state of almost deserving worship (almost duplicating God). This doesn't entail that
there's no maximum state of deserving almost-worship, but it surely suggests it.
Still, it's not implausible that in some cases likeness to God is a granular matter, that is,
comes in discrete degrees, with a maximum just shy of duplication. For we can describe
such a scale: just like God save for knowing four public truths God knows, or three, or
twoOn such scales, if there are maximal states, they are along the lines of being just like
God save for not knowing one public truth an omniscient being would know, or being
unable to do one task omnipotence, could accomplish, or being able to commit one sin. I
doubt that beings like this really are possible—what could keep someone who has all
eternity to figure things out, is omnipotent, and knows all the other public truths from
learning the last? Be that as it may, someone with just one of these defects would be more
like God than someone with all three. But which defect leaves one closest to God? Would
someone not quite omnipotent be more like God than someone not quite omniscient?
Someone is most like a perfect being if he or she is unlike it only in the least important
(“perfecting”) respect, and so this amounts to the question Which is least important:
omniscience, omnipotence, or moral perfection? Given the shakiness of all intuitions
here, the best reply may be that each one-defect being is more like God in his or her
nondefective respects than anything defective in these respects is, but there's no answer to
the question Which is most like God overall? This sparks a suggestion: perhaps each one-
defect being is in a state with no greater short of being God, and so is maximally Godlike
short of duplication. But this suggestion is correct only if there are no relevant gradations
within each one-defect state, and that's questionable.
Consider possible beings just one truth short of public-truth omniscience. Some don't
know this truth, some that. Which truth they don't know can affect their Godlikeness.
Some truths are more important than others. So the lack of some truths is more important
than the lack of others: it seems less important that God know the weight of a particular
gnat in early Mesopotamia than that God know that floods kill. It's more Godlike
(“perfecting”) to get important things right. So beings are less Godlike the more
important the truths they lack. Again, lacking some truths entails greater cognitive defect
than lacking others: not knowing about the gnat is minor, while not knowing that modus
ponens is valid is major. But it would take some doing to show that there are least
important truths or lacks or defects. If some truths or lacks are more important than
others, none are least important, and a being is the more Godlike in knowledge the less
important the truth it lacks (or the less important the lack of this truth, or the defect it
entails), then not all not-quite-omniscient beings are equally Godlike and there probably
is no such thing as a most-Godlike not-quite-omniscient being. Like comments apply to
lacks of power and abilities to sin.
The more like God in greatness-relevant ways, the closer to deserving worship. So if
there is no greatest nonduplicative likeness to God, for every possible being deserving
almost-worship, there is a state something can be in that would put it closer to deserving
worship, and so make it deserve more or greater almost-worship. If possibly God exists,
then, there is no state than which there is no greater for almost-Gods. Of course, if God is
impossible, then again no possible being can duplicate Him, and the points just made
about greater likeness to God remain, for they did not turn on the claim that God possibly
exists. Possible items can be graded for likeness with impossible ones; the more nearly
circular a thing, the more it is like a circular square.
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