- Do you believe an all-powerful being is possible?
- If so, can an all-powerful being deceive limited beings?
- Are you a limited being?
- Then how can you trust personal revelation, outside authority, historical records, physical evidence or anything that you feel supports your beliefs in a world with an all-powerful being?
I recently asked this question to the Google+ community for the Christian Apologetics Alliance.
In a world where a supernatural entity exists with the power to reveal knowledge to me or others directly or indirectly, how can I be sure that the same or different supernatural entity won't reveal false knowledge?Here is the link to the original post. The responses, for the most part, refused to acknowledge the entirety of the question. None of the comments were able to adequately answer the question in my opinion, but I encourage you to judge for yourself.
That's a great question, and honestly I don't think a suitable answer exists. It's interesting to see what people will come up with though. I scanned through the discussion, it seems that you are right, the things I saw didn't really address the question. I think a great example is what is at the bottom right now
ReplyDelete"God doesn't lie. Simple as that. He'll tell you what He needs to tell you, whether you like it or not."
Yeah, no matter how much progress I make in comments, someone like that always comes in and resets the conversation to "I don't get it."
DeleteThis is a truly ancient and inescapable argument. The being doesn't even have to be "all powerful" -- it is sufficient to imagine a very powerful entity (maybe an alien, person or even a sophisticated person) who is able to impress, deceive and persuade. Cult leaders do this all the time, convincing many followers (sometimes millions) that they are in fact God or a prophet of God.
ReplyDeleteI also like to think about a related puzzle: suppose there is an "all knowing" being (let's call it "God" for simplicity's sake). I could ask how we know that God is all-knowing, but it's more fun to ask how God knows that He is all-knowing. Is it enough to say that He knows everything He knows, and is not aware of anything else? Is it because He has never been surprised and doesn't expect to ever be surprised? To me this is a fun question because I like to imagine God struggling with it Himself.
I keep hearing my arguments are ancient. I guess I'm unoriginal. :-)
DeleteWe all know it comes down to blind faith. They will have blind faith that their god wouldn't deceive them. There is no way to debate a theist without running face first into that faith wall at some point.
ReplyDelete@Grundy
ReplyDeleteIndeed, a great line of questioning. No surprise that you're not getting a straight answer there, huh? After all, it's much easier to cozy up to a God who is love and always tells the truth than one who is really just pulling a prank on you for his own amusement!
I'm telling the truth.. honest... you can believe me! :-)
@chriswinstead.net
Great question. It's fun to think about.
If I had to guess, I'd imagine that the William Lane Craigs of the world would say something about how a maximally great being must embody maximal good, because that's greater than maximal evil.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I've seen some of that...but no clear reasoning why God must be maximally great.
Delete"No clear reasoning"? I don't want to be offensive, but you either haven't understood the rich amount of literature concerning this topic, or don't understand modal logic. There is quite clear reasoning why God must be maximally great; the only escape is to postulate that such a being is impossible, metaphysically.
DeleteBreak it down for me.
DeleteWell Christian teaching has believed that God is the greatest possible being (explicitly since Anselm and implicitly since the oral tradition that pre-dated the Hebrew Scriptures). The Maximally Great Being (MGB) has maximal excellence in all possible worlds. Maximal excellence is defined as possessing all great-making properties (properties it is better to have than to lack) to a maximal degree (where properties admit of degrees, of course). A degreed property is one like being tall, or, more relevantly, the property of knowing. A non-degreed property is like being a human, or necessary existence. Thus, the MGB is the best being in all possible worlds, or the best being there possibly could be. Ergo, by the transitivity of identity, the MGB is the Christian God. Now we do have two ways out (in contradiction to my former claim). First, we can claim the MGB is impossible. This will entail the Christian God is impossible. Second, we can say that the MGB exists, but the Christian God is not it. The problem with the first road is that it seems the MGB is possible after all, and the problem with the second is that it is an internal critique. Internal critiques of views will depend on the theology involved.
DeleteTo help understand why no one feels the force of this argument in the Christian community, consider that question #2 is ambiguous. Do you mean "for any all-powerful being X, it is within X's power to deceive any non-X"? If so, Christians just say the answer is "no." Ball's in your court. :)
ReplyDeleteBut if the answer is no, how can that being be all-powerful? The question isn't whether you think that God *WILL* deceive, but whether God *CAN* deceive. If it is beyond God's ability to deceive, then God cannot be all-powerful.
DeleteThen we just ask how you know God hasn't deceived you. Faith is not an adequate answer either.
Cephus, in the scholarly literature, it is pretty well-recognized that omnipotence does not entail the ability to bring about a logical contradiction; that is to say, logically contradictory states of affairs do not count as things to be done. It is up to you to show why you think being all-powerful entails the ability to do logical contradictions, and why such a conception is not self-referentially absurd (e.g., if this is so, then one could make it the case that he cannot make it the case, and of course he could and could not do that).
DeleteHow can the answer possibly be "no"?
ReplyDeleteI am guessing it would come down to the supreme being not been able to lie, but then postulate 2 does not hold and so the philosophical question becomes void. All you are then left with is postulate 1 that an all powerful being exists. Congratulations you are a deist ;) I will call mine peanut butter sandwich.
DeleteGod deceives the wicked (to be able to condemn them). 2 Thess 2:11-12
ReplyDeleteso he can and does lie. NOT an MGB after all.
Most Christians don't accept that interpretation, so you need to argue for it. Otherwise, I can hold that he is. Also, why can't one just abandon biblical inerrancy, even if these cases prove to be the way you say?
DeleteArgumentum ad populum. It doesn't matter what most Christians accept or do not accept, the statement is there in black and white. If you disagree with the statement, it's up to *YOU* to back it up with something other than blind faith,
DeleteCephus, that's a textbook example of the fallacy fallacy, which is to label something a fallacy because it takes a particular form (which is fallacious precisely because these types of fallacies are of the *informal* variety). I'm not making the argument "Most Christians don't accept that God actively deceives the wicked, therefore he doesn't." I'm arguing that most Christians don't accept that God actively deceives the wicked, and so merely claiming that he does won't do anything to those of us who think that claim is false. So if one wants to show it is true, he or she will have to show that it's the proper exegetical interpretation, which will involve immediate and broad context, theological background of the author (Paul), and one's own theological and/or philosophical presuppositions, and whether or not those are justified and cohere with the text.
DeleteI think that theists would say that Q2 neglects to mention that the all powerful being must also be all-good, and therefore cannot deceive. That's the assessment I'd guess if I put on my apologist thinking cap.
ReplyDelete