Proof, discussion.

[Cygnus]

I totally forgot to respond to this. my apologies.

Valvilis said:

2) The other attributes of this god are questionable as well. How fast is this god? Is it the fastest? It has to be, he is perfection itself. But speed does not have a starting and finishing point, it is a ray rather than a line. There is stop and from there it increases to the inifnite. Is god infinitely fast? Does that even mean anything? Is this going to make the prospect of thinking of such a being all that much more impossible? Intelligence is the same - a ray, just knowing everything in the universe, like some sort of cosmic encyclopedia is not the end all of intelligence. Is god infinitely smart? Does that increase his ability to conceive of a yet more perfect being? Surely as intelligence approaches the transfinite, the ability to conceive a more perfect being becomes available - proving that the first was not perfect to begin with, and in this particular case, rendering the now-smarter god non-existent to begin with.

speed is a function of time and space. Both of which, god, if he was not physical concepts of speed, wouldnt even be related to to. Intelligence i am not sure, can go beyond omnicience.. all knowing. Infinite knowledge is something different and as you pointed out seems to raise some interesting questions.

[AnonymousUser]

Rama, i'd like that like to the Nova programs.
I'm pretty sure that the theory is stuck between either 10 or 16 dimensions. i dont think that 11 ever came into the mix. pick up "hyperspace" by michio kaku for more about extra dimensional physics. or almost anything by stephen hawking. if you dont have the time though, just download any mp3 by MC Hawking.

back to the proof though,
perfection only means the state of being without defect. thus molecular decay does not come into sway, as a perfect diamond only need to be perfect now, not infinitely. if you want to argue that perfection implies for an infinite amount of time, then you also need to prove that things dont stop existing when people stop beleiving. There is no proof that things are still somewhere when we are not observing them. We can not tell the state of something until we observe that thing. (perhaps you are familiar with Shroedinger's Cat)

[Cygnus]

Im not sure that i like that definition of perfection. Without defect, does that imply complete harmony and order?

[profdunebastard]

Does perfection require complete harmony and order? Can you have perfect chaos?

[Rama265]

Cygnus said:

Physical perfection is inconcievable because it is illogical. As i said before you cannot concieve of 2+3=6 because it does not follow from logic.

Gestalt theory.
*insert rimshot*

So what did I mean by statistics being god? To understand the point I was trying to make you must first think of several attributes commonly given to the omni-God. The one most important here is the concept that God, being omnipotent can never be contradicted, nor can his commands or actions be overridden.
If you flip a coin 50 billion times (I could swear I've made this post already...) then you're going to come out with around half of those flips resulting in heads, and the other half resulting in tails. Give or take a standard deviation or something or other (been a while since my last statistics class). While it is certainly theoretically possible for 50 billion coin flips to result in 100% tails, the chances of this happening are so insignificant that (as we discussed in the other thread) they may be dismissed and do not need to be announced, as they are assumed.
So in statistics (and nature, not meaning bunny rabbits and shit, think more along the lines of fractals and snow flakes crystalline structures) we have something that cannot be refuted and the effects of which are absolute (Given a proper time frame).
The whole point of my mentioning that however was not to say anything about what god is or isn't, it was to say that the proof is worthless because it does not depend on the content of the proof (eg, God), but on the structure and layout of the words and their interpretations into various languages. This is of course true of all human communications, but you see my point, yes? You could as easily 'prove' the existance of an omniscient and omnipotent leprechaun as you could the existence of jehovah. This proof in fact proves nothing, especially considering all the other logical flaws and fallacies inherent in the concept of an omniscient/omnipotent god.

Oh yeah, here's the link.
www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program.html

[Rama356]

Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention...
A vacuum is not something that is immaterial. It's nothing. Simply the lack of molecules. You can't say that this nothing is immaterial because there's nothing there for there to be immaterial.

[Cygnus]

Guest-Rama265 said:

The whole point of my mentioning that however was not to say anything about what god is or isn't, it was to say that the proof is worthless because it does not depend on the content of the proof (eg, God), but on the structure and layout of the words and their interpretations into various languages. This is of course true of all human communications, but you see my point, yes? You could as easily 'prove' the existance of an omniscient and omnipotent leprechaun as you could the existence of jehovah. This proof in fact proves nothing, especially considering all the other logical flaws and fallacies inherent in the concept of an omniscient/omnipotent god.

I agree with your assesment of the proof, both regarding the point that it could be any "greatest thing" leprechaun or whatever. The proof isnt specific to any religion or any god. And also that omniscience and omnipotence seem to be flawed. I dont think that either of those concepts can be understood or thought, as we touched on this before. If we cant really think about omnicience or omnipotence it points to reason that st. Anselm is not proving the existence of such a god. Vavilis talked about the inability to concieve of true perfection earlier and this is where it leads.

Guest-Rama265 said:

A vacuum is not something that is immaterial. It's nothing. Simply the lack of molecules. You can't say that this nothing is immaterial because there's nothing there for there to be immaterial.

Of course it is nothing. Wasnt that the point? do vacuums exist outside of the mind? they arent composed of any matter. But if a vacuum doesnt satisfy you ill try and come up with something else.. but as im sure you are already confident.. I can make no guarantees .

[AnonymousUser]

Yes, one can have perfect chaos, it is perfectly chaotic with no signs of order at all. It does not imply harmony and order, just for perfection to be acheived, some object must be without defect.

That definition is from the American Heritage Dictionary. So, like it or not, that is the generally accepted definition.

[Rama]

The vacuum was brought in as an example of something that does not exist in the physical world (And by extension does exist in the immaterial, one that has no supporting evidence of its existance), yes?
It is less an object or nothing, and more a description. An adjective if you will. You can say that a cat exists in the physical world, and you can say that a book does too, but you cannot say that "nothing" (meaning the vacuum) exists but outside of the physical world as it is not a thing, it is a description of a lack of molecules. Of course a vacuum isn't composed of any matter, because by definition it is the state in which none exists.
It's sort of like saying that love exists outside the mind but not in a physical realm (Which of course isn't true because emotions are indicative of the electrons and neural signals that are found in the brain). Hmm, it's not really that good of an analogy I guess.
But anyhow, you can't use a vacuum as an example to support your argument because it is inapplicable to the assertions you are making.
Find me an automobile that exists outside the mind but not in the physical realm, or whatever gibberish it is you're trying to push. And by the way, it's not that the vacuum answer doesn't satisfy me, it's that it doesn't satisfy my question or the argument at hand.