[ARCHIVED] - The attributes of the Christian God exhibit logical contradictions.

[Ryft]

Rebuttal Against Responses
by Arcanus

25 September 2009

In her most recent response, Saerules attempted to prove that the rock-too-heavy rhetorical device is not fallacious, but unfortunately it seems she neither understands the nature of the Loaded Question fallacy nor sees the fallacy being committed by this particular question. As Saerules correctly identified, in order for this particular fallacy to be committed there ought to be some internal feature that begs the question. (This is not necessarily true, but true often enough that we can work with it here in this discussion.)

But she incorrectly asserts that the rock-too-heavy rhetorical device “does not assume anything,” which she hopes to support by pointing to the auxiliary verb “can.” What she does not seem to recognize is that this fails to disprove the fallacy because (i) it is still 'loaded' with two or more questions and (ii) it is the hidden question that commits the fallacy by making a contentious assumption. Although it is legitimate to ask questions about what God can create—the obvious first question—it is illegitimate [1] to assume that an Immovable Object is logically possible when the question itself regards whether or not an Irresistible Force is logically possible—the hidden second question—since the two phenomena are mutually exclusive.

So how does it contain multiple questions? And how is the fallacy committed? Consider two illustrative examples first. There is the familiar and classic example, “Have you stopped beating your spouse?” As the student of philosophy is typically shown, there are actually two questions being asked here. The first is, “Have you beaten your spouse?” The second is, “If so, have you stopped?” As we can see, the latter is the obvious question being asked while the former is the hidden question not being asked. It qualifies as a Loaded Question because it involves (i.e., is 'loaded' with) two or more questions, and it commits the question-begging fallacy by assuming the truth of spousal abuse in a question about spousal abuse.

Another example question would be, “Where did you put the cookies you stole?” Here there are actually three questions being asked: (i) “Did you steal the cookies?” (ii) “If so, did you put them somewhere?” and (iii) “If not, did you eat them?” The second is the obvious question being asked, while the first is the hidden question not being asked and producing the fallacy by assuming the truth of cookie theft in a question about cookie theft. (The third question exists tacitly if the answer is “nowhere” to the loaded question or “no” to the obvious question).

Understanding this, now consider the question, “Can God create a rock he cannot lift?” Within this single question about omnipotence there are actually two questions being asked: (i) “Can God create some rock?” (ii) “Can God fail to lift some rock?” On the one hand, that is how it is a Loaded Question; it involves or is 'loaded' with more than one question. The former question is the obvious one being asked, while the latter question is the hidden one not being asked. On the other hand, that is how it is fallacious; by virtue of assuming that God is not omnipotent within a question about whether or not God is omnipotent, which it does by assuming that an Immovable Object is logically possible (“a rock he cannot lift”) when the question itself is about whether or not an Irresistible Force is logically possible. As I said in my Opening Statements, “by presupposing as possible the existence of the former one has necessarily denied as impossible the existence of the latter” and thereby “commits the question-begging fallacy.”

As for the additional question she asked (about an omnipotent power creating something “more powerful than itself”), what she is doing is probing a tautology, for her question is asking, “Can something be more powerful than all-powerful?” Well, no—by definition. If she were so foolish as to think this somehow disproves omnipotence, I would direct her attention back to my Opening Statements where I had already addressed that sort of angle; that is, if she thinks that true omnipotence should be able to overwhelm even the logically impossible, her entire position in this debate would self-destruct: “To suggest that nothing is impossible if given sufficient power” (in this case, omnipotence) “is to deny that real contradictions exist; in other words, if the impossible could become possible or actual simply by applying sufficient power to it, then it was never impossible to begin with but merely difficult. However, it should be obvious that this tosses the entire argument out the window. One who makes such an argument accidentally proves too much: if neither logic nor real contradictions exist, well then, the very objection one started out with vanishes (that God cannot exist in virtue of logical contradictions).”

And as for her closing six-point argument, it did not prove any logical contradictions in God. If it succeeded at proving anything at all, it is that God does not indiscriminately love his creatures universally—which the Bible already admits, particularly in those passages that describe the wrath of God against unrepentant sinners living in obdurate rebellion against him.

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NOTES:

[1] As defined in the context of logic (q.v. “not in accordance with the principles of valid inference”; see entry at Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. Web. Accessed 24 Sep. 2009).