peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Thursday, August 5, 2021 at 4:51:14 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>>
peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> On Thursday, August 5, 2021 at 8:46:13 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>>>> Burkhard wrote:
>>>>>
peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>>> On Tuesday, August 3, 2021 at 9:01:13 PM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:
>>>>>>> On 8/3/2021 7:42 PM,
peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I don't think Bill knows much that is worth knowing about these
>>>>>>>> Gods. His God is a medieval adaptation
>>>>>>>> of some non-Christian gods, such as Plato's. The idea of an
>>>>>>>> omniscient God is not to be found in the Bible.
>>>
>>> Your failure to take into account what I wrote in the above four lines is noteworthy, Burkhard,
>>> in assessing what you wrote below.
>
>> Not really, your ad hominems are just not worth a reply.
>
> This ad hominem of yours fails to delimit your concept of "ad hominems."
>
> Is your definition so broad that you consider the two lines to which you are responding above
> as "ad hominem"?"
My definition of ad hominem is the one normally used in argumentation
theory: an attack on an attribute of the speaker that has no bearing on
the truth of the position that the speaker argues.
You try, as usual when failing to make a cogent point, to derail a
discussion by making irrelevant claims about the interlocutors. I'm not
playing.
>
>>>
>>>>>>>> It *a* *fortiori* is not in the book of Mormon. I don't know enough
>>>>>>>> about the Koran to say something about
>>>>>>>> whether Islam has such an idea.
>
> This was intended to be the first step towards finding out whether there is
> a contrast between the Islam of the Koran as to what "omnipotent" means
> and any modifications that became entrenched in Islamic theology.
if that was what you want to find out, you have an odd way to go about
it. I can't second guess what's going on in your mind, only answer
questions as formulated.
>
> In particular, I would like to know whether any are as radical as the medieval-origin Thomistic one,
> which can be construed to be the same concept as that of Bill Rogers. If so, we would have:
>
> Koran : Bible :: Some School of Islamic Theology : Thomistic theology
>
> This is because it seems that the Islam of the Koran is anchored in our own universe, just
> as that of the Bible is. Yes, there is also an invisible-to-us heaven and hell in both,
> but God's ominpotence is neither
> (1) construed to extend to all possible universes,
no idea what you mean with this. Do you mean "possible universes" the
way modern physics uses this? Then yes, neither Qu'ran nor Bible nor any
theologian from the middle ages to early modernity explicitly discuss
the theological implications of a theory that was only discovered
hundreds of years after their time. Trivial, but so what?
Or are you talking about the type of multiverse theory that Leibniz
proposed, and if it has been discussed in Islam, or if there has been a
similar approach? Not as far as I know, but then Leibniz was very clear
that these possible worlds do not really exist. If one really wanted to
re-read classical philosophers through modern conceptual lenses, then
the closest one in Islam would be Avicenna and his discussion of the
semantic of universals (the meaning of a term is the set of objects it
designates across all possible worlds, the way it does in the
Leibniz-inspired Kripke semantics of today)
Or do you mean possible universes the way some of the Greek atomists may
have understood them (what they really meant is difficult to say, given
the scarcity of sources), in particular Anaximander's notion of the
Apeiron, or later the nascent multiverse theories of Leucippus and
Democritus and Epicurus?
nor
> (2) does it preclude interaction by God with the physical world.
>
>
> Take away the "neither" and (1) goes with Thomism and Rogers's concept; take away the
> "nor" and (2) goes with Rogers's concept and an uncompromising Deism.
or 3, imminentism and occasionalism, which feature prominently though
the ages in Islam. That is God is efficient cause of everything, which
again from our perspective makes it indistinguishable from the laws of
nature
>
>
>>>>>>>> It certainly pictures Allah as being
>>>>>>>> far more remote than the Christian God,
>>>>>>>> and considers it blasphemy to speak of a Trinity the way Christians do.
