Posted by Gremlin [12.255.181.7 - 12-255-181-7.client.attbi.com] on 12 July 2002 at 10.22.00 ZuluTime:

In Reply to: clarification posted by Andy on 12 July 2002 at 04.26.08 ZuluTime:

You wouldn't believe the sheer number of morons who accuse atheists of worshipping the big bang. Pointing out objects of atheistic worship is a bigger scam than most religions.
     No, the laws of physics aren't ultimate. Every time we think we have them all worked out, we manage to break them badly enough to reconsider how things really work. A hundred years ago, gravity was a force pulling things toward it; now, it looks as though gravitons are elements backdrafting things away from them. Nothing is certain for long.
     Whether a deity would have to be superphysical is a debate on its own. And it goes back to defining the characteristics of a deity. I mean: I'm a deity; I write books; I create people, drop them into really aggrivating situations, kill them, and generally work in mysterious ways. But, as I've mentioned, my characters--my little creations--don't worship me; they don't buy cigarettes with fivers adorned with In Gremlin We Trust.
     Whether a deity would have to be superphysical--or even superhuman--is something we can't really determine from evidence. We can arbitrate that a deity must be more powerful than people are, but that doesn't actually tell us much. Elephants are more powerful than people are. So are mitochonrdia and laptops and motorbikes.
     I don't think we should assume anything about deities until we have enough evidence about them to be at least somewhat certain of what they are--including whether they're real or fictional. If I create a character in LightWave, it can defy the laws of physics: it can fly and it can swallow its own head. That doesn't make it a deity. But, there's as much evidence that deities are superphycical entities as there is that superphysical entities are deities.
     First we have to have a reason to assume that deities exist. Optimally, we'd want to capture one and study it. Then, if our resident deity can swallow its own head, we can start to postulate that it might be superphysical.
     We're a long way from that point.
     Right now, we have exactly two things on deities. We have the term deity, which is really only defined as something other than every other sort of entity we know about, and we have the assertion that deities exist. And that's good. Because now, if we encounter an entity which isn't the sort of entity we've already catalogued, then we can begin to wonder whether it might be a deity.
     I'll give you a more tangible example. Right now today, we have a lake called Loch Ness. It's there; we've compiled enough evidence of the existence of Loch Ness to conclude that the largish amount of water exists.
     We also have the assertion that there's a monster in it.
     Here's the extent of what we know about the monster.
     We know that something with the mass of a basking shark is in Loch Ness. We've caught that much on sonar. Whatever it is, it's self-propelled. We haven't actually filmed this animal yet, but we have a good idea what its mass is.
     That's important, because nothing in Loch Ness should have the mass of a basking shark.
     So: we have the Loch Ness Monster in Loch Ness. But we don't know what it is yet.
     If it's a basking shark, or an escaped elephant, or any of a dozen other technically-possible documented animals, then we can't really call it Nessie anymore. Because if it turns out to be nothing more than a basking shark, then we already have a way of describing it. It was a basking shark before it was Nessie--just like it was an Apatasaurus excelsus before it was a brontosaur.
     We don't know what Nessie is yet. And we don't know what deities are yet. If we ever encounter either, then we can determine whether it's actually just something else we already know about.
     And that sounds a little odd, if we're talking about something superphysical; but it's still the case.
     There was a time when thunder was blamed on deities. We now know that thunder is essentially a sonic boom created by static electricity. We don't blame thunder on deities anymore.
     There are still gaps in the laws of physics. But we're slowly filling those with quantum and nonlinear dynamics and so on. And every time we identify a new evident component of reality, we destroy one more 'reason' why deities exist. Apparently, we've now locked deities out of physics altogether. Because physics satisfactorily explain themselves.
     As for what lies beyond the edge of physics it's neither identifiable at the moment, nor of any actual importance to reality. You can claim that the superphysical realm contains a deity; I can claim that the deity lurks in the pit, which is why the oscillating blade dropping down notch by notch is oddly comforting.
     You're basically talking about Schrodinger's Deity here. Put a deity in a box, and you won't know whether it's alive or dead. I, on the other hand, won't much care either way. If it's in the box, it's not hurting anyone, and I don't really miss it. Yes: it's in a paratransitional state; but, in addition to being concurrently dead and alive, it's also concurrently fascinating to consider, and of no actual importance to anyone.
     Of course, by the same token--and under the general inferred rules of omnipresence and omnipotence, Schrodinger's Deity would also have to be paratransitionally physical and superphysical. It would, in fact, have to be concurrently real and fictional. But only if it existed.
     And that's where we have to start. We have to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that one or more dieties can and do exist somewhere. Then we can worry about where, who, and whether they have anything to do with anything else in the multiverse.
     Incidentally, for any innocent lurkers: if this is a weird course of thought, stay the bloody hell away from the Sector Ninety-seven Saga. For the extreme hell of it, I took the liberty of proving deities to exist in that series.
     And no: I'm not going to tell you how I did it.