What do I believe a god can do?

[Lestat]

<font color="blue">so, can something be 30 degrees F and 70 degrees F at the same time? </font>

I'm not sure. I'm just saying I can conceive of many physical laws being broken, but I cannot conceive of a square circle.

[bigpooch]

I think if one admits as axiomatic "God created the heavens
and the earth" (the first verse of the Torah/Pentateuch) and
that this implies "God created the physical cosmos", then
one can think that God was able to choose the physical
laws that govern the physical cosmos, the initial states,
etc.

Now, I might do the same with a very simple "cosmos" that
exists only as bits/bytes in a computer which I decide is
a two dimensional grid of bits that simply follow Conway's
Game of Life. I may start off with some arbitrary initial
state of my own choosing and let a program decide what rules
to follow to generate the next grid based on those rules.

Of course, I may decide to "change the rules", by simply
suspending the program temporarily and toggle some of the
bits of the "cosmos" (=grid). To an analytical being
observing the "cosmos" that might be able to deduce the
rules of Conway's Game of Life, especially if the program
had run for several "generations", that being might deduce
that somehow the rules he discovered were not followed or
that his "instruments" deceived him. Of course, he can
repeat his experiments and find to his satisfaction that
the normal rules seem to be followed except in that rare
observation where events were not as expected and he may
discount it as experimental or observational error.

Another being might observe this and say that it is
conceivable that someone has a "backdoor program" and can
decide to change the rules.

Well, some rules can't be changed, such as a cell has a bit
that is either a "zero" nor a "one" whereas some rules can
be changed for an arbitrary grid-world "cosmos". I could
use different rules for the generation of the next "frame";
perhaps, I could decide that instead of a grid, I would
decide on a 3-dimensional lattice, etc. I might want to use
a general program for determining the next "frame", but I
may also want to be able to sometimes toggle some bits, or
use a slightly different program that operates on a subset
of the grid.

But some things I couldn't change: I couldn't change the
way the computer works, how computer programs work, to make
what already happened "not happen", etc. I couldn't claim
that the "cosmos" did not exist or that it is impossible for
an analytical being to deduce the "rules" if the grid had
evolved for enough generations.

Now, I could be a research student in some department of
computer science, under the supervision of a professor
doing some research and he might want some restricions
about what I could do. I wouldn't exactly be "God" of this
cosmos, but I wouldn't exactly be impotent either, even if
my supervising professor never even came close to the
computer. On the other hand, I could really screw things
up!

Of course, the most interesting thing is that someone who is
simply observing can deduce some of the rules. Many of the
rules may be simple and some of them may be quite profound.

[Prodigy54321]

[ QUOTE ]
All your questions are implying relatives.

[/ QUOTE ]

well this leads me to my point that I've really been trying to get to..

is morality or who is right in terms of morality relative?

can it logically not be relative when more than one sentient being is present?

is anything but relative morality logical or does "absolute morality" disobey logic?

[Prodigy54321]

[ QUOTE ]
<font color="blue">so, can something be 30 degrees F and 70 degrees F at the same time? </font>

I'm not sure. I'm just saying I can conceive of many physical laws being broken, but I cannot conceive of a square circle.

[/ QUOTE ]

would you consider the above to be a question of physics or logic?

[Prodigy54321]

I'm going to sleep...

I think I'm going to try to organize my thoughts and start a new thread some time in the next week...

feel free to ignore ignore all the crap I have said in this thread...

I'm just spewing incoherent babble as usual..

my argument is basically going to be that absolute morality is a logical impossibility, much like some of the logical impossibilities we've discussed here.

but I'm not getting there clearly in this thread..

I'll try again after taking a few days to clear my head

the questions of whether or not logical impossibilities are actually impossible is another issue, but it should wait until after the other thread...I think it will make more sense that way.

[Lestat]

Physics first.