Kevin's Watch

I've been thinking about the whole free will thing again, but this time with reference to the Creator, rather than TC. I'm not sure logic can or even should be applied here, but let's give it a try...

The Creator's clearly not omnipotent, because if He was, this causes problems with the plot structure. He even owns up to a level of impotence - at the end of Chrons 1, He spells out to TC that He's not all-powerful and cannot save Foamfollower without breaking the Arch of Time.

The Creator's equally as clearly not omniscient, because if He was, there are still major problems with the plot structure - His choosing of TC would have been quite deliberate in the certain knowledge that TC was going to succeed. It's equally spelled out that His "choice" of TC was risk-laden and made in hope, not certainty.

So on that basis, the Creator is either more impotent and/or ignorant than He's letting on, or He's not telling the truth. Perhaps He is omniscient but not omnipotent and just needs the right someone to kick Foul's ass for Him. Perhaps he's just a minor league deity who's not packing much juice. Or perhaps He's amoral and it's all an experiment for Him - like a kid poking an anthill to see what'll happen. None of these alternatives are good news for a supposedly benevolent deity at the best of times... all are bound to get Him/Her/It a load of bad press.

The best I can come up with is this - maybe the Creator's only got qualified omnipotence and omniscience - and yes that's a blatant oxymoron, but bear with me. Maybe the Creator is omnipotent and omniscient except when it comes to all things under the Arch of Time... maybe, to paraphrase the playground paradox, when creating the Land and the Arch, He really did create a rock so heavy that He cannot not lift it.

Or far more likely, He doesn't exist at all...

What's important here is that the Creator is not God. He creates, and he seems to like to preserve what he creates. To do that, he can't reach into it himself, not without destroying that which made him want to preserve his creation to begin with.

I've always...well, not always, but since some time shortly after I read 2nd. C's, lo those many years ago...thought, in brief synopsis form:
Omnipotent: he has that just like any other creator; complete control over what is made. But, once it IS made, if other beings relate to it, he has little to no control over what happens/what is done...except one last omnipotent act: it is his by right, destroy it.
Omniscience: I have a perhaps idiosyncratic interpretation of this word. "All knowing" doesn't mean "knows everything in its entirety." only "knows everything that is knowable. " So, this creator knows everything about everything that ever has been up to this exact moment in time...but NOT the future. IF the future is a knowable/known thing, nothing is living, nothing matters, it's just a machine waiting to break down, no matter how the parts that think they're living in it feel about it.

Orlion wrote:What's important here is that the Creator is not God.

You hit the nail on the head. The Creator is not equivalent to the Christian God.

He's quite possibly an actual ochre-robed bum in our world.

Horrim Carabal wrote:

Orlion wrote:What's important here is that the Creator is not God.

You hit the nail on the head. The Creator is not equivalent to the Christian God.

Yes I'm in entire agreement with you both here.

Vraith wrote: Omnipotence: he has that just like any other creator; complete control over what is made. But, once it IS made, if other beings relate to it, he has little to no control over what happens/what is done.
Omniscience: I have a perhaps idiosyncratic interpretation of this word. "All knowing" doesn't mean "knows everything in its entirety." only "knows everything that is knowable. " So, this creator knows everything about everything that ever has been up to this exact moment in time...but NOT the future.

I'd say that was qualified omnipotence and omniscience Maybe that's the fairest judgement of the ochre-robed mystery man... that is, presuming he's not just Horrim's bum.

TheFallen wrote: I'd say that was qualified omnipotence and omniscience Maybe that's the fairest judgement of the ochre-robed mystery man... that is, presuming he's not just Horrim's bum.

Well, in our world TC is just a leprosy-ridden writer of mediocre fiction. Yet in the Land he carries perhaps the greatest power of them all.

Similarly, I see no problem with the Creator being an actual vagrant in our world.

Horrim Carabal wrote:

TheFallen wrote: I'd say that was qualified omnipotence and omniscience Maybe that's the fairest judgement of the ochre-robed mystery man... that is, presuming he's not just Horrim's bum.

Well, in our world TC is just a leprosy-ridden writer of mediocre fiction. Yet in the Land he carries perhaps the greatest power of them all.

Similarly, I see no problem with the Creator being an actual vagrant in our world.

he certainly doesn't have time for a full time job in the real world.

TheFallen wrote:

Vraith wrote: Omnipotence: he has that just like any other creator; complete control over what is made. But, once it IS made, if other beings relate to it, he has little to no control over what happens/what is done.
Omniscience: I have a perhaps idiosyncratic interpretation of this word. "All knowing" doesn't mean "knows everything in its entirety." only "knows everything that is knowable. " So, this creator knows everything about everything that ever has been up to this exact moment in time...but NOT the future.

