Talk:Omnipresence

Question

Is this the theological equivalent of this?

Given that all the 'omni-' God words produce paradoxes are (a) the concepts are inherently flawed, (b) Schrödinger's cat (which is potentially both alive and dead until looked at), (c) the universe, if theologically inclined, is polytheistic, or (d) God is as relevant as the flowers here. Anna Livia (talk) 19:06, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

I wouldn't say so. The aether is taken as sort of an all-permeating field, but there are things that aren't made of aether. God's omnipresence is often taken as all things being in God in a different sense. The best example off the top of my head is Spinoza, according to whom all things are modes or affections of God's attributes, and by extension of the substance God (there being no other substances). To put it another way, things can sit in the aether, but have a different nature than the aether, whereas everything shares in or reflects God's nature. Serene (talk) 19:34, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Mentioned partly so a reference to the non-equivalence can be included.

As 'God/the creative spirit/'whatever induces in us the sense of wonder and beauty' is 'all-inclusive' the (deity pronoun)'s attributes will include 'the capacity to do evil', even if 'God (etc)' chooses not to do so. Anna Livia (talk) 12:04, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

R.e. Your so called “variation on the problem of evil” example.

This argument appears to consist of three premises (lines 1-3). This is incorrect, there is only one premise. Lines 1-3 are connected by logical operators. The material conditional ‘if-then’ and conjunction ‘and’ form one whole compound. It is improper to construe these lines as separate premises.

Premises 1-3 should be grouped accordingly: If (God is perfectly good and God is in all places) then (There should be perfect goodness at all places).

Also, you are violating the is-ought distinction, you have attempted to derive an ‘ought’ about God from what (supposedly) ‘is’. Since this is an informal argument, composed of natural language, it is worth noting that the term ‘God’, and the predicate ‘perfectly good’, are extremely vague—this argument is unsound from the get-go and even in a formal setting I can’t see a model satisfying ‘God’ or the predicate ‘perfect goodness’. Leucippus^Talk 00:35, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

It could be at least partially resolved by rephrasing:

P1: God is perfectly good (by definition).

P2: God is in all places (by definition).

C1: Something that is perfectly good is in all places (P1, P2).

P3: If something perfectly good is in a place, then there cannot be evil in that place.

C2: There cannot be evil in any place (P3, C1).

P4: There is evil in at least one place.

C3: At least one of P1, P2, P3, P4 is false (from C2, P4 by contradiction).

This is still an adequate argument; it is difficult if not impossible to deny P4 or P3 without special pleading over what it means for something to be evil or perfectly good. I take the should in the original argument as being an indicative premise expressed in a subjunctive mood (as a colloquialism), thus sublimating the is-ought problem. I also analyze the if-then into a series of premises. The problems related to 'God' and 'perfect goodness' remain, but at least colloquially these are terms that get used. 𝒮𝑒𝓇𝑒𝓃𝑒 ^talk 01:41, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

@Serene Yes, the problem that I highlighted with the original presentation can be easily dissolved by rephrasing each premise as an individual statement. My quibbles about the argument violating the ‘is-ought’ distinction aren’t significant since the use of “should” in “there should be perfect goodness at all places” is, as you correctly noted, better interpreted as the consequent of a subjunctive conditional i.e. if P1 and P2 were true then “there is perfect goodness in all places” would be true; the “should” indicates the speakers’ justified expectation that this ought to be true. Indeed, this “variation on the problem of evil” is a valid informal argument, and P3 and P4 are (in my opinion) impossible to deny! My challenges to the vagueness of ‘God’ and ‘perfect goodness’ are irrelevant to the validity of this argument. By overly focussing on the formal aspects of the argument I missed what was staring me in the face—this is an informal argument, and even if an argument contains vague components this needn’t imply that it is invalid—and hence, my reasoning was fallacious (although I don’t remember the name of this particular fallacy). Leucippus^Talk 21:11, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Apologies for miswriting a logical statement. I admit I have no idea how to properly format or put one into formal words, and if anyone wants to rewrite or remove it, that is welcome. While the term God is used by people with a variety of definitions, here I use the term to mean “a being that is both perfectly good and in all places Another way to think of it is this: if there is perfect heat, and it is in all places, then there ought to be no cold, because everything should be perfectly hot. If there is cold, then there either is not perfect heat or perfect heat is not in all places. If there is perfect brightness, and it is in all places, then there ought to be no darkness because everything should be perfectly bright. If there is darkness, either there is not perfect brightness or that perfect brightness is not in all places. If it’s worth anything, the paradox was spoken of by Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologica, [1] where he said the problem was, as he put it, “If one of two contraries be infinite, the other would be altogether destroyed.” Aquinas denies this argument by saying that God allows evil to exist and brings goodness out of it, which I feel is missing the point- that under the premises, evil shouldn’t exist to begin with. Allgoodusernamesweretaken (talk) 00:58, 4 July 2021 (UTC)Allgoodusernamesweretaken

But - is the issue that God (singular) cannot be omnipotent and and omnipresent and omnibenevolent (and possibly a few other omnis) and have 'the universe as it is now (probably with other species sufficiently sentient to discuss the question of evil)? Multiple Deities (of one or several genders) with collective omnipotence (the centre of black holes and a few other places being debatable territories) might be a different matter. Anna Livia (talk) 09:29, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Another variation on the problem of evil that may be relevant to omnipresence is the ‘problem of divine evil’, (which I believe was first bought up by the philosopher David Lewis). The ‘problem of divine evil’ focuses not on what God fails to prevent but, instead, focuses on what God does to those who commit evil. I shall start by presenting an informal argument:

P1: God is in all places (by definition).

