Brad Ideas - Can you be merely "influenced" by God? - Comments

woops

che — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 11:46:00 -0800

That was me. I didn't mean to be anonymous.

Not just Gog, but everything...

Anonymous — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 11:02:33 -0800

This is a great blog. I have spent, in the past three days, quite a bit of time reading about a show that hasn't been on for over two years. A show that during its initial run -- at least until the escape from New Caprica -- I believed to be the best show broadcast on American television.

And I found that you really nailed one of many cruxes of the shows ultimate failure. While logically, I agree that the idea that A Wizard... er... God Did It should invalidate the struggles of the characters, this wasn't the final dagger in the heart for me. I've enjoyed reading the debate on whether this Gog knows ALL futures, THE future, chooses to ignore the future while simultaneously planting specific visions and coordinates in the past that will come into play in the future. But the biggest failing in the final episode, to me, was the stupid flashbacks.

I want to say more about the Gog stuff, but I have to bring up this flashback business. Here are character's we've followed for four seasons and a miniseries. Until the final season, they mostly behaved as we'd come to expect, and their relationships and sense of self were clearly defined. The drama of these characters came largely from the "our civilization just got toasted and we're stuck in space without a home" set up of the show, though back story like "My actions led to the death of my lover/your son/your brother," and "I've never been a leader, but here I am... also, I have cancer," provided for more personal drama within the "OMG, we're out of water and fuel and we're getting attacked by our own creations again and again and again," plots.

During the last two episodes, we are given all these looks into the characters before the start of the series, in moments that one is meant to assume are important to who those characters are today, where they are, the choices (assuming they have a choice) that they've made. But they waited until literally the last two episodes of the show to give us this back story. That means, for four seasons we've been working under different assumptions about who these characters are. That means for four seasons we've had an idea of how these relationships should resolve and why they're important, but suddenly, well past the 11th hour, we're given new information to consider, that is meant to hold weight, that is meant to make the conclusion emotionally satisfying on a character level. If these flashbacks AREN'T important to the resolution of the story, then why are we seeing them? And why are we seeing them at the last possible moment? The revelation of Laura Roslin losing her sisters and mother in a car accident doesn't ACTUALLY mean anything to me in the context of the series. Does knowing that make her motivations or character more meaningful? No. It feels like sloppily inserted extra drama that holds no baring on the impending confrontation and last huzzah of the Galactica. It can only be there, in my opinion, to try to add some sort of emotional resonance to a season that just couldn't get it together.

Then we have ol' Bill Adama considering taking a private sector job. What on... Earth(??) is this sequence for? When the show begins, Adama's already got enough going on. He's commanding an old bucket of bolts that's about to be decommissioned, he has an estranged relationship with his family, and a dead son. During the course of the show, this good old soldier assumes command of a fleet, struggles with his role as commander of a single ship and as protector of the human race, butts heads with civilian leadership and military leadership about philosophy and command and theology, makes up with fights with and makes up with again and fights with his son and his "adoptive daughter," lets go of his ex-wife and struggles with feelings for the president, moves from hating those THINGS to making one of those things an officer and a trusted confident... this guy has no shortage of drama and choices to make. Why give us this irrelevant scene about some career quandary? It doesn't make the man more complex, it's just a waste of time. Was this really just to remind us about Caprica so we might tune into that train wreck of a show? Frankly, I was far more interested in how Bill Adama was feeling knowing that his ship was just about at the end of the road, getting ready to go into one last battle, assuming it was a suicide mission. He had finally accepted love from Roslin. His best and oldest friend is not only a toaster, but is an ancient cyborg/alien/thingy from a mythical 13th colony planet (which was destroyed by war in the distant past). And that trouble-making, unconventional, hell of a pilot he bonded with after the death of his son? Yeah, she's back from the dead. Inexplicably. And they decided to spend time showing me a guy who wasn't sure whether or not to leave the military, YEARS AGO!? WHAT?

