This thought hit me a few minutes ago. It seems like a fun little mental puzzle to work out. The standard explanation for how god is illogical is that he’s omnipotent, and can therefore do even the illogical. You just gotta trust us, you see.
But if he’s omnipotent, then he can also be not omnipotent. Let’s explore the ramifications of that. My brain’s still spinning, let’s see what everyone has to say.
Define omnipotent. Wikipedia has 5 to choose from.
Logically, it would seem that if he can do anything then he can bend logic so yes.
I believe St. Augustine wrote that it is a sin (nowadays we would say “error”) to believe that God is any the less omnipotent just because He cannot do logically impossible things, such as dividing something into three halves.
Which is not how philosophers and theologians typically define omnipotence, though.
A kindergarden-level definition would be “the ability to do anything at all.” Philosophers typically do not, construe omnipotence in that manner, though. Many emphasize that omnipotence does not include the ability to do what is logically self-contradictory, for example. Additionally, you have people like Aquinas, who emphasize that omnipotence should not include the *inability * to do something (e.g. to lift an immovable rock). Even the atheistic philosopher J.L. Mackie argued for more liberal definitions of omnipotence, rather than simply construing it as the ability to do anything at all.
Aquinas’ view is that God can do anything, but that logically contradictory actions are not even describable and are not even candidate actions. So it is not accurate to say that God cannot do these actions; it is more accurate to say that they are not there to be done–they are not included among “all actions” or “everything”.
But this is demonstrably easy to do. I can’t do everything. If god can’t even match me on that level, how powerful is that?
I’m very ready to admit this is a shitty argument, as I sort of feel it’s hollow, but I can’t figure out why. But it’ll take some serious argument.
I agree. This isn’t even really an argument about God at all. It’s an issue of what the word omnipotence means. If you define it as the ability to do anything logically possible, then that’s what it is. If you define it as being able to do anything regardless of logic, then that’s what it is. It would probably be useful to separate the two different definitions and give them each their own term as to avoid confusion.
As to whether it’s possible to do something that defies logic somehow, I would say that it’s at least conceivable in the weak sense - that what we conceive of as logically possible may still be naive. Quantum mechanics has certainly challanged many of our ideas of what is logically possible. In the strong sense - can something self-contradictory exist? Sure, why not? Things we thought conceptually meaningless before we now have conceptual models for, like infinity, limits, and fuzzy logic.
Some of the confusion here is the Hitchhikers Guide fallacy - thinking that a question is hard to answer because the answer is too big or hard to conceive of when the truth is that the problem is that we haven’t clarified the question well enough. “Omnipotence” is just one vague case study in the larger area of inquiry of logical contradiction, which is really more of a mathematical problem than a religious or even physical one.
Yes, sort of. Jesus the man was limited, as God was not. Both coexists. This is not a problem with God.
All powerful does not mean you will do everything, just you can do anything if it is your will.
In Christian theology didn’t God establish in his conversation with Job that our tiny little minds could not comprehend his motives?
Marc
Yeah, but that’s a copout. Anyway, we’re getting distracted–I shouldn’t have said “god”, but merely left it as “omnipotent being.” jackdavinci has got the right idea.
There’s an easy enough experiment - write a novel. Have Your created characters follow a particular scientific paradigm, also of Your creation, then violate it on every other page. The characters can’t escape the book, nor can they modify their paradigm without Your approval, nor can they do much of anything, really, without Your direct input. Congratulations, you’re God.
If one wants to claim that we’re not just characters in someone’s novel… well, so much for the omnipotent writer/God.
Iirc, the logos ( the total definition) of God can be summed up into 5 concepts:
Omnipotent-infinite power. He merely spoke, and Creation sprang forth.
Omniscient-infinite knowledge/wisdom
Omnipresent-exists everywhere
Benevolent-infinite love/compassion/mercy
Trancentent-unrestrained from any physical barrier or logical limit. God gan go faster than light, and can know both the momentum/position/direction of any particle with absolute accuracy.
Okay, but what does it mean when you write in your novel, “Fred drew a square circle on the chalkboard?” Have you just done the impossible (via your fictional proxy, Fred), or does that little piece of your creation simly lack coherent meaning entirely?
Well, you’ve done the impossible by the standards of the universe outside the novel, but if within the standards of the novel, a square circle is possible if you decide it is and there’s no contradiction. You can choose to write a page describing how Fred’s forehead wrinkles and he questions his own feat, or you can write a page about how he finishes his drawing with satisfaction and goes to the beach.
Y’know… the beach where the water is rock steady and the buildings wash up and down…
It’s not a copout if it’s true, it is part of the faith.
This isn’t about Christianity, and this is about about the logical coherency of the statement “can A be also not-A, where not-A violates A.” Responding that logic doesn’t apply is sidestepping the question.
Being part of faith has nothing to do with being true.
Sure, but suppose that it is tacitly impossible for the concept to exist in the world (like contradictions are impossible to exist in ours). Like, suppose somebody then wanted to make a movie of your book? I’d say that trying to ‘break the medium’ like that is enough to stymy any god.
Heck, a movie can contain as many impossibilities as a book. If I need a character in my movie to draw a square circle, I can just include this dialogue:
Character 1: I just drew a square circle.
Character 2: That’s cool. Wanna go to the beach?
Now, if the audience (for whom square circles are an impossibility) wants to actually see the character drawing a square circle, I’m in trouble, but in omnipotent God’s reckoning, He doesn’t have to worry about us, His mere puppets, but only the scorn from his fellow God-buddies who presumably are working on screenplays/universes of their own, each trying to sell one to God-Hollywood (“You made pi irrational? Good luck pitching that!”).
My point is that the existence of an omnipotent being renders all physical laws and all free will utterly moot, since said being can redefine them at will. Given that is an unfalsifiable premise, I find it easier to ignore the existence of an omnipotent being. If that offends Him/It, He/It can do whatever He/It wants about it and I can’t stop Him/It.