/lit/ - Literature

This might be stupid but bear, with me.
When you imagine something, you're running a simulation of it in your head. A simplified simulation because you're not Laplace's Demon, but a simulation nonetheless.
Now, how would it be in a perfect imagination? The imagination of Laplace's Demon, even - a processor capable of calculating every possible detail. The simulation would be perfect, if you imagined a universe for long enough, you'd eventually imagine minds within that universe, too. Separate (observable) fully conscious minds existing within yours. As far as they're concerned, the imagined universe is the universe. There's no way in or out, no boundaries. The definition of "real" and "imaginary" is only an order of magnitudinal complexity.

Consider "God". Being omniscient, omnipotent and all that, I think it's fair to assume he has such an imagination. Even so, if he wants to know what's going to happen in the future, he has to think about it. He has to imagine it. Absolutely any thought that goes through his "mind" exists in a fully realised sense, certainly from our point of view. So even with the best intentions, in order to think of a universe where there is no evil, no suffering etc, he has to consider each possible variation of the universe, see where it goes before deciding which one to "create". But, in imagining them, they are created.

Particularly if he's omniscient, by definition he has to have perfect knowledge of all possible universes and all possible evils, in which case all those things exist because they're in his "head".

I think really the crux of the matter, which I've arrived at before is that regardless of whether or not God exists or is good or anything, the attributes omniscience and omnipotence are mutually exclusive.
derp