>
>>> The following link was helpfully provided by Oxyaena:
>>>
>>>>>>>
https://www.al-islam.org/islamic-doctrines-simplified/allah-omniscient
>>>
>>> And the beginning of my response follows:
>>>
>>>>>> The two short quotes it gives from the Koran weren't meant for
>>>>>> sophisticated theologians
>>>>>> or philosophers, and give no hint of the kind of omniscience that
>>>>>> Bill Rogers talks about:
>
> and, as I said, the commentary in the webpage by the Al-Balagh foundation,
>
>
https://www.al-islam.org/islamic-doctrines-simplified/allah-omniscient
>
> also gives no such hint.
and why would one expect them to anticipate Bill?
>
>
>>>>> Don't know why that would matter,
>>>
>>> Ask your buddy Hemidactylus to explain if the colossal distinction between what
>>> your ally Bill wrote and what you write below is beyond your understanding of philosophy.
>
> I delineated the distinction in discussing (1) and (2) above.
>
>>>
>>>>> asy our question was about the Qur'an,
>>>>> not the theological systems build on it,
>>>
>>> You missed the point of my "whether Islam has such an idea."
>
>> You asked specifically about the Qu'ran.
>
> See above about the direction in which I was headed. I didn't know whether
> the Koran itself gave anything approaching Bill Rogers's concept, and evidently it does not.
To be more precise, the Qu'ran does not talk explicitly about the many
worlds interpretation of quantum physics that you for some unexplained
reasons read into what Bill wrote.
>
> <ad hominem snipped here>
>>> But it looks like Oxyaena didn't, because that website that she linked
>>> expounds not only on the two verses but also on what the authors, at least,
>>> take to be mainstream Islamic understanding of omniscience -- a far cry from that of Bill Rogers.
>
>> First, nothing in the text contradicts anything Bill wrote.
>
> Sure, just as Elon Musk's space capsule docking with the International Space Station in earth orbit
> does not contradict Apollo 11's lunar lander docking with the command module in lunar orbit.
Yes, and so what? That is all Bill needs for his argument to work.
Consistency is all that is required for that. I've no idea what you
think Boll's argument tries to do, but given your general inability to
understand the structure of arguments others are making, I'm not even
going to speculate.
>
>
>> But your claim was not that
>> not everyone within the Islamic tradition thinks like Bill, but that it
>> is not part of any Islamic tradition.
>
> Your last clause, with "your claim" understood, is a false ad hominem and is not worthy of any further reply.
As per above, and ad hominem requires an attack on a characteristic of a
speaker that has no nearing on the truth of the conclusion of the
argument/ Where is the attack here, just for starters? It shows that
what you are arguing (that some thinkers in Islam might disagree with
Bill) is too weak to support your argument, for which you would have to
show that no Islamic thinker could endorse his view.
>
>> which my quotes flatly refuse.
>
> They may refuse assent, but I saw no refutation of the claim when stripped of its false connection with me.
No idea what that sentence is supposed to mean
>
>
>>> Iqbal, on the other hand, reads more like a Sufi with strong Hindu influences
>
>> Let's see. In one corner we have a writer
>
> <credentials irrelevant to whether Muhammad Iqbal endorsed (1) with "neither" removed, snipped>
credentials relevant for your rather pathetic attempt to dismiss an
obvious counter example to your claim as "not being a proper Muslim" or
part of a fringe tradition.
>
> I'll grant you one thing: they helped me to narrow me down to "Muhammad Iqbal" as to whom
> you are talking about, and to disambiguate him from 4 others by that name, and 3 others whose
> names include his as a subset.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Iqbal_(disambiguation)
>>
>
> <snip partially false ad hominem reminiscent of the description of Tweedledum's interruption of Alice>
>
>
> > I wonder, whom should I
>> follow for an account of what Islamic theology is?
>
> Anyone who can steer you to some Islamic theologian whose concept of omnipotence is
> of comparable magnitude to that of Bill Rogers.
We were talking about omniscience. If you want to move the goalpost
again, maybe you should say so explicitly. And again, the only thing
that Bill needs, if at all, is that his concept is consistent with
conceptions of god across religions, not that this specific idea was
espoused in that form. He is after all talking with Ron, who for all I
know isn't a Muslim.
