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 [email protected]. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> 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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
