Reply #136: This is now a 'reductio ad absurdum' of your own argument [View All]

[Stunster]

First you write:

Now, the observation is that in every regard, the first god and the second god are isomorphic.


Then you write:

Both know that that is not the case with regard to their children gods, the first with regard to the second, the second with regard to the third. So: is there any way that the first god can really know that he is the ultimate god? No, because if there were, the second god could also.

Well, now it turns out that it is not the case that in every regard the first and the second gods are isomorphic!

The first god has deceived the second god, and knows this. Which means there's some fact that the first god knows (that it has deceived the second god) which the second god does not know.

Also, the first god would be uncreated, but the second god wouldn't be. That is another factual difference between them, and a genuinely omniscient being would know all factual differences, and a non-omniscient being wouldn't. So again, no true isomorphism.

You're taking one unidirectional relational property and saying that's isomorphic. But that's just an ad hoc restriction on your part, and has got nothing to do with the concept of God or of omniscience as these terms are used by theists.

But really the problem is when you write, "No, because if there were, the second god could also." The theist holds that by necessity there can only be one God (in Aquinas' terms, God's essence = God's existence), and you take this to be incoherent with the further theistic claim that God is omnipotent. But actually, it's not.

Classical theism defines omnipotence in terms of having the power to do whatever it is logically possible to do. And if theism is true, then there is no logically possible world in which there are two Gods. So God not being able to actualize such a world is no more a limitation on divine omnipotence than God not being able to actualize a world in which 43% of circles are squares or in which all bachelors are married. (Only Descartes is prominent among theists who have included the ability to do the logically impossible in their concept of omnipotence, and most theists think he was simply mistaken about that.)

In other words, once one understands the concept of God in traditional theism, one sees that if that concept is instantiated at all, then it is of necessity uniquely instantiated.

What you're trying to do is like taking the concept of the only person who ever lives past the age of 128, and saying suppose that concept was instantiated twice. If it's instantiated at all, it's only instantiated once.

Complaining about theism being so carefully defined that it's hard to refute is a weak argument, since almost any philosophical view, or argument, can be refuted if it's carelessly defined.