>
> Perhaps something Iqbal wrote will do that, but you haven't found such a statement yet.
Oh, it did, you just dismissed it
without reasons
>
>
> <I stand corrected about what I wrote about Sufism; demonstration snipped>
>
>
>> As for Vedic influences, unsurprisingly, there have been
>> cross-fertilization between Islamic and Vedic thinkers in India,
>> inevitable given the close geographical proximity, and some convergence
>> between world religions is anyway to be expected.
>
> Yes. Efforts have been made, especially in the second half of the 20th century,
Not what I mean, I'm not talking about interfaith dialogue as an
intentional project, just the inevitable cross-fertilization of ideas -
both Islam and Christianity e.g. incorporated large parts of
neoplatonism, so will have some similarities, in addition of course to
being monotheistic etc . Similar conceptual borrowing happened in India,
the emergence of the bhakti movement within Hinduims in the 15th century
e.g. is normally seen as a response to Islamic influences, especially in
the work of Kabir (who I think was born into a Muslim family)
That's not a systematic effort of aligning religions, that is merely
seeing that your neighbour is doing something that works for a problem
you have too (e.g. here how to reconcile omniscience and free will) so
it gets borrowed, or it's simply a case of convergent thinking
> to produce a convergence with Christianity, but these efforts have been in decline for about three decades now.
> Bishop J.A.T. Robinson was one person pushing for it, in _Honest to God_, in its heyday.
>
>> He studied Vedic
>> philosophy, just as he did with western philosophy and Christian
>> theology , and he discusses explicitly the similarities but also
>> differences. In the context relevant here, omniscience, as I said he
>> paints a sort of mirror image - he talks in this context about passive
>> and active omniscience, so despite some superficial similarities comes
>> to a very different account.
>
> From Bill's. Yes. Probably also from the Biblical concept of omnipotence. So far, Zen Cycle
> hasn't lifted a finger to explain which of the hundred or so biblical verses corresponds
> to Bill Rogers's concept.
again, why do they need to "correspond" when consistency is all that is
needed for Bill's argument?
How could anyone prove anything "to you". I gave you a quote that I
think speaks for itself, you reject it. I furthermore explained why the
quote shows what I say it does, in case it isn't obvious after all. Lots
of possible futures, they all exist in God - just the way Bill
described it, parallel to each other as possible worlds You dismiss the
explanation as "editorializing". That way you can always protect your
hermetically sealed mind, and equally dismiss anything else I or anyone
else could find, so why bother?
> If not, any widely accepted mainstream Islamic scholar will do.
Iqbal is a widely accepted mainstream scholar, that's why I gave the
credentials you snipped.
But here is a contemporary discussion of multiple universes from an
Islamic perspective - though I have no doubts that you will again find
reasons to reject it
https://aboutislam.net/muslim-issues/science-muslim-issues/aliens-alternate-dimensions-allah/
>
>
>> But more important, your entire "argument" above makes no sense. God is
>> omniscient. That means he knows all there is to know.
>
> According to a definition Bill will probably endorse, despite his restriction
> that ruled out all universes with which God reacts after creating them.
>
> But that is not the issue. If you are tempted to press your claim on
> the basis of literal etymology, I offer the example of the Holy Roman Empire for your inspection.
sure, sometimes words are misleading. Normally however they aren't,
that's what communication works. So it would be up to you to demonstrate
how the plain text reading (no etymology involved, btw) is false.
I.e. you, or anyone else who thinks there are hidden exceptions implied
in the word would have to give a theological argument why in Islam,
when Allah is called Al-‘Aleem, or omniscient, this really means not
what is seems to mean, but rather
- knows everything with the exception of what's going on on other planets
or
- knows everything with the exception of what's going on in other universes
or
- knows everything with the exception of what might happen in the future
or
- knows everything with the exception of what Mrs Smith of 32 Wildesmere
road had for tea
For the last, that seems to be what Avicenna, whom I mentioned above in
connection with Leibniz, was arguing. God only knows universals, and
not particulars, and again in the terminology of possible world
semantics that would mean he knows all possible worlds, but before his
eyes they are all equal, so he does not "know" which one is the one we
are in.(because that is a meaningless anthropocentric notion, so there
is nothing "to" know)
For the first, there is quite a bit of direct discussion. One of the
attributes of God "Cherisher and Sustainer of the worlds,” and that has
often been interpreted as a claim that there is extraterrestrial life.
