(December 13, 2024 at 2:02 pm)Angrboda Wrote:(December 13, 2024 at 1:21 pm)Sheldon Wrote: There is the paradox of free will of course, or theological fatalism, but this might also apply to any deity itself, if it was omniscient it must necessarily know the future exactly as it will happen, or put a limit on it's knowledge. If it knew the future exactly as it would happen, then it could not change it, hence it would have no autonomy, let alone be omnipotent.
Aquinas has suggested that to ascribe the ability to do the impossible to omnipotence is an error in conception, that while we can imagine the impossible, loosely speaking, we cannot actually dot the i's and cross the t's when it came to actually fitting it within reality. It raises the question of whether or not an omniscient being can make a triangle that has four sides? Now one certainly can answer this in two ways, but it doesn't immediately seem unreasonable to suggest that the very concept of a triangle is that it does not have four sides, and that suggesting that it could have four sides is to abuse reason and the very concept itself. Do you disagree?
Are we talking about the same deity that creates all of reality from nothing, appears as a bush that burns but is not consumed, has a son born of a virgin who lives and dies and lives again, and violates reason on every second page of scripture in magical and horrifying ways? Even a cursory skim of the Bible shows that Aquinas' god only passingly flirted with reason. A four-sided triangle would seem downright normal compared to the usual shenanigans.