And then of course there's the Lee/Kara scene. This scene suggests there's been something between the two all along. That's not impossible. They obviously have chemistry, which we see in the miniseries, the moment Lee visits Kara in the brig. And they have a complex back story. But this scene... I can't help but feel like they're setting up the idea that "these two just never seem to connect" so that the eventual resolution of that relationship -- which I might add is Kara "Starbuck" Star of the Show Thrace simply disappearing after a cut -- might fit into the larger pattern. I'll be honest, if Kara is going to be an angel and disappear at the end of the series, fine (not really, but, okay), but resolving that relationship with basically a cut-away shot? That's it? I followed these two characters for four years for that? You couldn't even hold on the shot of her looking at him before the cut away, give some effing gravity to the moment? Anyway, I feel like the flashbacks of this scene are designed specifically to get you ready for that scene, and/or to give you SOME kind of moment of Apollo and Starbuck on-screen together... which, incidentally, happened about four times during the entire season. Lame. If you want my theory, it's that the staff was feeling abused by all the complaining and hating on the "marital issues" arc during season 3, and in an attempt to get away from that, they eschewed all relations between Kara and Lee for the final season. Despite the fact that the first two seasons of the show were built heavily on the web of relations between Kara and Lee and Roslin and Adama (and of course Gaius and Six). Heck, in general it seems like they couldn't figure out how to use Starbuck during this season, and my understanding is even Katee Sackoff didn't know what they were doing with her character. It's a bad sign when your actress comes to you and says she doesn't know what's going on with her character.

I'd say that about 50% of my disappointment with the season finale came from the above mentioned stupid flashbacks.

Now, let's get back to Gog...

The Opera House. That's IT? That's what the vision was referring to? That's so... disappointingly... pedestrian. It's not even metaphoric, it's just like a straight simile or something. A literal translation. A synonym. Something. That's the vision they've all been having? It's sooooo meaningless. It's just, "oh, you guys will get that baby, and then you'll all be standing around in the same place." Wow. Way to take the wind out of the mystical sails. It completely reeks of "crap, we put this thing in there, we didn't really know what it was going to mean, and now we're forced to write something that it could be about."

The people who have had the visions. Initially Baltar had the visions. Okay, the guy was touched in the head. Either he was literally being visited by a sexy-angel, he had contracted some sort of nano-insanity-virus, or he was just a mad scientist. He's allowed to have visions. And we're allowed to never really know what those were about (frankly, if Baltar had eventually converted to belief outside of science based solely on his imaginary friend, his ego, and his interpretation of extraordinary events, I would have liked that better). Then, Roslin starts having the SAME dream. Whoa... freaky. She's on crazy drugs, and becomes an ardent believer in the prophecies. She also gets a cylon blood transfusion. I don't want to be the guy that brings up the cylon STD theory again, but, up until that point, everybody having the dream has had exposure to cylon bodily fluids. Sharon also has the dream. The dream is still open to interpretation at that point and could either be a vision or the result of some sort of programming. Which is nice. I liked that the show was doing the "this could be science, this could be god" thing. It was also leaving its own prophecies open to interpretation. Were the "serpents, two and ten" the snakes Roslin saw, or the Viper squadron Baltar guided to the tyllium refinery? Was the dying leader Roslin? Or were Baltar's psychotic episodes symptomatic of a brain tumor? Dementia? Was he to be the leader? Was the Galactica itself? Everything was open-ended. The way that mysticism should be handled in a sci-fi show that's meant to parallel our own existence. If there is DEFINITELY beyond the shadow of a doubt a Gog, then I find that the link between their world and mine is a bit more tenuous.

