Idiots.

Which one shouldn’t confuse with the Soul Train, although I could see where such confusion could arise. I think.

Clearly not, though. Zowie, it’s not even clear who you’re calling an idiot here, but if it was me, then calling me an idiot just for following a theoretical train of thought is out of bounds.

But isn’t he also omniscient? Wouldn’t that preclude unforeseen consequences?

Lift relative to what?

As such, you could probably impose a rule against yourself prohibiting the lifting of a particular rock. Or, for that matter, redefining what it means to ‘lift’ something (to address someone else’s objection).

At that point, although you have the ability to lift the rock, you do not do so as it would break one of your rules.

I should think an omnipotent deity probably conforms to an awful lot of rules, just to avoid total chaos.

I’m happier with that state of affairs, though. I’d be concerned with an omnipotent being that plays favorites.

Er, not like that anyway.

Imagine the greatest conceivable being.
It would be perfect.
Existence is greater and more perfect than non-existence.
Thus, the greatest conceivable being must exist necessarily.

It’s just a word play to make something logical that can’t logically be found, verified, or backed up. Not to say there’s anything wrong with spirituality, before someone gets those panties knotted again. Spirituality does not have to be logical, but facts do, and spiritual beliefs cannot be backed by “fact”, only feeling and experiences.

Fun rejoinder puzzle to bicker over:
1. There’s an exception to every rule.
2. But, there’s a rule that God, a universal truth, exists (if you believe so).
3. If God is the rule that has no exception, and he is the exception to the rule that there is an exception to every rule (perfect), then there can be some universal truths.
4. As there is an exception to the rule that there can be some universal truths, then there must be only universal truths.
5. If there are only universal truths, and God is universal truth, then there is only God.

(And you can thank the Hindus for that). That’s an argument much better derived in symbolic logic, but then you can’t read the horrible awkward phrasing.

Taoists describe God as the “ever-executing non-executor”. Paradoxical to the logical mind, yet very obvious to the spiritual thought. He does all, yet does nothing. That makes sense to me, I haven’t seen the guy’s fuckin’ face in all of eternity. No miracles, no master plan, no interference. Free-will runs the way, but the natural laws and systems of this world are all we know of God.

C.S. Lewis addressed this very point, and sensibly observed that it’s wrong– as he put it, nonsense doesn’t become sense just by putting “God can” in front of it. Or to put it another way, God can do all things, but “all things” doesn’t include non-things like logical contradictions.

Personally, I’d just say that omnipotence is a polite exaggeration. It’s a claim that God has authorial powers over the universe, not that we have God’s user manual and can create logical paradoxes with it.

The idea that God always existed—that nothing created him, he just is—is already a logical contradiction. But people seem to be fine with God pulling that one off somehow. Any explanations are just rationalizations for a concept we have no way of comprehending, and I’d argue that my “sure, he can do X” is just as valid.

Logical contradiction is the heart of paradox — which must be embraced to understand anything else. We could analyze the logic until we’re blue in the face, but once you hit that paradox it’s no longer a two-way street, it forks into a third & unfamiliar road. For instance:

God can make a rock he can’t lift.
God can lift the unliftable rock.

Total contradiction. Now that those two have cancelled one another on a logical level, let’s take the possible third roads:

God can lift the unliftable rock without lifting at all.
God can’t lift the unliftable rock, but he can create something to have it lifted.
God has no desire to create nor lift the unliftable rock.
God make make the unliftable rock, but once lifted the rock is destroyed dues to it fallability.

Once you find the black and the white of a situation, it opens the door to explore the infinite shades of gray. It is that gray that the mind needs to wade through in order to draw any nearer to some sort of truth.

I don’t care for the clean-cut “God can do this & that, and that’s final” mindset. It doesn’t challenge our minds enough. That’s my biggest beef with religion, it’s a “This & That and That’s All” mentality. That temporarily feeds our mind’s hunger for truth, but after it’s digested and shit out we are still left hungry. When more people start letting go of beliefs and begin entertaining ideas, the race might finally start advancing towards an ultimate truth.

Heh.

That said, there’s a strain in the church that doesn’t mind them at all– Tertullian famously commented “I believe *because* it’s impossible.” Some folks kind of get off on having a God that’s defiantly above reason; they’re kind of the wingnuts of theology.

Look, if I say “all things”, I mean “all things”. Because you don’t like my definition of “all”, doesn’t mean you can decide how I am permitted to define it.

1. Our universe is built upon certain immutable laws
a. These laws include stuff like the law of conservation of matter/energy, the gravitational constant, the speed of light.
2. It’s fairly easy to imagine a universe with a different limit on the speed of light, the implications are a bit harder to understand but it’s still simple stuff (simple stuff if you can fully grasp the theories of relativity)
a. We actually do this, we assume the a world with an infinite speed of light in order to avoid bothersome relativity calculations when try to stop a ball from bashing our faces in.
b. Also, you assume parallel lines will always be the same distance apart just like the person you marry will always love you. This may not be true, depending on how the universe is curved they may intersect or diverge if it’s not perfectly flat
3. Why should we assume that logic is a fundamental constant of the universe? Admittedly its hard to imagine a world without logic. However if you live in The United States of America then tuning in to the elections or their coverage should help things.

Also, I think that in the Bible it states that the Universe is a part of God and not the other way around, at any rate is says that God was around be he created either earth, which I see as meaning the universe in general (earth just so happens to be the part we’re most interested in, at least those of us who are well grounded).

Though really, what your points sounds like to me is: “okay they allow this impossible-to-understand concept…okay that one’s good too…yep that checks out…no wait, that one is nonsense.” Why? Because it’s incomprehensible?

