If god is all powerful

Great Debates
101

Regarding the OP, it is a thinly disguised rendering of “Can God do things that are impossible by definition?” It confuses me that people here dismiss this argument as though it demonstrates nothing. The way I see it is, it limits is to accepting one of the following:

  1. Omnipotence doesn’t include the ability to do things that are impossible by definition. Hence, one of the two actions is impossible. (And presuming an omnipotent god, it’s probably impossible for it to create something outside of its power to lift, since such an object, itself, would be as impossible as a square triangle.)

or:
2) Pheh, who needs logic! God can do whatever I say it can.

or: (With credit to Alan Smithee)
3) The universe in which we live need not be an internally consistent reality. Despite all evidence observed to date, statements may be simultaneously true and false simultaneously. characters in this world may lift rocks while simultaneously not lifting them, and eat burritos while simultaneously not eating them. At the same time! (However, God is not within this universe, and so his reality is stable and consistent, and he is not omnipotent in his reality.)

I see it as useful to determine which of these you believe, if only to put it into clear terms with yourself what you are sacrificing for your belief: logical thinking, or the fabric of reality.
Regarding the sin thing, I think the problem here is that God has created us not only with the ability to sin, but the marked tendency to do so as well. Presumably God has free will (ignoring the omnitience paradox for a moment); and having free will God nonetheless does not sin. This proves that beings who have free will but yet choose not to sin can exist (unless God cannot exist). Presuming even a merely non-selfcontradictory definition of omnipotence, God would have been able to create us with free will and no tendency to sin, just like him. He didn’t. Presuming omnipotence, this was deliberate. God wanted us not only to be able to sin, but to do so as well; else he would have created us differently.

And there’s no point in bringing Satan or temptation into this; God is immune to such things, proving that the property of immunity to corruption is possible; he refrained from letting us have that property though, again by his own choice.

So, if God exists, he made us exactly the way he wanted us, sinning included. My assumption is that if God exists, created us, and was moderately competent in doing so, he probably did so so that he could derive entertainment from observing out trials, in much the way we derive enjoyment from watching a dramatic movie. This seems like the most self-consistent explanation for our reality in conjunction with a flawless creator. (I’ve got no proof for it though, or even for the notion that such a creator exists.)

102

begbert2 “(However, God is not within this universe, and so his reality is stable and consistent, and he is not omnipotent in his reality.)”

Well then, where is he? call me narrow minded, but I believe in what can be seen and proven. (I am kind of a fact guy)

I do not plan on majoring in anything that involves literature (probably psychology). I also do not plan on reading the bible unless absolutely necessary. You may say that I cannot comment on something unless I know every detail on it. I bet that some of you have dismissed other religions without having read into their entire religion. A basic understanding of the beliefs and a familiarity with what the opposite side of the argument should suffice.

** If god is infallible and all that is good etc. then why all of a sudden any change from the old testament to the new one. The only explanation I can come up with is most of the things in the bible are made up. How come you see so much magic and fairy tales in those books yet in the past 1000 years there have been no documented cases of talking snakes or people being turned into pillars of salt.
BTW in the famous flood the rate of rain that is necessary to have fallen in the 40 days and 40 nights to fill up the world would have been enough to sink an aircraft carrier, so clearly Noah’s arc would not have stood up.
**

I assume all the things in bold have been brought up in this site before, and I am acknowledging this now so please don’t criticize for bringing up an old topic. Thanks

103

Posted to wrong thread. My bad. Nevermind.

104

mawrestler_one25, you’re getting your arguments confused. The god people have been referring to is a theoretical entity outside of our time and space that can neither be proven or disproven (at least as far as we know).

The Biblical myths you refer to are exactly that, myths, and pointing out logical flaws in them is meaningless in determining whether the former type of god exists. As others have stated, fundamentalists who insist there is solid proof of the existence of their chosen god simply redefine the terms of necessary evidence.

105

Cite!