The Song. Oh man. I can't blame season 4 for this. I have to blame Season 3. During the season finale, there's some excitement afoot, and suddenly they start playing Bear McCreary's version of All Along The Watchtower. I give him credit for designing a version that is neither the Dylan nor the Hendrix version. But, every BSG fan in the world at that moment knew something had fundamentally shifted in the BSG world. There was earth music. What could it mean? As you pointed out, this made the idea that the series took place in the future almost a certainty, which surprised me, as I assumed they were going to do the "in the past" angle. More importantly, it introduced a MYSTERY (tm) that they would then have to resolve. WHY did all the cylons hear that song? Why THAT song? It was a mystery the writers did not seem to be up for. Perhaps this was part of Moore's famous "we're making it up as we go" style (as this season seems to be where they strayed from the series bible). But it was a huge mistake. It became one of the biggest contrivances of the show. Brad has already fully explained how coincidental and/or indicative of a predetermined fate this song is. The jump coordinates. In a song. That was played by Sam Anders (the biggest RetCon character since Jengo Fett/Boba Fett). Thousands of years ago. That against all odds, when punched into a Colonial nav computer will take the ship to Earth. Seriously. That's some hand of Gog ish right there. Or it's the biggest coincidence ever. But given the bizarre fixation on the song, it seems unlikely to have been set up as a coincidence. Given that the woman who punches in the coordinates is back from the dead, and has remembered her father playing the same song from thousands of years ago on a distant planet, that could only be located by way of finding a resurrected Viper and its pilot floating out in space.

Ugh.

Yeah. Unlike some fans, I was fine with the show including some mystical and paradoxical elements. Humans are constantly dealing with the need to balance what we observe with what we believe. And with the fact that so much is unknowable. A show that portrays a set of events that can be read from a variety of perspectives is a show that is doing well to acknowledge that. As it did with political and social issues, where often the area was gray, and major characters would come down on both sides of a debate, one would hope the show could be equally interpreted when it came to issues of belief. I would have loved it if one viewer could say, "there is no god nor are there gods in the Galactica universe" while another could say, "Of course there is." And they could have a lengthy debate on how the different elements could be interpreted in support of one thing or another.

But the show began to take sides. It brought Kara back from the dead, but insisted she wasn't a cylon. It even for a moment suggested that maybe she was HALF Cylon, but then axed that. Indeed, having Starbuck as a Cylon would have been a predictable, but workable revelation. If she dies. And resurrects having been to Earth, it might stand to reason that there is some sort of resurrection facility on Earth. The Final Five are then somehow linked to Earth. This was initially my theory, though I hadn't expected them to be ancient cylons, but rather cylons from part of the 12 that just split off on their own. Though, to be fair, in order to be more in keeping with the "All of this has happened before..." line, it should have been one, 13th model that was the one they never spoke about, and that split off.

As far as I'm concerned, the show ended after Unfinished Business.

Word.

The God, Angels, and Characters in Battlestar Galactica

The Zeitgeist — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 15:09:38 -0700

My THEORY on the whole God and angels issue is a bit simpler than all of your delving into the various archetypes of religious deities. 1- angels are future selves of people. 2- gog is the head writer. One somewhat leads into the other.

First, the angels- I think that the angel versions of Gaius and Six are simply the future angel versions of Gaius and Six. They died in the future on earth after the series was done. They have already lived the future. They KNOW what will happen. They know there is a God because they spoke to his angels and were resurrected by him. They lived with each other for a long time, so they know each other and what the other needs, they love each other. Thus, they are the perfect people for god to send back and craft their past counterparts into the people they will need to be. I mean Kara was resurrected as an angel and god gave her a spaceship, its not too far fetched to believe god could send Gaius and Six as his angel representatives back in time to affect their past selves. Thus, the reason why Six makes love to Gaius all the time in his head, is not JUST because she is a whorish angel, but also because she actually loves him. Also, she/he knows when and what their past selves will need to do, because she/he saw it happen before and saw who they will become. (Example: this is kind of like in Bill and Ted's excellent adventure when the future Bill & Ted help their past selves get out of jail by leaving a stereo of themselves singing. They knew what would happen if they did it, because they lived it.) Also, this would explain why 150,000 years in the future the two angels are still in Gaius and Six's bodies, even though there is noone around who would recognize them. They are in those bodies because they are their bodies.

