A God Equation

Mathematically Disproving an External Independent All Powerful GodI reckon it's possible to disprove some types of God, of course God is a tricky thing to tie down so I am going to put some parameters on the type of God I'm disproving. For the purpose of this discussion I will assign God the following attributes;- God is the greatest thing imaginable- Nothing can exist that is Greater than God- God is completely independent of all things and an unique entity in it's own rightWith these parameters it would be logical to assume that if something could be found of equal or greater value than God that would nullify this particular God as one of his essential attributes is to be greater than anything else.So;Let X = God, with the essential propertyFor X to exist it must be greater than anything elseNow Let Y = Everything that is not God, for the purposes of this demonstration Y is every physical thing currently in existence -
But Y could be reduced to a single blade of Grass or expanded infinitely.Now with those parameters set let's set up phase two,X is greater than Y
X is equal to X and nothing else
In order for X to exist nothing can be equal to or greater than X
Y has a value greater than zeroAnd the proof;X+ Y > XOf course this only counts for an external independent all powerful God, a God that is an intrinsic part of everything or is not all powerful can not be tackled in this manner - polytheists and pagans etc will not fall to this logic but I am very curious to see how monotheists handle it

Thread copied here from the A God Equation thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

I expect monotheists will proclaim that their god is in some sense an intrinsic part of everything. Even if in practise that "intrinsic part of everything" amounts to little more than having provided the 'energy' that sparked creation and which is thus contained in everything.Or something like that......In short I don't think monotheists are going to consider your 'proof' particulalrly relevant or challenging to their notion of god.

It seems to me that your proof relies on an ambiguity in the use of the word "greater."

To me it makes no sense that Creator+Creation is greater than the Creator. This would pan out as saying essentially that creation, by itself...is great. which is not my belief. Creation without a creator simply has no value.John 1:3(NIV)
3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.An added flaw in your theory is that you state that Y could be expanded infinitely. Perhaps matter could be expanded infinitely in theory, but life? No way. For a believer, Life is "In Him". A believer rejoices at being made alive in Christ. Life only exists because of a Creator of all seen and unseen.An unbeliever, in contrast, declares that I Am regardless. I live, and thus I have value.A believer pays homage to the Creator of life, while an unbeliever tends to deify self by virtue of being alive. Edited by Phat, : Edited by Phat, : further explanation.

You actually have some good points in your other thread. You should focus on that. All math is an abstraction and you can make abstractions do just about anything you want them to. Math becomes a useful abstraction when we craft it to match reality. You aren't doing that so your point just seems, pardon me, but juvenile.To be totally pedantic just for fun, the problem with your argument is that the + operator is not well defined for gods.Edited by Jazzns, : No reason given.

This is why I pay attention to word meanings. Meaning of Great

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And the proof;

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X + Y > X

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Greater than means larger than.

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God as one of his essential attributes is to be greater than anything else.

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Do you really mean one of his attributes is to be larger than anything else?God is the largest thing imaginable?
Nothing can exist that is larger than God?I think your proof went poof.Great is a word that can mean size depending on how it is used and it does refer to size in the Bible, but it also refers to power and authority.God + Creation doesn't make a new entity that is larger in size or more powerful than God.

I don't get it. So what? Which premise is broken?
X is still greater than Y.
X is still equal to X and nothing else.
There is still nothing that exists that is equal to or greater than X
Y still has a value greater than zero.Let me give you an example.We have a really big apple (say, 10 lbs). And a smaller apple (say, 2 lbs).
Lets claim that the big apple is the biggest and nothing is bigger.Proof:10 + 2 > 10So what?
Yes.. 12 lbs is greater than 10 lbs.But... our 10 lbs apple is still the biggest.
There is no 12 lbs apple. All we've done is some simple addition... that doesn't contradict any of our original parameters.All you've done is say that God + stuff is more than "just God".
Which is true.
But there's still nothing else that is "larger than God" on it's own. God is still the greatest, the most powerful, the biggest... the "most" of whatever it is you're talking about.Your proof doesn't contradict any of your original premises or parameters. Therefore, you haven't contradicted anything.
All you've done is some simple addition.I don't think God or the Bible ever implied that addition was impossible.

That sounds like another version of, "The messenger is more important than the message." That's one of the best arguments I've ever heard for being an unbeliever.

Hmmmmm all very interesting points, This was a bit of an experiment - I thought trying to simplify things to a basic equation would be gun and novel, turns out you guys don't like equations.I still think there is a fun illustration and imagination exercise in trying to quantify a god, set parameters and then smash them. I could go a lot more silly with this and I think (bur I'm totally gonna get blasted for thinking this way) it is still quote interesting.I'm gonna try use words instead of maths, and I am probably only gonna make it even sillier but try bare with me;If god has ANY property is it conceivable that anything else can exceed him in this property, knowledge, power etc
Is there a way to add to this property, and if there is why does that do to our thought model.I was gonna use a really ridiculous example cause I don't wanna get drawn into a debate on an example and miss what could be a really interesting discussion with both sides working together - but I'm probably hoping for too much. So I'll leave it at can the god hypothesis be quantified in any way, can we assign attributes or anything else

Now you are acting like a Creationist. First of all X+Y > X is not an equation. It is an inequality. Secondly, your logic was off and your demonstration failed.But in true Creationist fashion you conclude something bogus about us; namely that we do not like equations. Equations and our feelings about them were not even part of the discussion. I like equations just fine.Do you see any similarities between your premise here and designtheorist's insistence that we can learn something about God using the scientific method? I do. Both propositions are wrong.

There is a major difference with my stance and a creationist one - I'm delighted to be wrong, I'm finding all the replies here really fascinating and I'm learning lots. In a similar vein i was recently invited to join ToastMasters, my first meeting is in a few weeks and I've no doubt I'll fail spectacularly - but that's a cool experience for me and I'm ok with it.Edit : and I was being superfluous and coloical when I said you guys don't like equations, im sure some of you are very fond of them and far more knowlegible about them than I amEdited by GrimSqueaker, : No reason given.

Any "God" hypothesis can be added to or expanded. Humans by nature never want to feel limited or constrained as to their free thought. Again...of course. Humans even go so far as to assert that surely something had to "create" God...we simply refuse to have our intellect stopped by an eternally existing uncaused first cause. Evidently we imagine that since we ourselves can conceive of a first cause beyond an asserted first cause that our hypotheticals should be allowed to be potential actuals. Funny how we refuse to let God put our intellects in a box, isnt it?

"God" is incomparable.Technically, He may be bigger, smarter, faster, able to leap taller buildings with a single bound - but other than "God always wins" the mathematics is undefined. That's why questions like, "Can God create a rock so heavy that even He can not lift it?" always fail.And that's why concepts like "omnipotence" are essentially nonsensical.Edited by ringo, : Added missing quotation mark.

Humans are limited in our conceptions of time, space, logic, and reality. If I could hypothetically make a rock heavier than I could lift, the rock would become a static creation. It would weigh more than my maximum capability With God, the equation differs. Can God make a rock that exceeds His capability? Yes...and No. One instant He could create such a rock. The next instant He himself could exceed the rock. In essence, the magnitude of the rock is Gods imagined magnitude of that moment. God always exceeds Himself and yet is never exceeded. Such is the quirks of infinite omnipotence.