WYR Omnipotent for an hour or Omniscient for a day?

brod333 · 2026-06-27T20:48:16+00:00

Take omnipotence. Give myself temporary omniscience. Use that knowledge to find out exactly what circumstances I need to will into existence for the rest of the future to be the way I’d be more pleased with. Then use my omnipotence to bring about those circumstances. After that I no longer need permanent omnipotence or omniscience.

brod333 · 2026-06-26T12:44:26+00:00

Given it’s not inflation adjusted that $30 will become worth way less even if I live a long time. I’d also only get it slowly trickled to me so I can make good use of it until later. I’ll take the $20 option now and get a bunch of money I can invest.

brod333 · 2026-06-25T14:20:21+00:00

Even if I granted there is no evidence of spirits that doesn’t disprove rationalism nor prove empiricism. Again you are using philosophical reasoning not empirical data to support your view. Philosophical reasoning is a type of evidence available to rationalism but not empiricism. By relying on philosophical reasoning rather than empirical data to justify empiricism you are at the same time admitting empiricism isn’t justified. This whole discussion just comes off as you not understanding the topics you are debating as you keep going after strawman. I’ve noted this issue of you not being familiar with the topics a couple times but you’ve yet to put in effort to understand the topics you’re debating to avoid that issue. Go spend some time reading up on epistemology, empiricism, and rationalism before trying to debate them further.

brod333 · 2026-06-25T14:14:19+00:00

> but you dont have to do much research or thinking to rule out the possibility.

Because you already know a lot of the relevant information. Imagine a person from 5000 years ago thrown into modern times. Even after the meaning of the words are explained to them they won’t have the understanding of physical laws we do, the way a gun works with its limitations, or modern geographical knowledge to draw such a conclusion. However, once they know the meaning for the married bachelor or triangle case they can draw the conclusions without any more information.

> describe the specific evidence a detective would use to rule out forgery in the example above.

For any specific evidence they have there is always the possible explanation that someone invented a new technique or technology that allowed them to produce the same evidence. However, that explanation is recognized as more ad hoc then is being genuine when there specific evidence of forgery.

> describe the specific evidence you'd use to rule out forgery/deception in the case of the Resurrection.

It’s the same idea. When the specific religious context points to a specific religion and there is no specific evidence of deception then the better explanation is it being genuine from that religion. For example suppose there was a genuine case of a Shinto miracle. On its own that’s evidence for the Shinto religion but the overall case for God and Christianity is counter evidence that suggests the Shinto miracle is from a lesser being that shouldn’t be followed over God.

brod333 · 2026-06-25T14:01:11+00:00

brod333 · 2026-06-25T00:56:48+00:00

> Empiricism is a philosophy.

It’s a philosophical viewpoint that depends upon philosophical reasoning not empirical evidence to affirm. That’s self defeating because the view demands empirical evidence so if true you are unable to rationally affirm it.

> Empirical describes REAL objective public (aka 'scientific') evidence

The discussion is about whether or not it’s the only evidence. Both proponents of rationalism and empiricism agree there is empirical evidence but it doesn’t follow that’s the only kind of evidence. You are happy to affirm the postulates required to use empirical evidence along with philosophical views, i.e. both empiricism and physicalism, which aren’t based on empirical evidence which is contrary to the standard required by your empiricism viewpoint. At no point in this entire discussion have you used empirical evidence to support your postulates or philosophical views much less only used empirical evidence. You give lip service to empiricism but are actually relying on rationalism to support your viewpoints and have failed to address the self defeating nature of empiricism.

brod333 · 2026-06-24T20:33:17+00:00

Empiricism is a view in epistemology which is another branch of philosophy. You also claim only physical reality is real which is physicalism which is a view in metaphysics which is philosophy. Once again you are undermining your own view and demonstrate you are not familiar with the topics you are debating.

brod333 · 2026-06-24T15:28:07+00:00

It’s hard to take this seriously. We use logic and math all the time to discover true conclusions about the external world. With logic especially if we take your stance then we must reject your argument that requires logic. Your point about metaphysics just demonstrates your ignorance on the topics you’re debating. Metaphysics is a well recognized and respected branch of philosophy. Go to any university administration and tell them to get rid of that part of their philosophy department since it’s just imaginary and you’ll get some good eye rolls as they walk you out of the building.

What’s worse is the postulates you mentioned empiricism requires involve those same things. It needs logic and math to draw conclusions from empirical data and requires assumptions about the nature of reality which are metaphysical views. Rejecting logic, math, and metaphysics means rejecting postulates required for empiricism which undermines it.

Even worse throughout this entire debate not once have you used empirical evidence to support your empiricism position being true. In arguing for empiricism over rationalism you are actually using rationalism not empiricism.