Second- Theory on who is Gog? To me the ending of the series kind of gives away what and who gog is. When angel Gaius tells Six that gog doesnt like to be called "god", then he says "oh silly of me" (or whatever). Basically, this is a thickly veiled attempt by the actual head writer of Battlestar Galactica to insert himself into the series. He is the god of the Battlestar Galactica series. He has a real name, (though i dont know the name of the actual writer) and generally doesn't like to be called god by his friends most likely. But Gaius realizes in his head after telling Six not to call him god, that the writer of Battlestar Galactica also wrote the line where six called him god. So it is silly of him to try and correct her, when technically the god himself made her do it. Thus, everything is absolutely controlled by god, and he is quite cruel to his creations, and does have a sick sense of humor, but he also has a plan, and he has been watching all of his creations closely. Basically, the show breached the 4th wall without saying it out-loud, and tried to give us other more alluring "outs" which we could try to reason out (like many of the other people on this post have). (Example: in the graphic novel "Animal Man" when Grant Morrison literally wrote himself into the book and had a conversation with his novel's hero Animal Man. Or how Deadpole in Marvel comics knows that he is a comic book character). Also, in 150,000 years the Angels still look exactly like Gaius and Six. There is no-one left alive who would recognize them in that form, so why do they still look like that? (regardless of whether they are simply angels and not future versions of their past selves. Wouldnt they switch forms somewhat in 150,000 years? Get a little tired of the same suit?)They look like this simply because WE the Audience would recognize them, it is not a god acting within the realms of the universe, it is the writer self imposing himself into the story, so that we the viewers might recognize him as the god.(I mean this is obvious in some ways but tricky in others)

Overall, gog is the main writer of Battlestar Galactica, so you as the character are not merely influenced by gog, he writes exactly what you do. However, in that world, you might think you did have free will. Thus, Gog may or may not know what you are going to end up doing later, but when it comes, he will write it so that it looks like he knew all along. Booyah!(The real 5th cylon is YOU!) (again, just a theory)

A simpler solution

Amir Abiri — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 03:53:44 -0700

I can't believe I am trying to help the religious solve the problems with their stupid and fragile theories, but I guess there is some intellectual entertainment is this exercise... Anyway, I think there is a simpler solution to the problem of the omniscient god and free will: the omniscient god doesn't just know "the" future, he knows all futures.

In other words the universe is non-deterministic, hence there is free will. We can choose, and our choices can change the course of history. However, the omniscient god knows all of the possible infinite parallel futures, regardless of which exact path is realized.

Silly, but solves the problem. However it does raise another interesting question: is this really an all-knowing god? Is knowing all possible outcomes of an unpredictable event, without knowing which one will take place - equal to knowing the future?

Great blog BTW.

I would like it to be this way

brad — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 08:23:41 -0800

But the problem is so much of the plot hinged on that damn song, the song that contained in it a series of jump coordinates. Problem is we are told throughout the series how fickle jump coordinates are. Get them wrong and end up very far away. And they depend both on where you are and where you are going, they are not just a coordinate for a target.

So the numbers Starbuck punches in from the song only work if the ship is in exactly the place it is when she punches them in. Not something Gog can predict if Gog is granting humans true free will — being unpredictable even to Gog.

This is the worst one, but the others are also bad. The opera house vision seems hard to accept if the humans did not need to follow a specific path. Had the vision been of some grand and general thing, it would have been fine, but in fact it was of something trivial — the arrangement of people in a room when certain people enter carrying a certain child they have been chasing.

So while I would love a Gog that is not all-knowing, that’s not what we were given here.

