What would this argument be called?

Question

The more I think about what a supernatural creator god would entail, the more I find the idea implausibe for mathematical reasons.

A simple example is a hallucination. Dreams and hallucinations tend to lack complex interactivity because the amount of information necessary to fool an interacting brain grows more than exponentially over a passive dupe. For example, the classic "brain in a vat" scenario fails if you imagine what it would take to convince your brain that you are interacting with a clump of sand. The data needed undergoes a so-called "combinatorial explosion."

So, then, I apply this to the universe. Theists say that God created the universe in such a way as to produce human life, but wouldn't some sort of absolute knowledge of the universe take a ridiculous amount of data storage and processing capability? Theists can cop out and say that their God can do the impossible, but that's just a cop out. How could any entity control that much data?

Then, if this entity wants to interact with the universe, it must take into account the changes it will induce in the process of interacting. And in order for it to keep track *perfectly* (remember, God is supposed to be a perfect predictor), it would need perfect knowledge of its *own* extra-universal domain.

In the end, God just appears to make no sense.


Isn't it *much* easier to imagine a universe that comes together through a combination of accident and natural law, since we have plausible accounts of how that could happen?

J.P., are you saying that theists *don't* claim their god to be omniscient?

J.P., I'm not convinced a hypercomputer is physically possible, and it's certainly not plausible. Wouldn't the God's domain need infinitely many particles in order to compute using all real numbers?

J.P., I see what you are saying. I just was unable to find a definition of "paraextrinsic," since this is pretty far away from the math I have actually studied in any detail.


I'll concede that it's not *impossible* to build a hypercomputer in such a situation (which still requires some imagination), but I maintain that it becomes more and more impractical. Pretty soon, though, don't you end up with many universes worth of computational machinery all dedicated to helping God stay omniscient?


And yes, I do dismiss any god who gets to make and break rules willy nilly.

J.P. (and I hope you don't feel I'm attacking you or anything--I'm not a computer scientist by any stretch, but I do like learning), does that mean that the computation god (now *there's* a fun screen name for future use) needs either lots of resources or lots of time, and either way needs a lot of *something* over and above the universe we know?


I would tie this in with my earlier analogy--"brain in a vat" is technically possible, but it requires a ton of extra effort to make work, much more than "The Matrix" implies. Simply having a universe running about without a central planner is much easier and accounts for everything.


The point isn't really to disprove all notions of gods, especially gods who can break rules, since I feel comfortable dismissing them out of hand.

Answer 1

You could call it the 'Out of RAM' argument! :-)

I wonder whether the same would apply to panentheism. If the universe is not a separate reality from the divine, then could the universe itself be involved in processing the information and so on?

Answer 2

How could any entity control that much data? By setting it free. Whether Baptist or Baja'i, religions with rare exception, allow for free will.

Some insist on invoking the paradox--God gave you free will, but he knows what you're going to do, and all future generations. With faith, of course, you need no mechanism for this.

The most simple place where determinism breaks down is in the real number representation of location. To identify the location of one particle relative to another and represent this in a separate form with perfect accuracy, you would already need an infinite number of digits... Just for TWO particles.

But even with perfect knowledge of motion and location, quantum mechanics (Einstein Podalsky Rosen EPR, Bell's Theorem) suggests that at any given moment more than one possibility is available.

Answer 3

... how to call this ... , i guess i would call the "limited storage and processing capabilities" argument.
For you other question
"but wouldn't some sort of absolute knowledge of the universe take a ridiculous amount of data storage and processing capability?"

i dont think so , it is possible to generate an enormous mass of data with a formula that fits on one line of paper.
In fact it is possible to write less than what is actually meant i call that the inverse combinatorial explosion 26 letters the human abacus without words there are no puzzles.

Answer 4

Natural Law? If there is a law, there must be a law-giver. A law presupposes intelligence. Like many people, you are limited in your concept of God. The word itself is limiting.

"...but wouldn't some sort of absolute knowledge of the universe take a ridiculous amount of data storage and processing capability"?

God is the source of all knowledge, because God IS knowledge. Knowledge is just one quality of God. What is the source of the concept of knowledge, of factual information? Do thoughts come to you, or do you develop "thought" by your own effort? Thought is discernible even in ants. To say that thought is merely a function of the brain is an incomplete explanation. Scientists now say that the brain is incapable of recognizing itself. Yet, we are all aware of ourselves as living entities. What is the source of that self-awareness? I know that "I am". This is not a function of the brain, because the brain is not aware of itself. So, who is the "self", the "I" to whom we refer? This knowledge must come from an external source, and therefore, must be existing independantly of the biological and anatomical material body. Knowledge "IS".

It is illusion to presume that something exists only when you perceive the fact. Knowledge is existing already. The term we use when we comprehend it is "discovery", which implies pre-existence. Knowledge is existing and all-pervading. We may "discover" it or not. It makes no difference.

Answer 5

This might make sense if you could even explain how the lump of gray matter in our heads manages to achieve what it does with organic matter. And still we haven't figured out how to match the raw processing power and storage ability of the supercomputers in our crania.

Some have speculated that the human brain employs quantum computing to achieve what it does. The mind, then, is more than the sum of our neurons, it's something else. It's more than particles, it's waves. It's a standing field. But how does it work?

We really don't know.

If we exist, and I believe we do, and we can't figure out how something as small as the brain actually works, I wonder what other tricks God has up his sleeve to solve your massive computational problem?

