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God Cannot Do the Impossible

 
 
Alan McDougall
 
  1  
Reply Sat 20 Jun, 2009 11:59 pm
@jeeprs,
jeeprs;70768 wrote:
of course all of this presumes we know what is possible....


You are right yesterday magic often becomes today's science, is it possible to imagine an impossibility?
0 Replies
 
Zetetic11235
 
  1  
Reply Sun 21 Jun, 2009 11:05 am
@jeeprs,
jeeprs;70768 wrote:
of course all of this presumes we know what is possible....


His point is that god cannot do what is logically senseless. He can't make a round square, he can't make an invisible and visible table etc. Now considering that anything that is contradictory cannot be an object, there is nothing being said when someone says 'a round square', it is pretty much gibberish; conflicting syntax that is superficially coherent. All that he is saying is that God cannot make a round square because there is nothing to make. God can't make a Q that has both of the properties P and Not P.
Fido
 
  1  
Reply Sun 21 Jun, 2009 04:57 pm
@Zetetic11235,
Zetetic11235;70850 wrote:
His point is that god cannot do what is logically senseless. He can't make a round square, he can't make an invisible and visible table etc. Now considering that anything that is contradictory cannot be an object, there is nothing being said when someone says 'a round square', it is pretty much gibberish; conflicting syntax that is superficially coherent. All that he is saying is that God cannot make a round square because there is nothing to make. God can't make a Q that has both of the properties P and Not P.

Impossible is only a degree of difficulty... As an ironworker we used to say that the difficult we did right away; and the impossible takes a little longer... If God is infinite, and not just an infinite then that makes every impossibility possible since the infinte is itself impossible.. We know that time changes everything... What if it makes everything and unmakes everything... Then all your opposites and contradicitions will be resolved... Since we are finite, the infinite cannot possibly hold meaning, and that is the problem behind the problem...It is not whether God can do the impossible, but how it can have meaning if it happens before us, or after us... It has to happen for us for it to have meaning...What if doing the impossible takes a little longer than we can witness... What meaning will it have...

You know; We see with such limited vision... This whole thing is impossible...Life is impossible, and not just because of all the essholes making it impossible; but be cause we cannot do it...But it is finished, so we ask if God can do the impossible...Idnit obvious; if God did this as a conscious act of will ??? So; how do we judge impossible??? Much of what I did in my youth would be impossible to me physically and morally... Could God do it??? I could do it only because I thought I was a God....Rules did not apply to me, so I was impossible, and I did the impossible...Possible, and impossible are our limits and abilities... They do not aplly to God, So when Lincoln said: God cannot be both for and against... Think again... He/ she/ it -obviously is if it is at all...
Zetetic11235
 
  1  
Reply Sun 21 Jun, 2009 05:57 pm
@Fido,
Fido;70889 wrote:
Impossible is only a degree of difficulty
adjective Etymology:Middle English, from Anglo-French & Latin; Anglo-French, from Latin impossibilis, from in- + possibilis possibleDate:14th century (We are using 1 a)1 a: incapable of being or of occurring (as opposed to what you are saying, which is more in line with b) b: felt to be incapable of being done, attained, or fulfilled

Source is Merriam Webster

So hopefully now you have a better idea of what is being asserted.

Alan McDougall
 
  1  
Reply Sun 21 Jun, 2009 09:12 pm
@Zetetic11235,
Zetetic11235;70850 wrote:
His point is that god cannot do what is logically senseless. He can't make a round square, he can't make an invisible and visible table etc. Now considering that anything that is contradictory cannot be an object, there is nothing being said when someone says 'a round square', it is pretty much gibberish; conflicting syntax that is superficially coherent. All that he is saying is that God cannot make a round square because there is nothing to make. God can't make a Q that has both of the properties P and Not P.


Oh yes he can, he made me you know! :sarcastic:
0 Replies
 
Fido
 
  1  
Reply Sun 21 Jun, 2009 09:57 pm
@Zetetic11235,
Zetetic11235;70898 wrote:
adjective Etymology:Middle English, from Anglo-French & Latin; Anglo-French, from Latin impossibilis, from in- + possibilis possibleDate:14th century (We are using 1 a)1 a: incapable of being or of occurring (as opposed to what you are saying, which is more in line with b)b: felt to be incapable of being done, attained, or fulfilled

Source is Merriam Webster

So hopefully now you have a better idea of what is being asserted.