Of Mice and Gog

Schmoker — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 07:18:46 -0800

I don't want to get into a point by point defense of BSG's use of Gog (spoiler: I just reread this, and I kind of did). It was a great show that stumbled towards the end, and my problems with it came out all throughout the fourth season (which was wildly uneven, and even flat out bad sometimes), but I actually liked much of the ending, for the most part, and have a viewpoint that accepts Gog without denying free will. My view may be hogwash, but here it is for better or for worse. And don't anyone bitch about pronouns please. If I use "He" when I mean Gog, so be it. I don't really look at Gog, or God, as having gender, should He or She even exist, thank you very much. I just use a pronoun for simplicity's sake.

Think of a buggy computer program, and there you have Man. Yes, Gog can see the myriad possibilities that make up the future, but that does not mean he knows which path the future will take, because he introduced into the equation this pain in ass program he called Man. Gog designed Man, and if he wanted to design us so that we could confound him from time to time, what is so hard to believe about that? This is Gog we are talking about. Gog can do whatever the hell he wants. The idea that a Supreme Being HAS to know what every response to every action will be denies the fact that the being is supreme. Gog could make Man any way Gog sees fit, so that means that Gog could set up Man so that Gog could be surprised every once in a while.

After all, sometimes it has got to be boring being Gog, don't you think?

So, Gog knows us inside and out, and he obviously has the upper hand in pushing us in any direction He pleases, but that supposes that he even wants to push in exactly one direction. Perhaps Gog doesn't mind aiding man from time to time, but in the end let's say that Gog wants Man to stand or fall on his own, because that was why Gog gave Man the ability to confound Gog in the first place. Gog wanted to see what this new type of being he nurtured from the much and the ooze could accomplish.

So, how do you do that? Well, mostly you would think that you would stay out of the way, letting Man rise and fall on our own merits. But let's say that billions of years later Man has gotten himself into such a pickle that all of the great work that Gog did---a trillion years worth, perhaps---is about to be flushed down the galactic toilet when Man renders himself extinct. Maybe making Man in the first place was a real bitch, even for Gog, and Gog doesn't want to see all that work go to waste. Who the hell knows? This is Gog, so how could we know?

Maybe Gog just made a bet with a different God--say, the God of Lost, who we will call Gol--that Man would make it long term, and so Gog is cheating a little bit to make certain He beats Gol (who we will say is a She) out of the fifty billion galaxies they have riding on the bet.

So, for whatever reason, Gog decides Man is worth saving but only if Man is willing to meet Gog halfway. We can assume that Gog knows all the myriad outcomes of his various possible interventions, so he can easily set up markers and guides to help us along our way. But because Man is at least somewhat unpredictable to Gog (because Gog gave Man that power), maybe Gog sets up millions and millions of these markers, knowing that only a handful will be used depending on the path that Man ends up choosing to take. But since He's Gog, that is not a problem. Gog can set up an infinite amount of markers and guides should He choose to do so. He can use people, places, things, memories, dreams, visions, planets, stars, star clusters, galaxies, whatever-the-frak-he-pleases.

Starbuck the Angel-in-Training? Who is to say there weren't a hundred million potential Starbucks out there? Or a billion? Who is to say that Roslyn was the only candidate to be the dying leader? Perhaps there were many of those as well? This is Gog we are talking about. Just because the idea of how to do all of this baffles us, what does that matter? I'm just trying to set up a plausible reality where there is a Gog that can influence but still allow for free will while doing so.

Ok, don't worry, I'm getting somewhere.

So, yeah, Head Six could say exactly what Gog knows will cause Baltar to act exactly how Gog wants him to act, and there goes free will right out the air lock. But who says that is what Head Six did? Perhaps Gog had HS saying exactly what Gog knew would cause Baltar to merely walk the razor between the right action that saves humanity and the wrong one that dooms us? If Gog knows exactly what to say in order to get us to do exactly what he wants, thus negating free will, then obviously Gog knows exactly what to say to force us to make our own decision, thus ensuring free will shines through. Sure, Gog is lending a hand, but who is to say that hand was one that we had to accept? Gog may have been giving us that hand we needed while still allowing us to reject it if we choose to.

In other words, if Gog can force us to do what Gog wants, then Gog can obviously allow us to choose for ourselves if that is what Gog wants.

