(May 26, 2010 at 5:08 pm)tackattack Wrote: Renumbering is fine, whatever's easiest for discussion.
1. I don't think it limits divine omnipotence at all. It may be better stated as absolute power to do anything within this universe. I don't know if God would be omnipotent without a universe to have power over, powerful enough to create, but without a universe that could be as easy as thinking about it.
I'll use the infamous clockmaker as an example. Let's say God is the maker of a fine complex clock. He can reach into the big clock and just pull out a gearso he can clean it and put it back in. Perhaps the little gremlins living inside the clock rely on the immutability of a set of gears and their pins. God could reach in and bend what the gears thought was an immutable piece of metal to allow room for him to work, he then returns it back to it's original shape. He still has a presence outside the universe and can see everything going on inside and would know the best way to manipulate the items inside therefor not limiting the omnimax principles at all....
2...(cont) Then you're left with omni-benevolence, which is completely subjective as to your interpretation of his motives.
3. To each their own, might want to check you destructive tendencies on a percieved benefactor though.
1. I'll try out a longer version of the argument.
i) If god exists in the universe, then all of god exists in the universe. This is definitionally true, since the universe includes everything that can possibly interact with things that are in the universe.
ii) If all of god exists in the universe, and materialism is true, then god is entirely material. Denying this one, and saying that god is only partly material, gets you back to some sort of dualism with all of the problems that come with it.
iii) Lets call the material substance of god g-stuff. We obviously have no idea what actual properties g-stuff has, although we can assume that its significantly different from 'normal' matter and energy, which we'll call n-stuff.
iv) In order for god to be able to have an controlled effect on n-stuff, then some sort of nomological (law-like) relationship needs to pertain between g-stuff and n-stuff.
v) Thus god is constrained by whatever nomological relationship exists between g-stuff and n-stuff.
vi) Since god is a highly ordered entity, it seems necessary that there should also be nomological relationships between elements of g-stuff. Thus god is also constrained by the internal laws of g-stuff.
Note that god is only constrained by whatever laws apply to g-stuff/ n-stuff and g-stuff/ g-stuff interactions. Since the known laws of physics are all about n-stuff/ n-stuff interactions, they obviously wouldn't apply to god at all. Exactly what god can and cannot do becomes an unknown, since we don't know anything about g-stuff laws.
3. Well, afaics a comfortable slave is still a slave, and a benevolent slave-owner is still an oppressor. I'd shoot down the spaceship in the name of human freedom and dignity.
He who desires to worship God must harbor no childish illusions about the matter but bravely renounce his liberty and humanity.
Mikhail Bakunin
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything
Friedrich Nietzsche
Mikhail Bakunin
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything
Friedrich Nietzsche