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Comment by fnovd | Hacker News Reader

Of course they did. It was heretical to imply that something conceivable by man would be impossible for God to create. If we can imagine it, he can do it. A rather roundabout way of arriving at a theory of parallel universes, but fascinating nonetheless.

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But the fact that we can conceive of it, and that God can create it, does not mean that he did, does it?

I could conceive of another God that is able to destroy God. And since I can conceive of this, then God can create it - but it does not mean that he did.

I could conceive of God just doing nothing, and never creating anything in history eternal. But surely he has created something.

I guess I wonder about can vs did

>But the fact that we can conceive of it, and that God can create it, does not mean that he did, does it?

There was an implicit belief in pre-modern thought that this is the case. That reality is a permutation of all possible forms. It's arguable that evolutionary models are a temporalized version of these beliefs.[1]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_plenitude

Thanks for the link, it looks like interesting reading.

But, how are evolutionary models a version of enumerating all possible forms. The forms accessible to evolution, are not all possible forms but only evolutionary peaks that can be climbed in the fitness landscape.

The worldview gave explanation for why there is gradation between nature's forms. The search for "missing links" predates evolutionary theory. There was an understanding that there are intermediate forms between any two species. Evolution adds a temporal dimension to this worldview where intermediate forms unfold from one another.

It says they believed in the possibility, so it's 'can'.

ah yes, not that they do exist. makes sense thanks

They beloved all sorts of strange stuff, often without any evidence at all.

This is indeed fascinating. Never thought of it this way.

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