RE: Argument for atheism from impossible actions
September 1, 2010 at 12:02 pm
(This post was last modified: September 1, 2010 at 11:58 pm by everythingafter.)
(August 31, 2010 at 7:52 am)solja247 Wrote: 2. God has created everything and can do whatever He pleases
Since when are arguments true just by making an assertion and then following the line of thinking out to some other fatuous conclusion? Oh, I finally get it! He created everything, so he can do anything he wants! Makes perfect sense. Glad that's settled once and for all.
1. Zeus is immaterial, not materialistic.
2. Zeus has created everything and can do whatever He pleases
3. Since Zeus can do whatever He wants, He can enter and manipulate the materialistic world
4. Therefore, Zeus is not constricted to the immaterialistic world
If God is, well, God, he doesn't necessarily have to be constricted to the immaterial world, and indeed, if he is constricted to the immaterial world, he's not omnipotent. In other words, if he can't affect events in the material world, he's limited in some way. And that's not our definition of God, unless of course, we want to claim that God is not omnipotent.
(August 30, 2010 at 6:06 pm)Captain Scarlet Wrote: The Christian god is said to exist by definition in a superntural realm as an omnipotent but incorporeal mind. As such an incorporeal mind has no potential nor kinetic energy they are incapable of acting upon the material world.
I suppose, but it seems to me omnipotence, by definition, includes the ability to affect the physical world, or else, God is limited in some way. Ergo, he didn't make the heavens and earth, nor send plagues, nor any of the other physical actions commonly attributed to God. We can, of course, throw out the Bible, miracles and theology in general, which I'm happy to do, but that would seem to make above statement a non-issue in the first place.
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We have lingered in the chambers of the sea | By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown | Till human voices wake us, and we drown. — T.S. Eliot
"... man always has to decide for himself in the darkness, that he must want beyond what he knows. ..." — Simone de Beauvoir
"As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again." — Albert Camus, "The Stranger"
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We have lingered in the chambers of the sea | By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown | Till human voices wake us, and we drown. — T.S. Eliot
"... man always has to decide for himself in the darkness, that he must want beyond what he knows. ..." — Simone de Beauvoir
"As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again." — Albert Camus, "The Stranger"
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