106

More of a KNOWING rather than being “led” somewhere.

Some years ago, I read where this guy wanted to prove that 1+1 really in fact equaled 2. So, according to the article, after doing something like 7 pages worth of math equations, he finally did prove it (to himself).

I bring this up because I don’t kill myself by trying to think my way to things that are so utterly and completely basic.

I + K-N-O-W = (inexplicably) TRUE. Therefore, there is no room for explanation. It just simply IS!!! :cool:

Now that I’ve done you a favor, please “explain” the color green for me.

107

also, mawrestler you might want to check out this thread for Old-Testament God related stuff. It’s sort of skewed (and so is the site i was going to reference, www.skepticsannotatedbible.com) but it might be a good starting point.

Also looking through the archives of the articles of the straight dope with keywords related to religion might be an interesting place to start.

108

I am in agreement with your post, except the notion that God created us exclusively for entertainment. Perhaps God simply wanted to be loved. And a universe created with the sole purpose of generating beings who exist only to love God is kind of bland. He wanted the critters he created (us) to love Him and be able to demonstrate it. Love conquers all, but without sin and evil in the world, there is nothing to overcome.

That being said, my personal opinion is that mankind may not necessarily be inherently sinful. Most “sin” consists of things that, while immediately gratifying, are not beneficial in the end. Perhaps it is not just love, but wisdom which we are supposed to achieve. Maybe achieving one makes the other more attainable. Maybe Enlightenment, Nirvana, and Heaven are all the same things meaning we have reached our individual purpose. Pursue perfect wisdom, for the love of God, as it were.

109

Well, don’t expect us to do your homework for you. If you can’t even be bothered to read something along the lines of The Bible for Dummies, I don’t see how you can participate properly in Biblical discussions. I wouldn’t dream of trying to pronounce on Islam without reading the Koran first (as, you’ll find, a group of Dopers is currently doing), and I don’t see how you can consider yourself informed if you refuse to read basic texts.

110

The idea of inquiring withing? Nonsense! You do it all the time! You did it when you decided that “inquire within” was a nonsense statement. Who or what decided? Well, it wasn’t your navel. Call it your mind if you wish.

When you are presented with new ideas, you dismiss them, think about them for a while, accept them, maybe change your mind later. Sometimes you say to yourself, “That’s it! That’s it exactly!” But all the time it is as if you are looking to find what fits with the knowledge that is already there.

Even the word educate is from a Latin word that means to lead forth. The best teachers can bring out what is already there in a student.

When someone says “inquiring within” they are not talking about some recent bubble gum philosophy. They could be talking about chanting or meditation or contemplative prayer or quiet time or just time to sort things out. So many people don’t give themselves time to think about what they think anymore.

111 
 You may not dismiss the religion of Islam without reading the Koran. I bet you would dismiss the possibility that harry potter is real without reading all the books though. To me any form of religion is just like harry potter, Fictional. It's not that I am unwilling to learn things or read books to gain knowledge. I will do that if it is a topic that has some sort of proof behind the readers claims. I also refuse to read a book thats true message and stories have been lost in translation through more than a thousand years of rewriting by hand. You read fiction for entertainment, the bible does not entertain me.
112

A rather poor analogy though, since HP is published and marketed as fiction and is acknowledged to be fiction by its author, who is alive and available for interview and has indeed been interviewed many times; in other words, there is an abundance of direct evidence that HP is fiction and no sane person would claim otherwise.

However, if you were to get into a discussion on these boards about the relationship between Dumbledore and Harry, and whether Snape is really a bad guy or only a really, really cunning double agent… you’d get ripped a new one if you had never read the books and never intended to. You know nothing of the true message of the Bible if you have never read it, and you had better leave argument about it to, say, Diogenes the Cynic, whose knowledge of the texts puts the vast majority of believers to shame.

