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From: kin@laidbak.UUCP (Kin Wong)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy,net.religion
Subject: Omnipotence
Message-ID: <213@laidbak.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 4-Sep-84 18:24:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: laidbak.213
Posted: Tue Sep  4 18:24:22 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 6-Sep-84 03:57:56 EDT
Organization: LAI, Westmont, IL
Lines: 55


  Omnipotence, Omniscience and Physical Laws

I like to bring out the following points, I think they belong to
net.philosophy much more than net.religion, but I have included it
in net.religion so that perhaps other, less philosophical minded
may be able to bring in some light; and also because omnipotence and omniscience
are generally associated with the Supreme Being of various religions.
	I would like to show that Omnipotence implies (ie include)
Omniscience, but not the other way round:

1) We define Omnipotence as the capability for anything.
2) We define Omniscience as the ability to know everything.
3) It is therefore clear that if Y is omnipotent, Y would be
   capable of knowing everything, since otherwise it would
   mean that Y has not the capability to know everything, and
   therefore not omnipotent.
   therefore Omnipotence ==> Omniscience.
4) Suppose X is omniscience, ie X knows everything. We choose
any physical law, such as that the speed of light  is a constant, and
we assume that this law is true (actually we can just use any
physical law that is "absolutely true", if any). Now, even though
X knows all  these, that does not give X the capability to do 
anything with them; in fact, if it is true that light cannot go
faster than 186,000 miles per second, then X would know that X
is not omnipotent because X has not the capability to make light
travel faster than 186000 miles per second. 
Therefore Omniscience does not imply Omnipotence if (and only if?)
there exist any real (ie absolutely true) physical law.

I wish I could express the above in more concise logical and
mathematical terms, and I suspect that if the above is fallacious
it would probably be because it is not concise enough.

However, assuming that the above is  correct, I would like to raise
the following questions:
1)Doesn't that mean that the characteristics of being Omnipotent cannot
  exist in a Universe with any  real physical laws?
2) Or , does it only imply that perhaps there is a faulty notion of
what a physical law really is?
3) Or is it possible that physical laws are only a reflection of the
capabilities of those making them, i.e. could Super Being(s) still
exists, and that our physical laws just do not apply to It(them), and if
this is the case, then could there  be some beings of "intermediate"
capabilities, who are not Omnipotent, who have the capability to disobey
some of our physical laws, but some other kind of "physical laws"
still apply to them?
4) Am I starting from the wrong foot?
I hope I can get some discussion on this from the net.

kin wong
(..ihnp4!iwlc8!klw, ..laidbak!kin)