NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/alt/callahan/13743

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-17 | 1.6 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Speaker-to-Minerals)
Newsgroups: alt.callahans
Subject: Re:  Science and god:  Are they incompatible?  If so, why?
Date: 17 Nov 1992 20:40:28 GMT
Organization: HST Wide Field/Planetary Camera
Lines: 16
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]>,<[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
NNTP-Posting-Host: sol1.gps.caltech.edu

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (P'relan) writes:
=Secondly, what does omnipotent mean?  I think you'd probably exclude
=logical contradictions and I'd include violating the physical laws (the
=actual natural laws which are not isomorphic to our current conception
=of them).  Even if God could violate physical laws, I can't see that
=there ever would be a need to do so.  If you, as an omnipotent and omni-
=scient being, want to crush the evil king with a rock from the skies, you
=don't have to throw the rock yourself, but forseeing all these events in
=advance, you initialize your universe so that the orbit of a meteor happens
=to intersect the Earth exactly as to fall on the king at the precise time
=you want to do so.

Actually, there's no guarantee that this is possible.  It's possible that the
only ways you could get the meteor to fall at that place and time would've had
other effects that prevented the king from being there, from being the king, or
from being evil.