Before the Manhattan district project had done its work, even they knew the task, and the object were impossible... What they felt about it, that it could or could not be done was immaterial...They began their work inspite of the deed being for all practical purposes, save one, impossible... The fact is that it was made to happen because that is what we do every day... Standing on our hind legs is impossible... The ABCs are impossible...Flying planes or riding bicycles are impossible...Will makes possible what is impossible...Intellect, determination, aggression, fortune, all play their part together, and what would never have occured for the want of any of these qualities occurs...So; even what we pin on God that was impossible will be found in the course of human understanding to not be impossible at all...If it did happen it was not impossible, and if it will happen it is not impossible; and what will happen will undo and redo what did happen, so no one can say, taking time into account what is or is not possible...Que Serait...

---------- Post added at 12:07 AM ---------- Previous post was Yesterday at 11:57 PM ----------

Alan McDougall;70954 wrote:
Oh yes he can, he made me you know! :sarcastic:

Al; my eldest son is about 35, and when he was about eight he was trying to explain the theory of evolution to one of my cousins kids...All the while the other kids was shaking his head, No! Finally, exasperated, my kid said: well if you don't believed we evolved from apes where do you think we came from??? The other kid said: My daddy found me under a lettice leaf...

I don't mean to rag on you, but the thought that we are whole and have always been so, and the fact that we conceive of ourselves spiritually, as animus/soul, should not lead us to the conclusion as with so many, that we were made...We are conceived by living beings out of living matter that they were themselves born with...There is no life without life...We are all the last links in a chain stretching unbroken from the first life on this planet, and all the spiritual cant does not get it any more... I am still concerned with moral/spiritual truths...It is only because life depends upon moral concepts like justice and liberty...They are not soul food...They are as important to the physical being of people as their spiritual health, however that is conceived...
jeeprs
 
  1  
Reply Sun 21 Jun, 2009 10:37 pm
@Bonaventurian,
I do agree that one can define 'impossible' in the sense of 'logically impossible or senseless'. There is certainly a structure to reality which dictates the limit of possibility.

However, again, we have to be very careful about what we think we know. 'Miracles do not contradict nature', said Augustine, 'only what we know about nature'. Certainly a lot of what we do with modern technology would appear both miraculous and impossible to even a very learned scientist of Newton's day. It is amazing the number of things that have happened in history that someone once said was 'impossible'.
0 Replies
 
Alan McDougall
 
  1  
Reply Mon 22 Jun, 2009 12:04 am
@Fido,
Fido;70963 wrote:
Before the Manhattan district project had done its work, even they knew the task, and the object were impossible.


What they felt about it, that it could or could not be done was immaterial.

They began their work in spite of the deed being for all practical purposes, save one, impossible. The fact is that it was made to happen because that is what we do every day.

Standing on our hind legs is impossible.

The ABCs are impossible...Flying planes or riding bicycles are impossible...Will makes possible what is impossible...Intellect, determination, aggression, fortune, all play their part together, and what would never have occurred for the want of any of these qualities occursSo; even what we pin on God that was impossible will be found in the course of human understanding to not be impossible at all...If it did happen it was not impossible, and if it will happen it is not impossible; and what will happen will undo and redo what did happen, so no one can say, taking time into account what is or is not possible...Que Serait...

---------- Post added at 12:07 AM ---------- Previous post was Yesterday at 11:57 PM ----------


Al; my eldest son is about 35, and when he was about eight he was trying to explain the theory of evolution to one of my cousins kids...All the while the other kids was shaking his head, No! Finally, exasperated, my kid said: well if you don't believed we evolved from apes where do you think we came from??? The other kid said: My daddy found me under a lettice leaf...

I don't mean to rag on you, but the thought that we are whole and have always been so, and the fact that we conceive of ourselves spiritually, as animus/soul, should not lead us to the conclusion as with so many, that we were made...We are conceived by living beings out of living matter that they were themselves born with...There is no life without life...We are all the last links in a chain stretching unbroken from the first life on this planet, and all the spiritual cant does not get it any more... I am still concerned with moral/spiritual truths...It is only because life depends upon moral concepts like justice and liberty...They are not soul food...They are as important to the physical being of people as their spiritual health, however that is conceived...


I date you by some years I have four daughters of which the eldest is almost forty
Yes how can we equate morality right back to the supposed first living entity in the primordial soup of the young earth?

How did inanimate rock, water mixed with lightening and some amino acids morph into life?

Does the universe need sentient life to exist?

