Better reasons to quit Christianity

[spockrates]

I'm sorry, I must have missed your question. Please repeat it.

Here:

If you have a God who knows everything and is everywhere with at least enough power to create the universe, why is it that he is capable of not dictating the choices of every person ever to live? By creating a world with beings capable of choice he is necessarily creating a world where he predetermined the choices of everyone.

A God who knows everything before he creates everything is creating a world where he willed every being to make the choices they do.

Thank you. I'd say that I don't see how knowing what someone will do is the same as making someone do. For example, let's say I live in the 1980s and create a time machine. I travel to the year 2000 and learn that a guy named Bill Gates has created a corporation called Microsoft that has made hundreds of millions. I travel back to the 1980s and invest in Microsoft and make a fortune. Now, my knowing Bill Gates would create a corporation that was successful does not mean that I caused Bill Gates to do this.

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean when you say the word omnipotence. Please explain what omnipotence is.

Omnipotent isn't even an issue unless you are saying that your God is omnipotent.
I'll repeat this too:
Omnipotence is the ability to perform and action, think any thought, or otherwise act in any conceivable way. The capacity to do so, not that he would or does. That's as clear as it gets.

OK, so is it possible for someone who has the power to become perfectly honest to also be omnipotent?

Yes. Perfect justice, perfect love, perfect honesty- they all preclude the ability to perform the antithesis of themselves.

The reason I ask is because I'm still not sure I comprehend what you believe the word omnipotent to mean.

Nothing is impossible. If I were omnipotent I could do anything.

Once I have a working definition in mind, you and I can measure concepts of an omnipotent God against it.

Do you believe your God to be omnipotent? If not, then this discussion is moot.

We cannot come to an agreement that it is impossible for God to be omnipotent if we don't first come to an agreement on what omnipotence is! Don't you agree?

Omnipotence is logically impossible, but if your God can invalidate logic then that isn't a problem. Your God could then lie, cheat, steal, murder, rape, and torture while still being perfectly good, because he would be truly omnipotent. He could create a stone he is unable to lift, then lift it. Things like that.

Now if you, or I find that our proposed definition is not logical, no worries!

Yeah, omnipotence is, by it's nature, illogical.

We can just modify it until we agree that we agree as to what the correct concept of omnipotence is.

Or we could stick with a God who simply has the power to create worlds, answer prayers, create miracles, and other Godly things that Gods do, like I originally suggested. If the isn't your God then my argument is needless.

We will then be in a better position to come to some agreement as to whether God can be omnipotent and also omniscient and omnibenevolent.

...While maintaining free will as a trait for all humans.

I think you said omnipotence is the power to do anything and everything, but perhaps I misunderstood. So please tell me so I can be sure what you mean: What is omnipotence?

I already have. You asked three times in this one post, and I answered twice. I think that'll do.

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. Please allow me to repeat my revised post and respond to it, as I believe it addresses some of your points:

I'm not sure your concept of omnipotence actually is real. 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? I don't see how it is, do you? So how can omnipotence be "the capacity to do anything," since this one thing not even any omnipotent being could do?

So don't you agree it is impossible for even an omnipotent being to make a person who lies and who is (at the same time) perfectly honest? It appears that it is not possible for anyone--whether he be God, or omnipotent Ed! Neither one could make little people who were perfectly honest all of the time and perfectly dishonest all of the time. Thus, it seems we need a different concept of omnipotence, since this one is flawed. 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.

So I have to ask the question again: What is omnipotence?

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Agreed. Suffering has no meaning if it never ends. But if there is an eternity, then the suffering would seem (once there) but a blink of the eye. Reminds me of my sons crying when I took them to to get their first vaccinations. I told them it would sting, but it would be over soon. I didn't like seeing them cry, but I knew the moment of pain would save them a lifetime of pain should they contract the disease against which the vaccine would otherwise protect them. If there is a heaven, then it will be worth it, no matter how severe and prolonged the suffering in time.

Do you believe in an eternal hell?

