To add to my last comment, the article at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz-modal/ mentions that Leibniz was among those philosophers who distinguished between necessary and contingent truths, and only granted God the power to change contingent ones. Here's a relevant bit from the article:
Consider the way Leibniz distinguishes necessary and contingent truths in ยง13 of the *Discourse on Metaphysics*. The one whose contrary implies a contradiction is absolutely necessary; this deduction occurs in the eternal truths, for example, the truths of geometry. The other is necessary only *ex hypothesi* and, so to speak, accidentally, but it is contingent in itself, since its contrary does not imply a contradiction. And this connection is based not purely on ideas and God's simple understanding, but on his free decrees and on the sequence of the universe. (A VI iv 1547/AG 45) So, what's wrong with adopting Tegmark's solution which takes our universe as a Platonic mathematical structure, so that all truths about it are necessary ones too? Then there would be no need for a creator God, though one might still talk about a sort of Spinoza-esque pantheist God (especially if one also prefers panpsychism as a solution to the metaphysical problem of the relation between consciousness and third-person objective reality) On Sunday, December 1, 2013, Jesse Mazer wrote: > Most theistic philosophers and theologians who have considered the issue > agree that God did not create the laws of math and logic, and does not have > the power to alter them (or any other "necessary" truths, which for theists > might include things like moral rules, or qualities of God such as > omnipotence). Do you think the Mandelbrot set, or any other piece of pure > mathematics, functions without a government, or are mathematical rules > themselves a form of government even if God didn't create them? Certainly > most atheists now think the universe follows mathematical laws, and one > could even adopt Max Tegmark's idea and speculate that our universe is just > another part of the uncreated Platonic realm of mathematical forms. > > > On Sunday, December 1, 2013, Roger Clough wrote: > >> How can a grown man be an atheist ? >> >> An atheist is a person who believes that the universe can >> function without some form of government. >> >> How silly. >> >> >> Dr. Roger B Clough NIST (ret.) [1/1/2000] >> See my Leibniz site at >> http://independent.academia.edu/RogerClough >> >> >> ------------------------------ >> <http://www.avast.com/> >> >> This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! >> Antivirus<http://www.avast.com/>protection is active. >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Everything List" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. >> > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
