(August 18, 2012 at 10:29 pm)spockrates Wrote: I have to apologize. I made a major revision of my post prior to you posting your response, but your response was to my original post.Well... O.K.
Quote:I'm not sure your concept of omnipotence actually is real.Only in concept is omnipotence possible. I have said this a couple times already.
Quote:For you said: "Omnipotence is the capacity to do anything." My question about this premise is this: Is it possible to have the capacity to make a being that is 100% honest 100% of the time and (at the same time) 100% dishonest 100% of the time?No, it is logically contradictory. A truly omnipotent being would be able to ignore logical contradictions, but the repercussions would be dire.
Quote:So how can omnipotence be "the capacity to do anything," since this one thing not even any omnipotent being could do?A being that could ignore the most basic logical laws could perform that action. Most people don't think of their God as basely illogical, hell, a-logical, when they describe him/it. Do you?
Quote:Thus, it seems we need a different concept of omnipotence, since this one is flawed.I'll say it again- omnipotence, if it is to coexist with logical laws, is only possibly true in concept. It cannot exist with logical laws in place, or has to bypass/ignore them.
Quote:For I think you might agree that omnipotence cannot possibly be the capacity to do anything when there is one thing impossible for even an omnipotent being to do.Logically, yes. Please read my posts.
Quote:So I have to ask the question again: What is omnipotence?Please answer the original question. We do not need a working definition of omnipotent because neither I nor you believe an omnipotent being to be logically possible. Talking about a being that can bypass the laws of logic is silly. Theists use it to make God even more unfalsifiable. In other words, it's useless to talk about a God who cannot be proven or disproven with either observable, repeatable, verifiable data or with logical analysis.
On that note, we need to get back to the more salient point- can a God create a world with free will despite knowing beforehand how every being would act? Not just this, but choosing a world among many, knowing how each being in that world would behave?
God would necessarily be deterministic if he had these attributes and made the world, as theists propose.
My conclusion is that there is no reason to believe any of the dogmas of traditional theology and, further, that there is no reason to wish that they were true.
Man, in so far as he is not subject to natural forces, is free to work out his own destiny. The responsibility is his, and so is the opportunity.
-Bertrand Russell
Man, in so far as he is not subject to natural forces, is free to work out his own destiny. The responsibility is his, and so is the opportunity.
-Bertrand Russell