Barrow J. Impossibility(282s).pdf: eKnigu

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Barrow J. Impossibility(282s).pdf

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possess in any measure at all. In the most extreme case the gods may possess limitless powers which enable them to do anything at all and to know everything. This deceptively simple idea is not without its problems. We can see that it is attractive for the adherents of a particular deity to believe in their god's limitless powers, if only to avoid subservience to the god next door. But looking a little deeper, we see that if their god's actions were limited in some way, then whatever, or whoever, was doing the limiting would have a greater claim to be in control of events than the god. If your god has no jurisdiction over the wind, then the wind has a justifiable claim to be a superior deity. Eventually, someone will appeal to the superior power of the wind. Although a deity of limited powers has a credibility problem, one of limitless power seems to have far deeper problems of principle. How can there exist a Being for whom nothing is impossible? For whom 2 + 2 = 5 ; whose existence can be terminated; who is not bound by the laws of logic? Surely some things must be impossible or chaos and contradiction beckons? If a deity has denning characteristics then there must exist opposites of those attributes which define impossible actions for him or her. Few traditional religions now grapple with these hard questions,11 yet they are questions that clearly trouble many scientists. The late Heinz Pagels tells how this question was decisive in destroying his early belief in God: When I was in high school I remember reflecting on what kind of being God could possibly be—I was curious... I also remember asking that if God was allpowerful, could he do things like change the laws of logic? If he could change the laws of logic, then he was a kind of lawless Being incomprehensible to the human mind. On the other hand if he couldn't change the laws of logic, he wasn't allpowerful. These alternatives left me dissatisfied... this 'teenage theology' left me with the feeling that either God was not subject to the laws of logic, in which case there was no point thinking rationally about God, or he was subject to the laws of logic, in which case he was not a very impressive God.12 Some are content with the notion of a 'miracle', an event which defies the rules by which Nature operates (or, at least, of our experience of them), but none elevate violations of the laws of logic or mathematics to the same evidential status. Ancient authorities tried to distinguish more finely between actions which were in character and those which were out of character, regarding the latter as logically impossible for a being with the attributes of deity. But these distinctions seem rather slippery to modern ears. Some apologists for the miraculous stress the incompleteness of our knowledge of what is possible in the Universe, and have sought to accommodate God's action in exceptions to...

Now consider the plight of our hypothetical Omniscient Being ('Big O'). Suppose first that this statement is true and Big O does not know it. Then Big O would not be omniscient. So, instead, suppose our statement is false. This means that someone must know the statement to be true; hence it must be true. So regardless of whether we assume at the outset that this statement is true or false, we are forced to conclude that it must be true! And therefore, since the statement is true, nobody (including Big O) can know that it is true. This shows that there must always be true statements that no being can know to be true. Hence there cannot be an Omniscient Being who knows all truths. Nor, by the same argument, could we or our future successors, ever attain such a state of omniscience. All that can be known is all that can be known, not all that is true. As an aside, we note that the American political scientist, Stephen Brams, has carried out a fascinating analysis of many traditional theological questions relating to God's action in the world, for example the problem of suffering.22 Brams uses the methods of 'game theory', a branch of mathematics designed to ascertain whether there are optimal strategies for individuals who have different courses of action open to them. The word 'game' is used to describe any situation where two or more participants have a choice of strategies with associated costs and benefits. Brams sought to discover whether we could glean any evidence that the moral nature of the Universe reflects the optimal strategy of an omniscient being. The results were illuminating. Evil and suffering can be inevitable aspects of an optimal strategy to do good. It can turn out the deduction of an omniscient being's existence is logically undecidable if certain strategies are being adopted. The limitations that this lack of omniscience ensures should not be seen solely in a negative light. Errors and inconsistencies play an important role in our...

A cosmic speed limit
The simplicities of natural laws arise through the complexities of the languages we
use for their expression.
EUGENE WIGNER54...

The increasing cost of pushing back scientific frontiers might lead to a growth in the philosophical analysis of science and the discussion of unanswerable 'meaning-of-life' questions like 'how did the Universe begin?'. In this way, the hard core of science might be mined out, leaving only a superficial veneer of. questions about which one can have opinions but not testable answers. The view that science might bring about its own lugubrious demise was first aired in 1969 by the distinguished biologist Gunther Stent, then of the University of California at Berkeley, in his book The coming of the Golden Age.7 His argument has recently been rediscovered and reiterated by the American journalist John Horgan in his book The end of science.8 Stent thought that science was reaching the end of the road—but not because it was getting too expensive. He thought that the great discoveries had been made and science was heading towards a future of baroque elaboration, subjectivism, and introspection already to be found in many of the creative arts. History teaches us that the ancients harked back to a mythical Golden Age when a privileged race of mortal men lived on Earth in a state of paradise. According to Greek legend, this state of earthly bliss ended when Pandora lifted the lid of her box and released a host of previously unknown evils into the world. The Golden Age was then succeeded by a decline in lustre, through Silver, Brass, and Heroic Ages, until we reached the present Iron Age of labour and sorrow in which Mankind reaps the bitter harvest of the gods. Jewish tradition has a...