(March 6, 2015 at 10:05 pm)The Reality Salesman Wrote: What prevents God from being capable of logically impossible feats?
From an Atheist's perspective, it just seems like the nature of all existence carries with it some inherent conceptual restrictions. And at a minimum, in order to understand things in this universe, we need a way of identifying them as either "it" or "not-it". But if you pull all of us out of the universe, surely God wouldn't need to rely on the same simple rules that we use. And he certainly shouldn't be required to abide by them, right?
So, is God bound by the same things as all nature? If not, what's your move from here? Just wonderin'...
This is an old puzzle. William of Okham and Rene Descartes both wrote that God could create reality as he wished, he could make 2 + 2 = 5 or any state of affairs he desired. But if so he could by fiat create a world where moral evil does not exist. He could create man to have a god-like good nature and a god-like free will who, like God freely chooses to do no evil, the perfectly good God of theology.
Since obviously, we do not live in such a moral evil free Universe, the type of God does nor exist. And if that type of God exists any sort of hidden purpose argument is void from the start.
So we have establish naturalism, the world is dependent on natural laws beyond and outside of God, and God is not the basic foundation of reality. And where does this God free naturalism come from, and how deep does it go?
I call this the problem of super omnipotence, and I find it a good strong atheist argument against the most expansive arguments for an infinitely powerful God and for naturalism. God as a concept here is very shaky and self-destructs when taken to what as first seems to be the logical limit of omnipotence.
Cheerful Charlie
If I saw a man beating a tied up dog, I couldn't prove it was wrong, but I'd know it was wrong.
- Attributed to Mark Twain
If I saw a man beating a tied up dog, I couldn't prove it was wrong, but I'd know it was wrong.
- Attributed to Mark Twain