113

I believe that mawrestler’s question had to do with the difference between the Old Testament God and the New Testament God. A discussion of a topic that general shouldn’t require each participant to have read the Bible in it’s entirety. Long before I had read the entire Bible I had a pretty good idea of the difference between the two Gods. Our culture is awash in Biblical references and it’s hard to not be aware of the inconsistencies.

If a complete immersion in a subject is necessary before entering into a discussion, these boards would be pretty slow.

If you’re troubled by the Harry Potter analogy try this one. Can you dismiss the claims that the moon landings were faked in a movie studio without having read the entire loony bin writings? I would say you can.

Everyday we make judgments and form opinions based on incomplete knowledge. Of course, the more knowledge you have about something the better, but that doesn’t mean that full knowledge is required for everything.

114

It probably helps that I’ve seen some of that glurge about the place, and have enough command of science to refute a good deal of it point by point, which certainly entitles me to be more suspicious about the rest. Even without, I’d be able to point to masses of TV footage of some big phucking rockets going up in front of a host of witnesses. :cool:

mawrestler is not making a case for not reading the Bible in its entirety; he wants to be able to argue about it without reading it at all. The trouble with that is that what “everyone knows” is not necessarily the truth; like the time my sister wanted to argue about the stupidity of a commandment like “thou shalt not spill thy seed upon the ground”.

115

I think the problem with number one is that it starts getting into the McNose problem that’s often brought up with omniscience.

One of the things that Michael Martin highlighted in regards to the Rock problem is that it shows one thing that an omnipotent entity can’t do - which necessarily strips ‘omnipotence’ of the definition of ‘able to do all things’.

Ie, god can do somethings IFF god cannot do some other things.

IMO, all of the omni’s break down into incoherence. They contradict each other and render themselves meaningless in the process.

For example, an omnipotent entity should be able to sin. An omnibenevolent entity could not sin. Further, an omniscient entity should be able to know what it’s like to sin. Again, an omnibenevolent entity cannot sin and thus cannot know what it’s like to sin.

116

IMO, freewill doesn’t really cut the mustard in regards to the POE. Further, it seems to be something that god would necessarily lack.

I agree with your reasoning here and I also find that the notion of a sinless heaven undercuts many theodicies.

117

This is true and creates a paradox; a benevolent god responsible for evil.

Machavellian motives of sufficient causes do not erase this paradox.

118

This is unfortunately not very clear. One could also say that light was merely the absense of darkness.

If you posit the following, then the unavoidable conclusion is that god is responsible for evil:

  1. God has a plan.
  2. God created everything.
  3. Nothing can deviate from god’s plan.

I don’t see how you can get around god’s culpability here.

What does it mean to exist outside of time? Further, how can you reconcile this with the notion that god created anything?

That’s fair.

I don’t follow you - what exactly do you think hell is? Further, if you are in flux with your own views, how can you then go on to say that someone else misunderstands god’s motivations?

Why not only create entities that freely choose to worship god and not sin? Much like angels, or similar to god himself - who I would assume cannot sin. Or what about after death, in heaven - surely those people can’t sin can they?

I’m not compelled to believe that free will is of greater value then sin. Why should we assume it is?

119

What with being a renegade Christian and all, I willingly concede that I’m way out of the loop. But is there seriously a dogma somewhere in Christendom that stipulates that God created the coffee I just drank?

120

In essense, I’d argue yes.

If god has a plan and created this whole cosmos to go according to this plan, then ultimately the coffee you just drank is a result of that plan. In this sense I don’t think there is much of a distinction between ‘plan’ and ‘will’.

In order for my conclusion to follow, you have to hold:

  1. God is omniscient, omnipotent, and the creator of the universe.
  2. God has a plan.
    I think it’s evident that if something goes against god’s plan/will, then that has implications for god’s omnipotence (and or omniscience).

Now, i realize that these attributes don’t necessarily hold for god, but I think they hold for most conceptions that I’ve encountered. For example, a non omnipotent god wouldn’t be effected, nor would a deistic rendition of god.