BSG never conclusively said that Gog made everything happen; it only conclusively said that Gog was involved and helping. Some people chose to believe that any divine intervention negates man's existence. Others believe that without diving intervention man is nothing. I tend to walk the middle, thinking that a little diving intervention is not necessarily a bad thing, and that little bit of it can go a long way and isn't necessarily cheating (unless you have a bet with Gol going on, in which case She is going to be mighty pissed if She finds out).

The song? The opera house? These weren't the most well thought out over-story points by the writers, but let's not blame Gog for the failures of Ronald D. Moore. And who is to say that these were not all things that Gog set up because he knew that IF we accepted his help, then we would eventually reach the moments where they would come in handy? And maybe there were many other songs and visions at the ready just in case one of the other (millions? billions?) of possible angels-in-training/leaders ended up surviving to the end. Who knows how many other people had lives and back stories that fit perfectly into any number of Gog scenarios but didn't survive the Fall or were never needed? Gog could have loaded the deck (again, where was Gol, and how come she wasn't watching that deck more closely??) long before the first person on Kobol discovered fire.

Anyway, just because Gog was whispering in Baltar's ear doesn't mean that what Gog was whispering was designed to force it all to Gog's preordained conclusion. It was Gog opening the door, while still leaving to us the decision as to whether or not we walk on through. Obviously, if we proved ourselves worthy along the way, Gog may decide to step up His involvement, deciding that being so close to the end merited a little extra help (thus Baltar gets his "proof" right at the end), but I still don't see how that negates free will.

Look, it's all retconning. I know that. And personally, I'm not that invested in it all, because BSG let me down that last year by not being as compelling and entertaining as the show I had loved up to that point. The show just wasn't that good all season long, but it didn't let me down because of the Gog business, and I think it is because I can wrap my head around the idea that Gog's desires and our free will can coexist if Gog decides to let them coexist. Gog may have been ready to cut bait at any time, letting humaninty go down the tubes of extinction and starting over from scratch, but that's a lot of work to let slip away without at least trying to help out a little bit wherever and whenever Gog felt it was appropriate.

Basically, there are a lot of reasons why BSG disappointed me in the final year, but that "God did it" wasn't one of them, because I do not believe Gog did do it, or at least not all of it. The existence of a God does not have to mean that Man is a puppet on a string. A puppet maybe, but I think the strings were probably cut long ago. Gog, or God (or even Gol--she who is most beautiful of all), can choose to get involved directly, indirectly, or anything in between. And it is not beyond the realm of possibility to believe that Gog also created a creature whose actions Gog could predict but not know for certain. Sort of like Man trying to predict where electrons will end up during a double slit experiment. We can chart the probability, but we can't know for certain.

Omniscience is a silly concept even for a God. But even if we accept that idea of God, that doesn't mean that every God in every piece of fiction has to be completely omniscient. And it also doesn't mean that there cannot be graded levels of knowledge that appear to be omniscience but are not. Sure, knowing something that MIGHT happen a million years in the future sure seems omniscient if it comes to pass, but we don't know that Gog hadn't planned for any number of other outcomes other than the one that played out on BSG. And just because this particular Gog could see what was probably coming down the road thousands or millions of years in the future also doesn't mean that Gog had covered every base forever and ever into infinity.

Look--I really don't think BSG's failures all boil down to the fact that God was involved (except to those people who cannot emotionally accept even the possibility of a God existing at all---Atheism is new Fundamentalism, people), but that the show itself just wasn't very good in the final season. I don't get involved with shows for mythology and over-story, but, rather, for characters and entertainment. BSG was wildly entertaining for three years, then not so much once it had to start attending to the mythology that the (occasionally) psychotic fans demanded be attended to. Just like Lost, BSG stopped being a show about a group of characters and their story (and stories), but instead became about putting all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together, which is almost always a dramatically inert exercise.

