Logical absolutes/God

[Britney blue]

Well..a maximally powerful god can by definition do literally anything conceivable, including raising people from the dead, manifesting himself as a human/son, all the miracles, etc etc.  When people say 'omnipotence' they nearly always mean maximally powerful, because he's omnipotent in the realm of 'anything conceivable'.

Ah, I've been confusing "maximally powerful" to "maximally powerful that is logically possible".

[FatAndFaithless]

Well, those are the same things. You'll be hard pressed to find a Christian that flatly asserts that God can violate the logical absolutes. Maximally powerful is just the power to do literally anything that is conceivable everything the God of the Bible is said to have said/done comports with a maximally powerful god. People just use omnipotent because it's a nice shortcut (though I'm sure there are a small percentage of Christians who do think god can violate the logical absolutes and create a square circle or a married bachelor or a boulder so heavy he couldn't lift it).

[Britney blue]

Well, those are the same things.  You'll be hard pressed to find a Christian that flatly asserts that God can violate the logical absolutes.  Maximally powerful is just the power to do literally anything that is conceivable everything the God of the Bible is said to have said/done comports with a maximally powerful god.  People just use omnipotent because it's a nice shortcut (though I'm sure there are a small percentage of Christians who do think god can violate the logical absolutes and create a square circle or a married bachelor or a boulder so heavy he couldn't lift it).

Then God is not all-powerful. This argument by definition is putting a limit to God's power, what he's capable of doing, therefore we know what God cannot do.

[FatAndFaithless]

Hardly any Christian theology uses that definition of 'all powerful', so you'd be arguing against a vew that very few Christians actually hold. "All powerful" could simply mean "being able to do literally anything that is possible".

A god that cannot violate the logical absolutes fits perfectly with just about any monotheistc religion, and nothing in the Bible suggests that he can violate the laws of logic.

[The Grand Nudger]

Countering the omni belief?  Easy, tell them you don't believe them, or that you don't care (the latter being a personal favorite of mine). It's not as if their claim is the demonstration itself.

[robvalue]

How about, "How can you possibly know that? Even if he showed up in front of you, how could he demonstrate he is maximally powerful? No matter what he does there's always something that would require even more power."

So you're saying if God is maximally powerful he could not violate the laws of logic and demonstrating maximal power of God is just demonstrating logic...

No that wasn't my point, I'm saying that even if he is maximally powerful, he could never demonstrate it to us. He could only demonstrate power by using that power to do something. And whatever it is that he did, you could find a harder task than that, and so on. So as far as we're concerned, he can keep on breaking the world record for most powerful thing we have ever seen, but he's still only displaying a finite amount of power each time.

He would have to do something that could only be done with an unlimited amount of power, or whatever the heck "maximal logically possible power" means... and I don't think we'd be able to do anything other than take his word for it, even if he did something like that, because we wouldn't understand what the fuck he was doing.

[Britney blue]

Hardly any Christian theology uses that definition of 'all powerful', so you'd be arguing against a vew that very few Christians actually hold.  "All powerful" could simply mean "being able to do literally anything that is possible".  

A god that cannot violate the logical absolutes fits perfectly with just about any monotheistc religion, and nothing in the Bible suggests that he can violate the laws of logic.

Okay so they're just following the rules of logic... I don't see how this helps their case.

[Longhorn]

Anything that is said about god can be safely and efficiently countered by the good ol' 'and how the fuck do you know that?'

If they're honest, they'll admit they've been making shit up all that time and if they're not they'll go ape shit...lol

[FatAndFaithless]

Again, you're using the term 'omnipotent' in a different way than most Christians. It's like asking if god can make a square with five sides. It just doesn't make sense, it's inconceivable, it's nonsensical and it's impossible to do by the definitions of the terms invovled.

God can't make something that is at the same time a square and not a square. He can't invent a number that is both positive and negative. I'm sure can't even conceive of what that would look like, because I sure as hell can't. God can do literally anything that is possible/conceivable, which is the definition that most Christians mean when they use the word "omnipotent".

[Britney blue]

Anything that is said about god can be safely and efficiently countered by the good ol' 'and how the fuck do you know that?'

If they're honest, they'll admit they've been making shit up all that time and if they're not they'll go ape shit...lol