Physicists have long been searching for a "theory of everything" - basically a single mathematical way of describing reality so that space, time, the properties of particles like electrons and neutrinos, gravity - in fact everything.

Then follows as a consequence. At the moment physicists have a series of separate theories each of different parts of reality: like Einstein's Theory of relativity. Finding a way to fit all the theories together was something that even Einstein struggled with.

The latest attempt at a theory of everything is called "loop quantum gravity". It starts from Einstein's theory of relativity and the idea that everything is built from a network of relationships that can be tied in tangles. Particles are just the tangles.

I don't know much about quantum loop gravity, just relating it for interest sake

To me the TOE just equates to god if the TOE becomes fact, then as Stephen Hawking said," We will know the mind of god"

Maybe then we will know what is impossible and possible for the great entity we call god?

One of the wilder possibilities that emerge from this is that space might actually be made up of a web of information, a bit like in a virtual world like the Matrix and the universe is then just a giant computer: not a traditional computer as we currently use but a kind of quantum computer.


Quantum computers may be the future of computing. Traditional computers store information as bits: 1s or 0s. Quantum computers store cubits: bits that can be both 1 and 0 at the same time. If we can develop computers that work in this way they will be vastly more powerful than current ones.

The theory needs not only describe reality as we know it but predict some new things that experiments can be set up to test. If it passes the tests then Douglas Adams in the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy may not have been so far wrong.


His great cosmic computer after processing the question came up with the answer to TOE as 42 I think Smile

Though rather than the Earth being a computer trying to work out the question to the answer of life the universe and everything. Maybe the universe is god or a huge quantum computer in which we live much like the matrix movies

But it will not stop there there is infinite progression or regression ether which way we must find the Alpha point of uncaused cause god, or the Omega Point god again, it is he who begins and ends everything in an eternal process of renewal and distruction and we can clearly see this in the Second Law of theromdianamics or the relentless process and progression of entropy

Peace to you
Zetetic11235
 
  1  
Reply Mon 22 Jun, 2009 12:25 am
@Fido,
Fido;70963 wrote:
Before the Manhattan district project had done its work, even they knew the task, and the object were impossible... What they felt about it, that it could or could not be done was immaterial...They began their work inspite of the deed being for all practical purposes, save one, impossible... The fact is that it was made to happen because that is what we do every day... Standing on our hind legs is impossible... The ABCs are impossible...Flying planes or riding bicycles are impossible...Will makes possible what is impossible...Intellect, determination, aggression, fortune, all play their part together, and what would never have occured for the want of any of these qualities occurs...So; even what we pin on God that was impossible will be found in the course of human understanding to not be impossible at all...If it did happen it was not impossible, and if it will happen it is not impossible; and what will happen will undo and redo what did happen, so no one can say, taking time into account what is or is not possible...Que Serait...



You seem to have trouble grasping the fact that the opening post of this thread was addressing a primarily linguistic matter. Bonuventurian was talking about events that are not logically possible, things that would have a syntactic conflict in them. Something that by definition(pay attention, this is the key of the whole thing) could not be done. The reason why, is because putting two conflicting descroptors; e.g. both round and not round, on an object makes what is being said meaningless, by definition;e.g. A round and not round ball.

The assertion in fact stops before we even get to God; the set of descriptors have no meaning so you are really, by extension, claiming nothing by saying 'God cannot make a both round and not round ball'. Since there is no meaning behind the object, you have a sentence fragment followed by gibberish. This makes the same point that was made in the opening post, that 'God cannot make a contradictory object' is a meaningless sentence, so it is not a valid attack against omnipotence.
0 Replies
 
Fido
 
  1  
Reply Mon 22 Jun, 2009 07:21 am
@Alan McDougall,
Alan McDougall;70987 wrote:
I date you by some years I have four daughters of which the eldest is almost forty
Yes how can we equate morality right back to the supposed first living entity in the primordial soup of the young earth?

How did inanimate rock, water mixed with lightening and some amino acids morph into life?

Does the universe need sentient life to exist?

Physicists have long been searching for a "theory of everything" - basically a single mathematical way of describing reality so that space, time, the properties of particles like electrons and neutrinos, gravity - in fact everything.

Then follows as a consequence. At the moment physicists have a series of separate theories each of different parts of reality: like Einstein's Theory of relativity. Finding a way to fit all the theories together was something that even Einstein struggled with.