Sure, it could have been better. Much better. Sure, it suffered a lot, and they cut some corners, and some things turned out to be dead ends. But the idea that you can write an essay "proving" that God couldn't have done it, or that if God did do it then God had to do it this one certain way, which then negates all free will and character, is just silly. You don't know God anymore than I do. You have a concept based on the idea that an all powerful, all knowing God couldn't intervene without forcing everyone to do exactly what It wanted, but that just doesn't make any sense. An all powerful, all knowing God could do anything he or she wanted. They could force, or they could nudge, or they could abstain. Or they could do all three, depending on what God's mood was on that particular day, or whether or not God was out of coffee and in a cranky mood.

I don't believe, but I don't disbelieve. As Heinlein said, we'll all find out soon enough, so what's the rush to come to a decision? Denying without proof is no less ridiculous than believing without proof. And trashing a television show because you believe you know exactly how a God's actions would or would not affect man is no less ridiculous than either of those other alternatives.

It wasn't entertaining, fair enough. It wasn't entertaining to me for much of the final season, either (although a good part of the finale was very moving and far better than the handful of episodes that preceded it), but don't pretend that one story point about Gog was the only reason you are not happy with the show, because that just sounds childish and petulant.

And only Gods are allowed to be petulant children.

The knowledge per se isn't the problematic thing.

Chris M. — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 01:50:51 -0700

Consider the logic like this: for any being to have omniscient knowledge of the future, the future must be knowable. If future events are knowable, that means they are predetermined. And if future events are predetermined, then how can I possibly have any choice about what my future actions will be?

Thus it's not omniscience per se that precludes free will... it's the very possibility of omniscience, at least as something that transcends time. (And this is why the "God who chooses not to know" concept isn't an effective loophole, BTW.)

I'm acknowledging that in

Kamil — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 21:42:26 -0700

I'm acknowledging that in leaving my two cents, I obviously want to seem smart and curious. And my following response, though dismissive, is honestly asked. God is generally acknowledged to be omniscient and omnipotent. I would think that if God was just one of those things, it would be pretty easy to be the other. Thus the question: "If god whispers to you something that it omnisciently knows will make you turn right, are you an instrument or merely being influenced?”

really reduces to "Can a being that can do anything do the impossible ie two mutually exclusive things simultaneously like influencing and directing?"

Can someone who knows everything solve a paradox? Well if he knows everything, he should have the answer to any problem...but a paradox is a problem without a logical solution...but in knowing everything he would know how to circumvent causal relationships...but...

It's fun for a while, but it's been done before. How much time can we devote to (pardon the paradox) know the unknowable?

Thanks a lot!

Anonymous — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 15:05:18 -0700

Brad, thanks very much for the great reading and commentary on BSG over the past few years. It's been challenging, thought provoking and a lot of fun! I count myself as one who was also very dissappointed with the conclusion; but I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

Cheers!

Grace

Anonymous — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 16:34:51 -0700

There is a comment in many religions that we are "saved by grace". Technically, ego gets in the way between the self and reality. There is little the broken clock can do to fix itself but by letting go, dropping all ego driven preconceptions and clinging, ones "Buddha nature" might emerge. This is being "saved by grace". God is not necessarily required and this principle can be tested in everyday situations so should keep atheists and scientists happy as well. I see no reason why this can't operate in the reverse direction with free will and omniscience.

"Understanding" and "solving" are merely perspectives. There is nothing to understand or solve. This is counter-intuitive to the ego which finds letting go of preconceptions and clinging very difficult. It wants to understand or more properly impose understanding, or solve or more properly bend the world to its liking. However, once one grasps this and stops being such an egotistical putz things get a little easier. Again, this is why Buddhism among other religions comment that the short cut is the long path. The reasoning is poetic but quite sound.

Not to be resolved here

brad — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 12:01:21 -0700

This debate won’t get resolved here. As for the “how come?” — the basic answer is that that people ask how, if god already knows that you will turn left at the end of the street, can you choose to turn right? Or is your future predetermined? Some see this as a conflict with their concept of free will, and some don’t. However, that’s not the subject of this article, which is “If god whispers to you something that it omnisciently knows will make you turn right, are you an instrument or merely being influenced?”

