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From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Yet Another Spurious Proof
Message-ID: <2109@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 5-Nov-85 20:03:47 EST
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.2109
Posted: Tue Nov  5 20:03:47 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 8-Nov-85 06:52:59 EST
References: <1790@watdcsu.UUCP> <2004@umcp-cs.UUCP> <1237@mhuxt.UUCP>
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Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
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In article <1237@mhuxt.UUCP> js2j@mhuxt.UUCP (sonntag) writes:

[In reference to an argument against omniscience]

>> Unfortunately, this argument is totally bogus when applied to God, possibly
>> for multiple reasons.  Let us postulate that God has some sort of facility
>> which erroneously recognizes false statements as true (a function which has
>> some obvious utility).  We therefore have God's mind recognizing the
>> statement as true.  Another part, presumably dealing only with true
>> statements, realizes that the statement is in fact false (since He is
>> recognizing it somewhere else).  So there is no paradox, and God is still
>> omnicient (and without resort to semantics!).

>      There never *was* a paradox, Charley.  Just as Goedel showed that
>any *complete* formal system must be inconsistant, you've showed that
>an omnoscient being is no paradox as long as it is inconsistant.

I'll readily admit that paradox was not the right word.  I should have said
that there's no impediment to God's correctly knowing that the statement is
false.

>      Inconsistancy is considered a bad feature of formal systems.  I guess
>the specs for gods are more relaxed.

Well, of course they are.  The thing doesn't represent a *proof*, after all,
without the assumption that the Mind of God constitutes a formal system.  If
I assumed omniscience instead, then this "proof" forces the conclusion that
The Mind is *not* a formal system.  I have yet to see a good justification
for the statement that "God's Mind is a formal system," and certainly no
proof of it.  So I don't accept this "proof".

Charley Wingate