The latest attempt at a theory of everything is called "loop quantum gravity". It starts from Einstein's theory of relativity and the idea that everything is built from a network of relationships that can be tied in tangles. Particles are just the tangles.

I don't know much about quantum loop gravity, just relating it for interest sake

To me the TOE just equates to god if the TOE becomes fact, then as Stephen Hawking said," We will know the mind of god"

Maybe then we will know what is impossible and possible for the great entity we call god?

One of the wilder possibilities that emerge from this is that space might actually be made up of a web of information, a bit like in a virtual world like the Matrix and the universe is then just a giant computer: not a traditional computer as we currently use but a kind of quantum computer.

Quantum computers may be the future of computing. Traditional computers store information as bits: 1s or 0s. Quantum computers store cubits: bits that can be both 1 and 0 at the same time. If we can develop computers that work in this way they will be vastly more powerful than current ones.

The theory needs not only describe reality as we know it but predict some new things that experiments can be set up to test. If it passes the tests then Douglas Adams in the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy may not have been so far wrong.

His great cosmic computer after processing the question came up with the answer to TOE as 42 I think Smile

Though rather than the Earth being a computer trying to work out the question to the answer of life the universe and everything. Maybe the universe is god or a huge quantum computer in which we live much like the matrix movies

But it will not stop there there is infinite progression or regression ether which way we must find the Alpha point of uncaused cause god, or the Omega Point god again, it is he who begins and ends everything in an eternal process of renewal and distruction and we can clearly see this in the Second Law of theromdianamics or the relentless process and progression of entropy

Peace to you

We do not need to know how it happened to know that it did happen... The universe came in to existence out of existence...Who can say how that happened, or why... From our perspective, to assign being, or to assign intent can only be done from faith, which means it is not philosophy we are talking about, but theology, and the theology of speculation...

I could about guarantee the universe is a computer... Better in fact, because every single detail has to add up, and math as we have it only works in gross...
Alan McDougall
 
  1  
Reply Mon 22 Jun, 2009 11:47 am
@Fido,
Fido;71046 wrote:
We do not need to know how it happened to know that it did happen... The universe came in to existence out of existence...Who can say how that happened, or why... From our perspective, to assign being, or to assign intent can only be done from faith, which means it is not philosophy we are talking about, but theology, and the theology of speculation...

I could about guarantee the universe is a computer... Better in fact, because every single detail has to add up, and math as we have it only works in gross...



How can you have maths without a mathematician and cosmic laws with out a law maker?
Fido
 
  1  
Reply Mon 22 Jun, 2009 12:14 pm
@Alan McDougall,
Alan McDougall;71109 wrote:
How can you have maths without a mathematician and cosmic laws with out a law maker?

You cannot have math without mathematicians, as it is a form of relationship...I think the chances of cosmic laws or law maker is slim to none...
jeeprs
 
  1  
Reply Tue 23 Jun, 2009 04:55 pm
@Bonaventurian,
Quote:
How can you have maths without a mathematician and cosmic laws with out a law maker?


Good question, and no doubt you will be aware that in this sense, Albert Einstein was a firm believer in God - not the God of organised religions or social convention, which he thought was childish, but what he, throughout his life, referred to as 'the old one' or in sayings such as 'God does not play dice'.

---------- Post added at 09:04 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:55 AM ----------

Quote:
...I think the chances of cosmic laws or lawmaker is slim to none


Tell me, how is a 'scientific law' different to a 'cosmic law'? We presume that laws such as those governing quantum mechanics or Newton's laws are valid throughout the cosmos so in what sense are they not cosmic laws?

As for 'lawmaker' this is still very much an open question. I recommend the Paul Davies book (published in some markets as The Cosmic Blueprintand in others as The Goldilocks Enigma) which discusses it in depth. It makes it clear that the Platonic idea of the 'Demiurge as Cosmic Architect' is still very respectable in scientific circles, and that there is widespread agreement that 'scientific law' originates in a realm which is itself beyond the scope of scientific discovery. The main reason Dawkins et al won't entertain the idea is simply that they hate (what they think of as) 'religion'.
0 Replies
 
Alan McDougall
 
  1  
Reply Tue 23 Jun, 2009 10:43 pm
@Fido,
Fido;71116 wrote:
You cannot have math without mathematicians, as it is a form of relationship...I think the chances of cosmic laws or law maker is slim to none...


I must disagree "slim to none" change it to very likely!

On what premise do you base your slim to none comment? I can give evidence for a law maker, albeit circumstantial evidence , so on what evidence do you base your counter argument?