I'd say that was qualified omnipotence and omniscience

It is. But to be clear, I think that this is/would be the case for any possible god. He's as much god as any god could be...or maybe a truer way: any god more than this by its nature diminishes us to cogs even if we believe we're watchmakers.

Its an interesting question only hampered by the parameter of the stated " Or ". The creator comes off as " that which Is". ,,a presented , here is the world, now deal with it. As already pointed out, not a perfect world. That the Creator is shabby, a " bum" etc..may be a fitting comment associated to this " world" he has presented to TC.

So perhaps the demagogue of the " presented world" by a demigod, the creator, is what the " mystery man" in ocher is about. Change in this " world" is what TC has been all about. The Creator thus comes across as the acknowledgment of the shabby existence TC has led to that point. The need,, the want,, the challenge to change it all,,is made clear and of course,,it all begins within ones self.

TheFallen wrote:I've been thinking about the whole free will thing again, but this time with reference to the Creator, rather than TC. I'm not sure logic can or even should be applied here, but let's give it a try...

The Creator's clearly not omnipotent, because if He was, this causes problems with the plot structure. He even owns up to a level of impotence - at the end of Chrons 1, He spells out to TC that He's not all-powerful and cannot save Foamfollower without breaking the Arch of Time.

The Creator's equally as clearly not omniscient, because if He was, there are still major problems with the plot structure - His choosing of TC would have been quite deliberate in the certain knowledge that TC was going to succeed. It's equally spelled out that His "choice" of TC was risk-laden and made in hope, not certainty.

So on that basis, the Creator is either more impotent and/or ignorant than He's letting on, or He's not telling the truth. Perhaps He is omniscient but not omnipotent and just needs the right someone to kick Foul's ass for Him. Perhaps he's just a minor league deity who's not packing much juice. Or perhaps He's amoral and it's all an experiment for Him - like a kid poking an anthill to see what'll happen. None of these alternatives are good news for a supposedly benevolent deity at the best of times... all are bound to get Him/Her/It a load of bad press.

The best I can come up with is this - maybe the Creator's only got qualified omnipotence and omniscience - and yes that's a blatant oxymoron, but bear with me. Maybe the Creator is omnipotent and omniscient except when it comes to all things under the Arch of Time... maybe, to paraphrase the playground paradox, when creating the Land and the Arch, He really did create a rock so heavy that He cannot not lift it.

Or far more likely, He doesn't exist at all...

The Creator in the Chrons is not omnipotent in the sense that he cannot affect his Creation without breaking the Arch. However, that doesn't mean he can't do things, but the consequences are unavoidable. But isn't he omnipotent for setting those rules himself? The very capability suggests omnipotence. He can lift the rock, but by his own rules, it breaks in the process. It is not the Creator who is lacking, but the Creation.

edit- I'm just saying, by analogy, that the Christian God (I'm not saying they're the same) is not omnipotent in the sense that He cannot sin. Nevertheless, He is considered omnipotent.

one interpretation i've been fond of was that the vagrant is not the creator. that is, he's some sort of caretaker only. the creator moved on to other projects b/c he suffers no despair.

Possible and an interesting variant, though I think he just created the Earth and the Arch this way purposefully, exactly to be unable to interfere. He wanted a world that could live its own life.

The Creator is a God, but not an all powerful all seeing, all powerful deity like the Christian God. More like the limited gods of ancient legend. It also strikes me that he sucks at worldbuilding, because he made laws that could be broken(and stay broken once broken) and created a world that required an arch of time to keep it in existence. Whereas the God of Christian legend places all of existence within time, including himself, and thus allows himself free action should he choose it.

This Creator is a lot more "'human" than people realize. I think of him more along the lines of a Zeus-type character since we learned that he's involved in a pretty intense love triangle.

That's why I love SRD's use of the word Creator, it allows for a fantastically powerful being but none of the omnipotence and all-powerful contradictions that can arise.

Has anyone considered the possibility the the Creator is from our world as well? After all, TC is a writer who discovered he is the "reincarnation" of the Land's greatest hero. Maybe the Creator is an ordinary man in our world who discovered he could create worlds in the other reality. And his attempt was the world of the Land...

I think this quote explains the Creator quite well.

In [u]Against All Things Ending[/u] was wrote:Hellfire, he muttered in silence. No wonder only people like Roger and creatures like the croyel wanted to be gods. The sheer impotence of that state would appall a chunk of basalt—if the basalt happened to care about anything except itself. Absolute power was as bad as powerlessness for anybody who valued someone else’s peace or happiness or even survival. The Creator could only make or destroy worlds: he could not rule them, nurture them, assist them. He was simply too strong to express himself within the constraints of Time.