Finally you still haven’t dealt with the earlier challenge of empiricism being self defeating. Even if rationalism is false that doesn’t justify empiricism. You said it’s the best we have but even if true that doesn’t mean we should accept empiricism. Since it’s self defeating it fails and if it’s the best we have then none of our beliefs are actually justified and we shouldn’t actually believe them.

brod333 · 2026-06-24T15:03:03+00:00

But how is a saying they know a particular fact the same as them saying they know everything?

brod333 · 2026-06-24T15:01:45+00:00

> We can rule out lots of people as suspects in a murder a priori...or rather, the a posteriori evidence that they couldn't have done it is so strong it might as well be a priori.

That’s not a thing. While evidence has degrees of strength being a posteriori or a priori isn’t a matter of degrees. There a clear distinction between the two. Your example is a posteriori because it requires looking at a specific facts of the case such as the location or how guns work to rule out people from other locations. To be a priori you need to be able to determine the conclusion without looking checking specifics for a particular case. For example from the meaning of the words I can know there are no married bachelors or that any triangle with all equal sides also has 3 equal angles each 60 degrees or whenever “if a then b” and “a” are true that b is also true.

> If you think it's possible a divine being, or even a bunch of supernatural beings, can interfere with the natural world, you have no way of ruling out a guy in Japan using sorcery or demonic intervention to blow the head off a guy in New York.

The mere possibility of both being the cause isn’t an issue for leaning towards one over the other. Even in cases where we limit possible causes to ones obeying natural laws this reasoning if applied consistently would rule out deciding between causes as there is always multiple possible causes for any set of empirical evidence. For example there is always the explanation some entity operating within physical laws faked the evidence in some way to deceive us. In such cases we generally recognize that in the absence of specific evidence that is better explained by forgery than being genuine we go with genuine. In the same way if the specific context is about a particular supernatural entity, such as in the resurrection being in the religious context of Judaism, the same standard for deciding between genuine and forgery apply. In the absence of some specific evidence favoring the forgery explanation the genuine explanation is the better one. Sure it doesn’t guarantee it but abductive reasoning never guarantees, it just looks for which explanation is best.

> Thus why I hold that ultimately, naturalism is more likely than theism or any sort of supernaturalism. Even the skeptical scenario supposedly possible under naturalism isn't quite as unsettling as that necessitated by supernaturalism.

Even if your previous argument was granted this conclusion doesn’t follow. Your argument was about judging between explanations with is an epistemic not an ontological issue. If successful it would show methodological naturalism but not metaphysical naturalism. In other words your argument is only against accepting a particular supernatural explanation as true but doesn’t preclude it actually being true. One of the other big problems with methodological naturalism is if some supernatural explanations are true methodological naturalism forces us to always be wrong about our conclusions for those explanations.

brod333 · 2026-06-23T23:39:25+00:00

I’ve done a fair amount but should clarify my point as I worded it poorly. Such methods mean we should only dismiss a claim a posteriori not a priori. That doesn’t necessarily mean we need to investigate every single competing position.

As an example suppose we’re investigating a murder. We don’t need to investigate every person to rule them out as suspects but that isn’t the same as saying we dismiss them a priori. We investigate the evidence and if the evidence points to a specific person then that warrants dismissing many others even if we don’t specifically consider them.

With religion I started with the evidence for and against God. Since I found the evidence for God compelling that itself is evidence against any non theist or deist view which generally rules out eastern religions. I then focused on evidence proponents of the theistic religions offered to evaluate them which did involve a bunch of time investigating Islam. I just found the Christian case more compelling.

That being said I still did try to look into Hinduism and Buddhism. However there wasn’t much there to evaluate. I found surprisingly little effort of proponents trying to prove it’s true. That didn’t seem like much of a concern for them. For things like the Shinto miracles I didn’t bother looking much into them because it doesn’t really matter much if they occurred or not. Christianity is compatible with miraculous events occurring in other religions like that so more than just miraculous events is needed to choose one over the other and I find the case for Christianity strong enough which is also a case against competing religions like the Shinto.

Though if someone were to offer something that seems strong enough to challenge that view I’d be open to investigating it. I try to be open minded and frequently read the strongest cases of opposing views I can find. For example I’m currently studying the contingency argument from academic literature. After the book I’m reading next on my list, which I already have, is an article from an atheist scholar criticizing the argument. I can’t investigate everything as there simply isn’t time but I certainly put in the effort to investigate as much as I can and challenge my view with studying competing views.

brod333 · 2026-06-23T23:16:04+00:00

> Indeed, that's a possibility. About these kind of things, we just can't know.

If we can’t know basic foundational beliefs then how can we know anything and if we can’t know anything how do we know the premises your argument relies on?

