he still can be strongly structuring the events of our universe. He's working from a plan, placing this electron here, and that one there. Again, it looks non-deterministic to us, but it is.

Unfortunately (for our Pretend Pal), it can't work that way. The

Xtian god promises us free will: indeed, the whole explanation for our damnation is tied to this issue. Therefor, his decisions cannot be deterministic.

OK, so he fudges some chance into the works. The only way he can do this, of course, is by being non-deterministic himself. Otherwise, the ultimate results would once again be fixed, which would ruin his whole reward/punishment shtick.

But now he has a bigger problem. He can't know what the results of his fudging will be. The permutations fan out in space and time, and only get worse the more he dabbles. So if he wants to give life a kick start that ends up with us ("special purpose"), he cannot do this with any guarantees at all.

Oh, so what? So he just starts it up and nudges it in the "right" direction every now and then. Nope, for several reasons. This is not a simple system, a car running down a track where a simple push now and then keeps it on the track. No, this is Chaos stuff, and the possible permutations approach (or perhaps even are) infinite. And once again, if he *can* calculate these variables, we are deterministic, and we lose free will and all that that implies.

A possible solution: this god exists outside of time, and can experience all of time at once. He then just adjusts his actions to get the desired results. Unfortunately, we then end up totally deterministic once again, which blows his Sin thing all to hell.

He simply has to be non-deterministic himself to get away from this trap. This, of course, removes his Omniscience, and has serious implications for Omnipotence, to boot.

The Genesis bit takes care of this, of course. Adam and Eve get plopped down fully formed, ready to exercise their god-given free will. But our Christian evolutionists on t.o. claim to accept evolutionary theory, so we are back with the non-deterministic god totally out of control, with no idea how his meddling is going to turn out. "Special Purpose" flies out the window, and we are back to "Looky what growed over here!"

The Xtian god is dead impossible no matter how you look at it.