Ineffable

Anonymous — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 08:07:23 -0700

I find it remarkable that the thinkers behind the Tao grasped so many things. They understood that the substance of reality ran through everything, and that words were mere symbols wrapped around this unknowable reality. Plato had some insight into this as did more recent philosophers.

Some might consider any statement on these issues to be arrogant. Whether it's a priest or a scientist making proclomations based on less than certain understanding is a little hasty and almost always wrong. At best it's no more than a guess in the hope you get lucky.

One thing is sure: nobody knows anything. ;-)

Free will isn't determined by knowledge!

TJ — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 02:23:19 -0700

"Many religions struggle with the concept of a god that is so omniscient, it knows the future. This sometimes is described as being eternal, existing outside of time. The problem is the conflict between this, and free will. I find the two to be contradictory"

How come? Imagine a camera that, at any moment can go to any point in time (past or future point alike, doesn't matter) and go back to it's owner. Whatever happened or will happen is no secret to camera owner. However - where's his influence in the actions taken?

Knowledge doesn't influence anything (not in that way, at least). I know 2 times 2 gives 4, but in no way I determine what the outcome on that calculator will be. That's determined by something else entirely.

You are definitely right in

One-Note Pony — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 07:25:59 -0700

You are definitely right in that Yahweh was a less omniscient god; in the OT Yahweh is often like Greek gods in that he seems to need to have humans do his will, and goes around doing things like, well, wrestling with people, physically. But I disagree that my postulated god is not the Christians' god. Even many fundamentalist Christians effectively acknowledge that he is *not* omnipotent in their belief that he is limited by his own nature...that, for example, he cannot lie.

As for "demand[ing] it in order to not have slaves", that's exactly the point. God already has angels to do his will and sing his praises - humans must be meant for something else, and so there must be a possibility of failure.

This in no way takes away from your points that it's an awful lot of divine intervention for very little purpose, or that divine intervention is device indicating total narrative (and cognitive, IMHO) surrender. All I'm saying is that given a (literary or dramatic) god who can be omniscient and omnipotent and who actually cares about his creations, it is not impossible to imagine why he'd choose to move humans around the chessboard rather than either leave them to their own devices entirely (we've seen where that goes in the BSG universe) or simply bamf the world into his preferred configuration. The idea, I imagine, is that this way humans and Cylons would learn their lesson, though other narrative flaws in the story (as you have pointed out) actually demonstrate that this is not so.

Proof by Demonstration

Anonymous — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:28:13 -0700

Um, Brad. You need to look again at the Christian God, and check to see if you understand what wilfull blindness is.

Unless this is your way of proving the point to yourself...

Can you be merely "influenced" by God?

brad — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:48:54 -0700

Discussion of yesterday’s mega-review of the ending of Battlestar Galactica included much focus on my negative view of the rule of a god as an intervening character in fiction. Many readers feel that the God of Galactica (Gog) did not so much control events as influence them. This suggests the following sidebar on religion:

Many religions struggle with the concept of a god that is so omniscient, it knows the future. This sometimes is described as being eternal, existing outside of time. The problem is the conflict between this, and free will. I find the two to be contradictory, especially when it comes to the concept found in many Christian sects that free will is most important with respect to your choice about whether to believe in god or not, or whether to be good or evil. The religions say you were created by god, who knew what choices you would make before creating you, but you are also punished for those choices. Even though, if asked, “can I choose another future than the one god knows I will choose, making him wrong?” they will say no.

However, the religious often do not see the same contradiction. We will not resolve this conflict here. I want to address the more direct question of a god who talks to people, and intervenes directly in the mortal world, as Gog does.

Gog appears in the minds of Baltar and many other characters. Gog also directly affects physical events, doing things like returning Starbuck in a new Viper.