But as I said, this is really your job, you'd need to give a
theologically sound reason why God's knowledge is more limited than the
plain term omniscient would indicate. And not just an argument from
absence or silence of the text about such other universes, you'd have
to state some theological principle that contradicts the notion
>
>> What this means for us will change as our knowledge changes - so IF multiple universe
>> theory is true, God knows them all,
>
> That assumes that existing multiple universe theory can meaningfully write
> about the actual multiverse, which can include whole multiverses completely
> sealed off from each other.
Eh, no? Why would that assume anything like this? I'm not saying God
knows multiverse theory, he knows all universes IF MV, or any similar,
theory, is true. God's knowledge is not limited by what a given physical
theory can or cannot express.
>
>
> > if it isn't he doesn't, obviously.
>> We are talking about a theological doctrine here, not a contribution to physics.
>
> It needn't involve physics. If Heidegger didn't get deep enough into the concept of Being
> to envision realms of Being completely sealed off from each other [1], he is over-rated as a philosopher of Being.
I'm sure he is vastly overrated for lots of reasons, but not for that
one. No, I don't think he considers realms of being totally separated
from each other, but why would he?
>
> [1] many of them with a God who knows all there was to know about His realm, and able to theorize about
> all possible realms, yet oblivious to the existence of the others.
And you think that last version is something you find in mainstream
Islam or Christianity? Lots of gods in different universes, all
omniscient only for their realm? I'd like to see the evidence for this.
>
>
>> Having said that, Iqbal references the physical thought of his time
>> extensively, in particular Einstein whom he admired greatly, and while
>> he accepts his work as a description of the physical universe, he has
>> objections for its suitability for a philosophy of time:
>
> You put a colon here, and if you meant to put a period and say no more,
> this is just another statement that is completely beside the point.
There was meant to be a direct quote, don't know why it didn't work. And
the point was that he discussed and responded to the physics that was
known at his time, but not, as you seem to require, physics that was
only developed about 20 years after his death. And it also described his
concept of time, and I thought it made it clear that he is not talking
about the block universe that you brought for some reason into the
discussion.
>
>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Quote one: “Say: Do you instruct Allah about your religion? But Allah
>>>>>> knows all that is in the heavens and on the earth; Allah is Knowing of
>>>>>> all things” Holy Qur'an (49:16)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> "all things" seems, in context, to be speaking about all things in our
>>>>>> physical universe,
it may seem to you, but that's about it. Already invoking "heavens"
9note the plural) does not fit to the physical universe, and even
without that, that the sentence does not stop "earth" but then has a
categorical statement that says Allah is knowing of all things, without
any limitation mentioned, does really not fit your interpretation for
which you haven;t really given any reasoned support, apart from tah it
"seems to you" so
>>>>>> as opposed to all possible things and all possible events in all
>>>>>> possible universes,
>>>>>> which was Bill Rogers's meaning.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> To do it credit, the commentary sticks to this down to earth meaning
>>>>>> and doesn't
>>>>>> hint at grandiose concepts like that of Bill Rogers. If you disagree,
>>>>>> please
>>>>>> quote something that you think might be about that grandiose concept.
>>>
>>> I extend this challenge to you, Burkhard, as to Iqbal's works.
>
>> If you don;t see it from what I quoted already, not sure how I can help
>> you further.
>
> You can help by trying to figure out what the issue is. If you don't see
> it from what I wrote, I will do my best to try and explain it to you.
That might be a good idea. As far as I can make out, you shift goalposts
continuously and nothing what you ask or say has any bearing on Bill's
argument
>
>
> Peter Nyikos
>