Here is my post that began the "God, Gygax, Brahman" thread, since it doesn't seem to have

made it to all servers. Let me know if it looks too garbagy in your browser.

I'd appreciate email replies, since I don't seem to be getting all posts either.

JWLandrum wrote:

>

> By playing word games I meant that you are pretending that the definition of

> an English word places an inviolable limitation on what God (or anybody else

> for that matter) can do.  It does not in fact do so.

Bravo. Now, how about applying that to Lewis' arguments in Chapter 2 of /The Problem

of Pain/, "Divine Omnipotence." :-)

Lewis' masthead quote: 'Nothing whaich implies contradiction falls under the

omnipotence of God.' -- Thomas Aquinas, /Summ. Theol./ Ia Q XXV, Art. 4

/Problem of Pain/, Macmillan pb, p. 28:

Lewis: <<You may attribute miracels to Him, but not nonsense. ....meaningless

combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them

the two other words "God can." ....nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it

about God.>>

Imagine a desert tribe who had only one word, 'precipitation', which had to serve for

rain, hail, snow, fog, etc. If we said "God can make an island where it rains but

never snows," that would translate as "God can make an island where it preciptates but

never precipitates," and they would say we were talking nonsense. (See also L's essay

"Transposition" in a dif book)

p. 34-35:

Lewis: << ...a single, utterly self-consistent act of creation which to us appears, at

first sight, as the creation of many independent things.... With every advance in our

thouht the unity of the creative act, and the impossibility of tinkering with the

creation as though this or that element of it could have been removed, will become

more apparent. Perhaps this is not the "best of all possible" universes, but the only

possible one. Possible worlds can mean only "worlds that God could have made, but

didn't." The idea of that which God "could have" done involves a too anthropomorphic

conception of God's freedom. >>

Earlier he had quoted "With God all things are possible." Now he seems to be saying

'With God only the All-Thing is possible.' :-) (Any Hindus following this are probably

chuckling, and too polite to say 'Amen' out loud.)

p. 35

Lewis: <<The freedom of God consists in the fact that no cause other than Himself

produces His acts and no external obstacle impedes them....>>

Sort of a deterministic Big Bang? God's only choice being, to bang or not to bang?

Somehow I suspect L's thesis wouldn't even allow Him that much....

p. 29:

Lewis: <<I am going to submit that not even Omnipotence could create a society of free

souls without at the same time creating a relatively independent and "inexorable"

Nature.>>

Necessity, the Omnipotent's plea?

It has always seemed to me, that Lewis (and perhaps Aquinas et al before him? :-) was

doing all sorts of odd things to the word 'omnipotence.' How is it that we people in

the street feel held in the palm of an 'omnipotence' that some philopshers say is

impossible for even God to have? (And we feel it without hardly thinking at all :-)

Now to Gygax, who is often credited with inventing, not only his own secondary world

of Greyhawk and  the  Dungeons & Dragons rule system, but the whole concept of Fantasy

Role Playing Games. Story goes, that a gamer  went to heaven,  saw someone rolling

dice, and said "Is that--?"

St. Peter: "No, that's God, He just thinks He's Gary Gygax."

Anyway, suppose Gygax is refereeing and running NPCs, and a player's character gets

eaten by an orc NPC, and the player complains "Gygax is playing too rough."

The Sort of Person Who Writes Books on the Problem of Pain responds: "He had to. The

orc made its roll to hit."

Player: "But why did Gygax  put so many orcs in that room?"

TS: "He had to. It's in the notes on Greyhawk."

P: "Why did he put so many orcs in the notes?"

TS: "He had to. The rules state that for a party of X level you need X number of

orcs."

P: "Why did he make the rules so harsh?"

TS: "He had to. This is a wargame, Mr. Jones."

P:  "Why did he work up a war RPG instead of  < name of some later RPGs  >?"

TS: "This is the only game in town, and the only town. So shut up. QED."

Some Hindu philosophers have some more words for 'God' which might clear this up a

little, and I wish I understood them. :- ) I think it's something like:

Brahman* = Gygax as game inventor

Brahma = Gygax as author of Grayhawk, world creator

Krishna = Gygax as NPC walking in the world, Aslan, etc.

 *BTW, 'brahmin' is a different word, means human of clerical caste

The God whom Lewis is defending, would presumably be Brahma, doing His physical

creation within a system of possibilities/impossibilities He never made? "Cold

Equations"?

Is there a name for the sort of God who chose/meant/intended the 'laws' behind

creation, too? The whole underpinnings of causality, which L keeps invoking as excuse?

Or at least the topology of this particular playing field?

I'm thinking of something pretty sweeping here. : -)  But for analogy, a sci-fi author

is bound by whatever natural laws he gave his secondary world, after he has

established them. But he had a choice before: whether magic works, whether the world

is round or a disk or a ring, etc. It seems to me that the sort of  'sense/nonsense'

laws Lewis is talking about (if not just an oddity of language), would also be

something that a competent Author would have invented in the first place, would have

responsibly designed.

Mary

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"2+2=4." ... "You only say that because you are a mathemetician with ten fingers."

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