P2: God is perfectly good (by definition).

C1: Something that is perfectly good is in all places (from P1 and P2 by existential generalisation).

P3: If something perfectly good is in a place, then there cannot be evil in that place.

C2: There cannot be evil in any place

P4: Hell is a place deliberately created by God to punish sinners (by definition).

C2: God is in hell (from P1 and P4 by Universal Instantiation).

C3: Something perfectly good is in hell. (from C1)

C4: There is no evil in hell. (From P3)

P5: Hell is full of evil: suffering, torment, anguish, torture, etc. of sinners, for all eternity. (By definition).

C5: Contradiction (P5 contradicts C2, C4, P3 ; thus at least one of P1,P2, P3, P4, P5 is false.

C6: God deliberately causes evil (from P4 and P5)

Comments: Punishing sinners via P5 (and other methods) for all eternity is wildly disproportionate to the supposed sins committed. Punishing millions of humans throughout history— from petty crimes— to noncrimes e.g. atheism, homosexuality, promiscuity etc.—to truly heinous crimes e.g. rape, murder, genocide, and condemning them all, indiscriminately, to an eternity of suffering is to the human mind incomprehensible i.e. as to just how disproportionate and sadistic an infinite amount of suffering would be. Divine evil indeed. Leucippus^Talk 00:28, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

The free will thing and determinism, absurdities that arise in Calvinism

Predestination is one of the five points of Calvinism, it is a logical consequence of an omniscient being, there are also some issues with the problem that an entity which interacts with a system cannot know it, according to David Wolpert. This means that the omniscient being cannot be omniscient if it interacts with that system, basically, God can't touch the universe. This would necessarily lead to problems considering that the entity is supposedly the one that made it.BumblingBuffoon (talk) 20:02, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

Other verses

I don’t know how to incorporate this into the article, but these two verses seem to imply that an omnipresent, omniscient God doesn’t know where people are. The one from Job is particularly damning, as it implies Satan was walking all over the Earth but God was somehow unaware of this.

Both New International Version:

Genesis 3:8-9

8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden (of Eden) in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

Job 1:6-7

6 One day the angels came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them. 7 The Lord said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” Satan answered the Lord, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.” Allgoodusernamesweretaken (talk) 22:11, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Of course, an apologist might answer that God might deliberately weaken himself, because "God works in mysterious ways" or some such, or that God tricked Satan and co because God's a dick like that, but those seem to be excuses clutching at straws. Vee (talk) 22:17, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Apparently, Marcion of Sinope used this and other verses to argue that the God of the Old Testament isn’t the same powerful, benevolent God of the New Testament. One of the Church Fathers, Tertullion, argued against Marcion in a book called, well, Against Marcion. Specifically, Tertullion deals with this in Book 2, Chapter 25, God's Dealings with Adam at the Fall, and with Cain After His Crime, Admirably Explained and Defended.

[2]

“God calls out to Adam, Genesis 3:9,11, Where are you? As if ignorant where he was; and when he alleged that the shame of his nakedness was the cause (of his hiding himself), He inquired whether he had eaten of the tree, as if He were in doubt. By no means; God was neither uncertain about the commission of the sin, nor ignorant of Adam's whereabouts. It was certainly proper to summon the offender, who was concealing himself from the consciousness of his sin, and to bring him forth into the presence of his Lord, not merely by the calling out of his name, but with a home-thrust blow at the sin which he had at that moment committed. For the question ought not to be read in a merely interrogative tone, Where are you, Adam? But with an impressive and earnest voice, and with an air of imputation, Oh, Adam, where are you?— as much as to intimate: you are no longer here, you are in perdition — so that the voice is the utterance of One who is at once rebuking and sorrowing…

God put the question with an appearance of uncertainty, in order that even here He might prove man to be the subject of a free will in the alternative of either a denial or a confession, and give to him the opportunity of freely acknowledging his transgression, and, so far, of lightening it. In like manner He inquires of Cain where his brother was, just as if He had not yet heard the blood of Abel crying from the ground, in order that he too might have the opportunity from the same power of the will of spontaneously denying, and to this degree aggravating, his crime; and that thus there might be supplied to us examples of confessing sins rather than of denying them…

Coming down to the case of Sodom and Gomorrah, he says: “I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it which has come unto me; and if not, I will know.” Well, was He in this instance also uncertain through ignorance, and desiring to know? Or was this a necessary tone of utterance, as expressive of a minatory and not a dubious sense, under the color of an inquiry?”

Of course, it’s up to you whether you agree with him or see this as a rationalization.Allgoodusernamesweretaken (talk) 22:10, 16 October 2022 (UTC)