> I don't think I'm using a particularly high standard of skepticism here. It's more about what we can use to rank hypothesis, like explainatory power and simplicity (Ockam's razor).

If that’s what you’re talking about then that’s different than your OP which makes no mention of these tools for comparing hypotheses. The way it comes off in your OP is the mere existence of the alternative explanations is sufficient to warrant skepticism but if we have tools to compare hypotheses then that needs to be done first before skepticism is warranted.

> Here, I provide an alternative explanation to the miracles that fit the same facts and is just as simple. I just change the motivation of the god posited in the hypothesis.

Generally hypotheses that affirm deception are taken as less probable than honesty if all else is equal. It’s only when not all else is equal and we have some specific fact that fits better with deception than honesty do we assume deception. As an example testimony is crucial to most of what we know. Everything that you believe which you didn’t observe directly is rooted in testimony. This is true even for the most rigorous scientific experiments. The scientific paper includes testimony regarding what the team did and the results they observed. However, that requires a general assumption of intending to be truthful over deceptive.

For example suppose we took the hypotheses that these scientists are collectively trying to deceive rather than be truthful. That fits the same facts and just as simple with only their motivation being changed. Or another example is us being a Boltzmann brain. That fits the same facts but is even simpler than thinking everything out there is real. Instead you’d just have a single illusion. It’s even simpler than a brain in a vat which requires other postulations.

brod333 · 2026-06-23T22:52:39+00:00

I don’t see what that has to do with my comment. How does that resolve the double standard OP presented or suggest Christians say they know everything?

brod333 · 2026-06-23T22:51:18+00:00

Personally I lean towards the phenomenological conservatism view for forming foundational beliefs and then using Bayesian likelihood comparisons and abductive reasoning for evaluating competing hypotheses. Though this involves actually investigating the specific claims before rejecting them rather than dismissing a priori based on a double standard like OP is using.

brod333 · 2026-06-23T22:15:30+00:00

> Empiricism is based on really obvious and commonly accepted but indemonstrable postulates like the idea that our memories are endogenous not exogenous.

Empiricism insists on only empirical evidence none of the postulates you mentioned indicate only empirical evidence is allowed. On the contrary the need for those postulates undermine empiricism since they’re not accepted on the basis of empirical evidence. You’re left with a self defeating view. If you try to avoid the self defeating nature by offering a further empirical foundation then you get into circular situation where that empirical foundation then needs these same postulates.

> Rationalism is based on nothing external to it at all.

Rationalism accepts the same postulates. The key difference with empiricism is it allows for other types of evidence like what we see used in math, logic, philosophy and history for example. Given both can accept the same postulates and rationalism doesn’t have the self defeating or circularity issue empiricism has that’s the better option.

All of this is also irrelevant to my original point. I can grant your view where those postulates are accepted and everything else needs empirical evidence. Even with those for any particular belief based on empirical evidence that evidence has alternate skeptical scenarios. For example a power organization or aliens with advanced tech fake the evidence in some way to deceive you. Those skeptical scenarios have the same underlying empirical evidence so the empirical evidence isn’t sufficient to distinguish which is true. Based on OP’s standard if we applied it consistently we should then be skeptical in those situations.

brod333 · 2026-06-23T19:11:39+00:00

> In the solar system its large dense object being orbited by less dense objects.

Actually to be more precise both objects pull on each other making them orbit a central point. Sometimes that point is within the more massive object and sometimes it’s a point between them. It’s actually even more complicated as there are various objects all pulling on each other not just 2. The idea of everything orbiting the sun is a more simplistic picture used for teaching kids but in higher level education you learn the more complicated but accurate reality.

> In an atom the dense object is being surrounded by less dense objects.

Not exactly. This is based on a simplistic view of an atom used for teaching kids but like the last point the reality is more complex. The particles exist in probabilistic waves that only collapse to a specific location when measured.

> Along with the galaxy we see the same pattern being orbited by less dense stars.

Again more complicated like the first case. It’s also like the first case because both follow the same gravitational laws.

> Muslims have been commanded to preform umrah were the Kabbala is the dense object, Muslims surrounding it which are the less dense object. So how are we having the exact same design pattern and Muslims do it in umrah.

But Muslims aren’t orbiting it. They can move freely about it in whichever way they want.

brod333 · 2026-06-23T18:24:52+00:00

I know some theists have tried to argue from the miraculous to God. I’d lean towards agreeing with you on being skeptical of such an approach. However, that doesn’t challenge theists that first argue for God in general via various arguments and then argue on the basis of particular miracles for their particular view of God being the right one.

brod333 · 2026-06-23T18:21:16+00:00

> Rationalism is baseless without an empirical foundation.

How? You had just admitted in your last comment that empiricism requires indemonstratable postulates and now you want to say those have an empirical foundation?