“Omnipotent” doesn’t occur in the Bible; the closest is _pantokrator_ which is better translated “ruling over all” (krat- is the same root as in ‘democracy’)– that is, the word says that God is sovereign over everything.

There are plenty uses of “all things”, most of which are pretty clearly hyperbole. E.g. 2 Corinthians 7:14 “We spoke all things to you in truth” does not mean that Paul enumerated everything in this and all other universes; and even Revelation 21:5 “I will make all things new” doesn’t have your meaning; the promise (as other verses make clear) is to remake the earth.

Other Greg’s suggestion that logic doesn’t apply to God makes no sense to me (though I understand it appeals to some people). If we can’t use logic about God, it’s not worth talking about him, since there’s no way to evaluate any statement.

We can get things wrong, of course. But if we throw out reason, we’re going to go wrong even faster, as there is no longer any way to evaluate statements about God… anyone’s statement pulled from their ass can be set up as absolute truth (you can see it happening with fundamentalists).

A digression worth reading is that book ‘Under the Banner of Heaven’ by Krakauer. Although it looks at Mormonism. The closing chapters take a look at the reasonableness of someone claiming to be compelled by God. They must be insane. But if you call them insane then isn’t any Man who claims to know the will or speak the word of God insane?

The question then being, whether a statement about God is pulled from the ass or from the head, can you tell the difference? Seems their either all Reasonable or their all Insane.

You just used reason to divine God’s intent. Why stop at his attributes?

“Seems their either all Reasonable or their all Insane.”

Are there statements about God that are insane and statements that are reasonable? Sure. I’d bet you could tell the difference at 50 yards:
“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect, had intended for us to forgo their use.”
“God lives in my toaster and told me to purge the world of all its pudding, which is evil in his sight.”

“But, it seems if we apply reason as the litmus test, the limits of what is reasonable can be reasonably restricted to the point where it’s unreasonable to believe in God.”

Well… yes. Are you making the case for atheism being the most reasonable position, or implying that we must not use solely reason because that conclusion has to be wrong?

I make no argument for atheism. I just make an argument that Reason isn’t the appropriate tool to understand God’s nature. In my opinion, that’s why it’s a matter of Faith (or acceptance). I suppose, Faith guided by reason.

If you accept, as it appears you do (”Well…yes.”) that it could very well be unreasonable to believe in God, then it could also be unreasonable to believe that “God endowed us with sense…”etc. Thus, your first example would be insane in the sense that it’s not rational. The second one too.

“Omnipotent” doesn’t occur in the Bible; the closest is _pantokrator_ which is better translated “ruling over all” (krat- is the same root as in ‘democracy’)– that is, the word says that God is sovereign over everything.

It would surprise me to learn that there are theologists who hold there are limits to God’s power.

And, you know, again…you’re taking my argument here into a different (your own) context. You say “sure, if you make your own religion” as if I am required to speak within the context of a given religion. I was just going with the logical paradox of what an omnipotent being can’t do, and then you’re telling me I’m defeated by arguments of which you assume I am aware.

My point in #26 is that there are many clearly impossible things of which we generally assume God (the Catholic one) is capable. And when I say “God could defeat and assert this paradox”, you say it’s nonsense and such discussion doesn’t even apply. I say, that’s choosing which sort of impossibility is comfortable for you to accept and disregarding that which isn’t.

Then be surprised. Here is the Catholic Encyclopedia on omnipotence:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11251c.htm

Key bits, italics mine: “Omnipotence is the power of God to effect whatever is not intrinsically impossible… As intrinsically impossible must be classed: Any action on the part of God which would be out of harmony with His nature and attributes; Any action that would simultaneously connote mutually repellent elements, e.g. a square circle, an infinite creature, etc.”

As for choosing impossibilities, you’re assuming I accept some “clearly impossible” things. But I don’t. I’m afraid I know what I accept or don’t accept better than you do.

I guess my main point is that if you can find a loophole of some sort in the idea of omnipotence, well, some monk probably found it a thousand years ago. This particular one was addressed long ago in Catholic theology.

And I’m not presuming to tell you what you accept. I would stick by the statement, however, that some of the things you (probably?) accept about God are clearly impossible, from my atheistic standpoint. As I’m assuming you’ve never seen God firsthand and he’s essentially a spiritual thought experiment, then any number of things God has done/can do are just flat impossible, unless you’re God.

And if such a being was omnipotent, it could likely bend/model reality in such a way that contradiction becomes agreement. Even if something happening would logically result in something else happening (e.g. blowing out a candle resulting in there being no flame), an omnipotent being could figure out a way around these constraints.

Both are equally real.

Especially considering that from a purely subjective standpoint, God is real, regardless of whether he/it/whatever actually exists. It’s like arguing with a schizophrenic that their toaster isn’t talking to them. If you want to have a discussion that might result in instilling a more rational, reasonable perspective in the mind of a believer, you’re not going to make any progress by challenging subjective experiences that are very real to them.

noddinOff: But at the same time, we have to admit that our discussion and understanding of omnipotence is completely separate from it and bears no impact on the real thing.

From what I’ve read (Old Man and the Sea and a few short stories), he’s kind of melodramatically sentimental and his writing technique and style is pretty lacking.

The problem is that the two sides can never meet. From a believer’s perspective, it’s impossible to convince a nonbeliever about the existence of God because the nonbeliever sets the criteria that must be met, and those criteria present an impossible challenge — to change the nature of God so that he fits into a physical model that is recognizable by a specific set of tests. It can’t happen.

If God is indeed God, then he (masculine pronoun for ease of writing) exists independent from our concept of time, matter, space. Although there are theoretical models that continue to push the boundaries of how we define time, the universe, etc., they are still just theories that are constrained by our intellect.