"an omnipotent god can do anything that can be done by power"
Yeah, that's a good description.
I've also heard the other end of the scale: assuming any sentence starting "God can" is automatically true, even if it's so incoherent it doesn't really have a meaning attached.
I've heard a variety of ideas expressed: AFAICT there's no universally shared understanding that one is what's meant.
If you have an unconstrained novel-writer God, then you don't need to worry about unifying QM and general relativity
God certainly could rewrite the laws of physics from moment to moment. Or even just make them up as He/She went along, with no underlying physical theory at all, as almost all novelist do a little bit or a lot.
If He/She did, there would be no way to tell: a character in a retcon feels like the retcon was true all along.
But insofar as we can trust the history we're aware of, it generally seems suggestive that the more we learn about the universe, the more it looks like it's based on emergent behaviours of some underlying equations, and the less it looks like it's based on what "sounds plausible" to a personality. (I agree the opposite would be good evidence we might be in a simulation or a universe created by a personality.)
So it seems like, God or not, the best assumption is that the universe does run on rules. If I believed in this sort of God, I guess I'd imagine them running a simulation, not liking it, rewinding a bit and putting in a flood, not liking it, rewinding it a bit, putting in a self-insert character in galilee, etc... :)
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Date: 2013-12-11 10:41 pm (UTC)Yeah, that's a good description.
I've also heard the other end of the scale: assuming any sentence starting "God can" is automatically true, even if it's so incoherent it doesn't really have a meaning attached.
I've heard a variety of ideas expressed: AFAICT there's no universally shared understanding that one is what's meant.
If you have an unconstrained novel-writer God, then you don't need to worry about unifying QM and general relativity
God certainly could rewrite the laws of physics from moment to moment. Or even just make them up as He/She went along, with no underlying physical theory at all, as almost all novelist do a little bit or a lot.
If He/She did, there would be no way to tell: a character in a retcon feels like the retcon was true all along.
But insofar as we can trust the history we're aware of, it generally seems suggestive that the more we learn about the universe, the more it looks like it's based on emergent behaviours of some underlying equations, and the less it looks like it's based on what "sounds plausible" to a personality. (I agree the opposite would be good evidence we might be in a simulation or a universe created by a personality.)
So it seems like, God or not, the best assumption is that the universe does run on rules. If I believed in this sort of God, I guess I'd imagine them running a simulation, not liking it, rewinding a bit and putting in a flood, not liking it, rewinding it a bit, putting in a self-insert character in galilee, etc... :)