Peace
0 Replies
 
Fido
 
  1  
Reply Wed 24 Jun, 2009 05:41 am
@Bonaventurian,
Al;...The rock bottom law, as far as I can tell is the speed of light in a vacuum...There is a science program on light on my television that says scientist believe the law did not hold at some point in the formation of the universe, and that it may be possible to warp space, shrink it in front, and stack it up behind so that massive objects could be allowed to travel through space at light speed, or beyond... The point is that laws are how we conceive of reality, but reality and laws are changing all the time, and it seems unlikely that there are any constants long term...
0 Replies
 
haribol acharya
 
  1  
Reply Thu 9 Jul, 2009 09:23 am
@Bonaventurian,
Bonaventurian;38368 wrote:
I thought of a pretty cool argument a while back, and I figured that y'all may like it. Obviously, I'm going to be arguing from Platonist Idealism.

If someone creates something, the logical sequence (even if there's no temporal sequence) is basically this:

Concept of the thing in the mind (Knowledge) -> Intention to create -> The act of creation

For example, take a carpenter. Before a carpenter makes a house, he first has to know what a house is. Knowing what a house is, he has to will to make one. Willing, he then creates it.

Likewise in God we find the same logical sequence. God knows all possibilities in knowing Himself. Knowing all possibilities in knowing Himself, He wills. Willing, He creates from all eternity.

Clear so far?

What is obvious from the above is that both knowledge and intentionality require a proper object. You must know a thing. You must intend that thing.

Going back to the idea of "the impossible." When I say "the impossible" I mean contradictions. I say that God cannot make it both rain and not rain at the same time in the same place under the same circumstances...and so forth and so on. Yet, there are those who say otherwise. To them I answer in this fashion:

Suppose for a moment that "the impossible" can be willed. Well...ok. Well what's being willed? "The impossible" is not. It is not an object. It is nothing. Ok. Therefore, if God wills the impossible, He must know, will, and create nothing.

Here's the problem though:



God is the proper object (and the only object) of His intellect. If God knows nothing, then since God can only know Himself, God must be nothing.

Said another way: if God wills the impossible, then there is no God.

The moment you posit that God can will the impossible is the moment that you slip away into atheism.


Of course this logic is convincing. The point is the Upanishads claim God is beyond philosophical propositions. God is indescribable and human logicality cannot comprehend this truth.

The reach of our mind is limited and we cannot think beyond logical :lol:systems.

Is God something more than this. If he is intelligible and measurable by the metrics of our minds, He will not be God. What we call logicality is not anything other than conditioning.

We must rise above this notion and logic is caged by its own.
kennethamy
 
  1  
Reply Thu 9 Jul, 2009 09:48 am
@Zetetic11235,
Zetetic11235;70402 wrote:
So by nothing, you really mean nothing? I think that the essence of what you are saying is made manifest in the void behind your words.Smile


Hmm. That nothing must be really something!!! I have never heard of anything like it!
0 Replies
 
grasshopper
 
  1  
Reply Thu 9 Jul, 2009 03:44 pm
@Bonaventurian,
God created us to get to know himself better, he wanted to see images from his total existence.
Fido
 
  1  
Reply Thu 9 Jul, 2009 09:59 pm
@grasshopper,
grasshopper;76144 wrote:
God created us to get to know himself better, he wanted to see images from his total existence.

God created us to scratch an itch he could not scratch... I don't know nothing about God, but that will not stop me from assigning motives...I don't know why neither, but it helps me to think I do... No it doesn't.... It makes me worse off to feel better off...
0 Replies
 
Alan McDougall
 
  1  
Reply Fri 10 Jul, 2009 12:17 am
@haribol acharya,
haribol acharya;76101 wrote:
Of course this logic is convincing. The point is the Upanishads claim God is beyond philosophical propositions. God is indescribable and human logicality cannot comprehend this truth.

The reach of our mind is limited and we cannot think beyond logical :lol:systems.

Is God something more than this. If he is intelligible and measurable by the metrics of our minds, He will not be God. What we call logicality is not anything other than conditioning.

We must rise above this notion and logic is caged by its own.


A warm welcome Smile Smile to a really great forum.While it is true that we finite entities cannot reach up and comprehend an infinite mind like that of God, the reverse is possible god has no difficulty reaching downward and embracing us with his love and knowledge if we would only listen and feel his reality and presence
 

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