RE: The rock God can't lift.
January 5, 2013 at 4:16 pm
(This post was last modified: January 5, 2013 at 5:28 pm by Tiberius.)
(January 5, 2013 at 3:53 pm)Brian37 Wrote: I don't see that as a loaded question.It is one. There are two questions combined into one:
1) Can God create a rock?
2) Can God fail at lifting that rock?
It's like the question that Violet alluded to: have you stopped beating your wife? If you answer "yes", it means you are admitting to wife-beating. If you answer "no", it means you are still beating her. The problem with these questions is that there are other valid answers, and sometimes a "yes or no" doesn't cut it. For instance, a perfectly valid answer to the wife-beating question would be "I have never beaten my wife."
Likewise, a perfectly valid answer to the question about God and rocks is "God can always lift the rocks he creates."
Quote:"Can god lie"No they don't. Only the second one makes a contradiction with logic. It is perfectly possible for a God to lie, or a God to murder, since lying and murdering are both logically possible tasks. Creating a square circle is not.
"Can god make a square circle"
"Is god capable of murder"
Any one of those examples creates a contradiction.
Quote:If he can lie, then you could never know if he is good or bad or anything about his intent. If he cant lie, then he is not all powerful.There is nothing in any definition of omnipotence that has anything to do with intent. You are confusing the issues by making this about a specific God. For the purposes of logical evaluation, it is not. Rather, it applies generally to the concept of Gods.
Quote:"Capable of murder"Again, we are not talking about the God of the OT. We're talking about actions that are logically possible.
If he can, then he cannot be considered moral. (murder, meaning criminal, not self defense). Murdering out of jealousy seems to be the OT God and Revelation character's motif.
If he cannot murder out of jeolousy, for example, again, you could not call him all powerful.
Quote:All of those are examples of why, as a concept, as a claim, not as a real thing, but as a claim, makes the idea of "all powerful" as an atribute an absurd claim.No, it makes it an absurd claim for Christians, as you've demonstrated, but not many Christians (at least, not many thinking Christians) make the claim that their God is "all powerful". Rather, they claim he is all powerful apart from aspects which god against his nature as a "perfect" moral being. Indeed, ask most intelligent Christians if there is anything they can do that God can't, and they'll give a one word answer: sin.
Being "all powerful" in the sense that you can do anything logically possible is a valid concept. It just doesn't apply to the Christian god, but I was never talking about the Christian god.
(January 5, 2013 at 4:01 pm)Brian37 Wrote: "all" in "all powerful" means can do anything and everything. That includes being illogical. I like my explinations to reality to be logical not illogical.There are multiple meanings to the word "omnipotence". Likewise, there are multiple meanings to the concept of "all powerful". In a very narrow view, it means exactly as you state...that any all-powerful being can do everything, including those things that are logically impossible. I have yet to meet a single theist who subscribes to this view, and until I do (or until one shows up here) it is completely irrelevant to the discussion.
The more common meanings are that an all-powerful being can do everything that is logically possible, or that they can do everything that is logically possible except things that go against its nature.