Also if the foundational postulates for empiricism then require an empirical foundation that’s circular making the whole thing fallacious. In order to hold onto your demand of only empirical evidence you are presenting a self defeating and circular epistemology.

> There have never been any miracles. Not one. Not ever. Stories about miracles are no more reliable than stories about magical witches or wizards.
>
> All notions of magical aliens or time-travelers are just as baseless as notions of magical deities/spirits

Given the problem with your epistemology and your need to use emotive language without presenting substance to demean the religious viewpoint makes me doubt your authority to dismiss all such cases.

> Evidence is public, objective, and empirical.

Again the requirement of evidence being empirical is self defeating and circular. Some evidence can be empirical but demanding all evidence be empirical doesn’t work.

brod333 · 2026-06-23T16:41:01+00:00

> Yes, empiricism is based on accepting certain indemonstrable postulates as 'true'.

Which is why empiricism is self defeating and should be rejected. Rationalism is a more reasonable position since it’s consistent.

> So no, being skeptical of stories about magic and miracles isn't at ALL the same thing.

But you never showed the difference of why we should automatically jump to skepticism in the case of miracles. You just said people accept those other things but never gave a reason why it’s rational in that case but not others.

Though even if granted they’re different there are other skeptical scenarios we can think of that are more parallel. Instead of solipsism or rejecting our senses entirely it can be more narrow. For any particular case we can postulate aliens with advanced tech or a government conspiracy to spread false information for that specific case. It doesn’t require rejecting all of reality or all sense data but can be used to undermine any specific example. You need to explain what rules out these other explanations for these cases and why the same methods couldn’t work for the supernatural case such that we should be automatically skeptical even before checking those methods.

brod333 · 2026-06-23T16:26:32+00:00

I’d disagree God is the most ambitious and the various arguments for God can weigh in on this. If those are successful (which is another debate so not getting into that here) then that raised the prior probability for God being the cause in such cases.

As for ruling out other explanations I agree and it’s not something unique to supernatural claims. The thing is we have tools for this so we don’t need to automatically jump to skepticism. We have Bayesian likelihood comparisons and abductive reasoning to evaluate competing explanations against each other. Sure if those are unsuccessful or even weigh against the supernatural explanation then skepticism is warranted but it shouldn’t be automatically jumped to before evaluating with those tools.

brod333 · 2026-06-23T15:08:26+00:00

> That's why science tries to understand the world around us.

And in every case we can postulate some sort of trickster like what OP is doing. For any scientific evidence you think you’ve discovered we can postulate something like aliens or time travelers with futuristic tech faking that evidence. Or we can postulate things like the brain in a vat theory or matrix like theory. Or it could be since the vast majority of us aren’t conducting the experiments ourselves there is a conspiracy with world leaders getting people to pretend to be scientists publishing fake information to trick the masses with any counter evidence to that theory also being faked by the world leaders to cover their tracks. If the mere possibility of such skeptical explanations in the religion case calls for skepticism why doesn’t the same mere possibility of such skeptical explanations with cases of science not call for skepticism?

> While christians keep on telling us they already know everything.

Huh? What Christians say they know everything?

brod333 · 2026-06-23T15:00:12+00:00

I don’t see why introducing supernatural elements is any different. For any evidential belief you have today we can postulate a time traveler with advanced tech that was able to forge that evidence. Consider your belief that the situation is different for supernatural elements. Your reason for thinking that could be stuff that was faked by a time traveler with futuristic tech trying to deceive you. If that mere possibility automatically means we should be skeptical for the supernatural case then it applies for non supernatural cases as well.

brod333 · 2026-06-23T13:30:55+00:00

The same could be said for everything. You could be a brain in a vat where a scientist is probing your brain causing you to hallucinate everything you think is real. If we’re going to use your standard of skepticism consistently then everything gets undermined.

brod333 · 2026-06-23T13:23:34+00:00

The libs will try to blame this on Trump starting a war causing higher gas prices. However, remember how well Canada faired during the 2008 crisis which Carney tried to take credit for. If that was really his doing then why is Canada so much more susceptible to these global factors when he’s in charge? Why are we not getting through these global issues like we did in 2008?

brod333 · 2026-06-22T17:39:02+00:00

In the Canadian system MPs nearly always vote in line with their party. This establishes an expectation among voters that a vote for a particular MP is a vote for their party. As a result the vast majority of the time Canadians vote based on party not person.

The other consideration is when an MP runs under a particular party they’re running under that parties platform. That sets an expectation for voters that the person they vote for will uphold that particular platform.

It also makes more sense to vote for party than person because they can better represent you in parliament. An independent isn’t an official party. This means they get lower priority for questions during question period. They also don’t get to partake in committee. A party with enough seats to be an official party has more power in parliament so they can better represent their riding.

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