The concept seems to be taught by scripture, yes. Why do you ask?

True. For them I would expect (if there is a God who is both just and loving) that the momentary suffering would be worth it once in eternity.

So a very short life of unusual suffering qualifies you for an eternal reward?

I'd say it would be just for God to compensate those who suffer, yes.

Yes, that would be true if the omniscient one existed in time and was waiting for the future, but it would not be true is the omniscient one existed outside of time and was already there in the future. God might look at us like one might look at a timeline in an open book. He might already see what we are going to do, but he would not already see what he is going to do, because he would have already done it. God isn't waiting for the future, he is already there.

The God you're describing can't change anything, because it's already done everything its ever going to do. If the concept of doing something doesn't contract the nature of something outside of time, since time is the only context in which doing something makes sense.

Rather than saying a God who exists in a dimension outside space and time cannot change anything, I'd say it is possible such a God (if he exists) has already changed things. That is, he has if he has the power to reach into time at any point in time and make changes any time he wants. For him (as the Rush song puts it), "time stands still." He would have all the time he needed to enter any point in time any time he wanted and make any change he wanted and then see the result at the end of time. The timeline of time, we might imagine, is not a done deal, but a work in progress. You have to think outside the box of time and imagine what someone who existed in a time outside of time might be able to do.

I don't believe there is such as thing as unlimited quantity of power.

I agree, which is why 'omnipotence' is a word with no referent in reality. Seriously, you're arguing for the most unlikely conceivable God, just a pile of omni-attributes that was the culmination of generations of people claiming my God is bigger/better/wiser/more powerful than yours.

True, your concept of omnipotence might have no referent in reality, but that does not mean that my concept (or the concept someone else has) of omnipotence does not have a referent in reality, I think. To say that your concept is unreal and so no concept is real is to create a straw man and knock it down, I think. Why not consider the concept of someone else before dismissing it as unreal as your own?

Not if the word die has a different meaning than the one you are attributing to it.

That's exactly what I meant by cognitive acrobatics. If you have to say 'die' doesn't mean 'die' in the usual sense in order to keep believing what you already believe, you don't hesitate.

But you were a Penecostal. Weren't you taught the difference between physical death and spiritual death? Before rejecting the idea that the Bible gives different meanings to the word death depending on the context, you should first ask what I think the word die means in the context we are discussing, don't you think?

Actually, it depends on what omnipotent is. I'd say it can be the freedom to choose to do anything, but it cannot possibly be the freedom to do everything. Should I explain my meaning?

No. I know that taking omnipotent to mean what it says is ridiculous, but you don't want to give up the word, so you will seek a new meaning for it that doesn't mean 'all-powerful' so you can continue saying the word that means 'all-powerful' while actually meaning something else. Then you will go through life having to explain what you mean by 'omnipotent' to people who insist on thinking it means what omnipotent means: all-powerful.

Note that the KJV never uses the word 'omnipotent'.

The KJV also doesn't use the word Trinity, either, but I'm sure you were taught how the concept is clearly taught in scripture--unless, of course, you used to be a Oneness Penecostal. In that case, you were taught Modalism, which is a word that is also not in the Bible.



I propose we use the meaning of the word omnipotent that is not logically absurd. If we say, like some mistakenly believe, that omnipotence is the power to do anything at all, then that means it is the power to make a person 100% honest 100% of the time and (at the same time) 100% dishonest 100% of the time. If we say omnipotence is the power to do anything at all, then it would be the power to make a circle that is not only perfectly round, but also has four right angles at the same time. If we say omnipotence is the power to do anything at all, then it would be the power to make an object that is completely white and completely black at the same time. Such propositions are self-contradictory, illogical and absurd!

So I don't see anyway it is logically possible for omnipotence to be the power to do absolutely anything at all--no matter how utterly ridiculous it is. What I suggest is that omnipotence is instead the power to do anything that is not self-contradictory, is not illogical and is not absurd. Would you agree with this definition of the word? Or do you think it nonsensical for me to make such a suggestion?