And if you want to talk mathematics, consider the impossibly, vanishingly small, odds that random nucleotides would spontaneously combine is such a way as to be able to replicate. Figure out a realistic scenario where that could have happened in the roughly 5 billion years this earth has been here, and you'll win the Nobel peace prize.

Regards,

Rich

Answer 6

God has all knowledge. It amazes me that a mere human being could possibly compare his or her opinion to that of God. I know that it is only through ignorance of Him and His power that you can make such a statement but I find it incredibly vain never the less. You and other humans can only see "data" that God put there in the first place yet you seem to think that you have made some fantastic discovery when you recognize how much "data" it would take. Believe me, you have only scratched the surface and the time will never come when you or other non-believing humans will comprehend the complexity of that being that I call God.

Answer 7

So close, and yet... so far.

From one atheist to another, let me caution you -- you just pulled a strawman argument.

"I don't like your definition of God so here's the definition I'm going to use!"

In short, you attack your version, not the one the hypothetical reader actually believes in.

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NaturalBornKeiler:

You overlook two possibilities: global quantum variables and frogs-eye vs. birds-eye views of the spacetime continuum. Intrinsically, it's possible that quantum events are random, but extrinsically they are caused.

In such cases, an omniscient being would be possible.

Also, a Turing Oracle is often invoked in various proofs (and disproofs) in the Computer Science field. One might suppose that the deity is an acutalization of a Turing Oracle.

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No, they say their deity is omniscient. However, you rule it out by simply saying, "How could any entity control that much data?"

I provide a solution. As mentioned, a paraextrinsic space/time would allow an entity to exist outside the visible universe. Since it is not limited to the finite size of the visible universe, and the finite number of particles within the visible universe, it could have significantly more numbers of particles. As such, a being in paraextrinsic spacetime has the possibility of being a hypercomputer by the standards of the visible universe, and thus capable of processing everything within the universe.

You can thus not simply dismiss omnipotence and omniscience as 'just a cop out'. There are sound ways to describe the action of a deity via computational mathematics.

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No, it wouldn't necessarily need to use an infinite number of particles to compute all reals.

Our universe has a smallest scale in both space and time, the planck length and the planck moment/instant (your choice on term, seen it both ways). As such, there is only a finite amount of 'resolution' to our universe. Thus, our universe contains finite data.

A computer over the paraextrinsic spacetime would have the possibility, with finite particles and finite space, to perform extrinsically in such a way that its intrinsic effect would be hypercomputation over the group that is our visible universe.

All the same, this is me saying, hey, we COULD in theory get these properties through fundamental computational mathematics. This is still a straw man in and of itself -- we are presuming that this 'deity' is bound by such rules.

Theists posit the existence of a being that can literally break any rule it likes because it MADE the rules. You and I might find that laughable, but refusing that definition and substituting our own does result in a straw man error. We might ultimately be RIGHT... but our application is flawed.

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NaturalBornKeiler:

Paraextrinsic spacetime would be spacetime outside the visible universe.

Many current cosmological theories that describe the Big Bang/Inflationary era posit the existence of an eternal quantum field, the Universe (big U) or Inflaton, on which our visible universe (little u) exists.

It would thus be possible (however unlikely) that an entity could exist on the Inflation such that that entity would be, to our visible universe, either a Turing Oracle OR a hypercomputer.

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bear:

Read it, it was crap. One huge argument from incredulity.

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Monica:

It depends on how many visible universes our computational deity is bothering to observe. Considering the inflaton is one of the few places in physics where an infinity actually makes SENSE, our computational deity could have infinite time and infinite space. Because of the fact that we could frame-step our universe (that is, here's one frame, spend ten million years processing the next frame, ten million more...) in the extrinsic Universe, intrinsically to our universe, we'd never notice the outside time.

Think about this. It can take five hours to render a single frame of a complex computer animated movie. When I play back the movie, does it matter that it took five hours between each frame? Or do I just shove all the completed frames together/ Do my characters notice the five hours passing from frame to frame? No... their continuity exists only within the frames.

I could render the first half of the movie, put it off for two years, and come back to it, and my characters would be none the wiser (unless I chose to make them so of course).

Answer 8

Imagine for a moment that god is an electro-magnetic being that shares all the energy of the universe, I think that would be enough to make lots of computations, not to predict the future accurately, because that's impossible, but to predict some possible futures.

Answer 9

I think what JP is saying is that not all definitions of god fit the one your argument applies to, so there is still some wiggle room for theists.

You basic premise makes a lot of sense to me, though. A god would simply make things far more complicated than necessary. As Occam says (essentially), the simplest answer is usually the right one.

Answer 10

OK, this is my interpretation of the essence of this argument, rephrased. I dont know for sure if this is what you mean or not, but its interesting.
1) assume the storage and awareness of some peice of information does require some kind of form, whether it be physical or unphysical, which iself must have properties- these properties are exactly what allos it to store and be aware of information
2)assuming This thing exists, if it has knowledge of all that exists, it must have knowledge of itself which requires:
3)it must ahve knowledge of that part of its own design which allows it to be aware of everything else, and this extra bit of inofrmation, must require extra form of some kind....
4) which is must be aware of, ad infinitum.

It reminds me of the contradictions in naive set theory, caused from its being self-referential. Ive considered this before, although i was considering the impossibility of a perfectly self-repairing robot, I didnt think to extend the argument to theology.