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Wed 22 Mar, 2006 11:31 am
Believers claim that god is omnipotent, but for a being to truly be omnipotent it'd have to exist in a state where even a logical fallacy (ex. Can god create a rock that he couldn't lift?) would be possible. Humans are entirely logical creatures, our reasoning depends solely it. (We're either bound by logic or the inability to understand things logically) My thoughts are that either god's a logical being or they're not omnipotent. Monotheistic gods seem to have a very specific view of the world, either very logical or completely irrelevant. My question is this: How can humans ever hope to understand the motives of a being that exists outside of the logic that rules our existence? What reason would an illogical (Not in the sense that it can't understand logic but more like it is not bound by the same rules as us. I suppose the right word would be allogical*) being have for commanding something like 'Thou shall not kill'. It seems that for a being to truly be the god monotheistic religious texts describe, those texts would have to be meaningless.
Of course, there's also the thought that god might exist both as a logical and allogical being, but then again that's even more incomprehensible to the human mind than a logical fallacy. My point here is not to rebuff the existence of god, I however, can't understand how any human would have enough understanding of such a complex existence to try and describe it.
Also note that while some religious texts might seem completely illogical to the more intelligent among us, that is still a very human thing. No book could ever fathom to describe the allogical nature of an omnipotent being.
(*) I realized this is not a real word, but it serves its purpose since there are no equivalents for it in the English language.
*edit* I posted this here in philosophy for a reason, I think people at the religion threads would completely miss the point of my post and turn it into a theological debate.
Eryemil
Quote:Humans are entirely logical creatures, our reasoning depends solely it.
This is false. Piaget showed that "logic" is a subprocess of general semantics which is associated with
some adult's cognitive processes.
Since the essence of religion tends to be a childlike submission to a paternal deity the "problem" of omnipotence either never arises or is isolated the "God moves in mysterious ways - rationality box"
That pretty much takes care of that, Fresco . . .
Next ! ! !
It must be noted that actual philosophers have either been incapable of proving God's existence through logic (their methods have had glaring flaws in them) or have disproved the existence of God through logic.
Hmm?
Yet somehow you manage to miss the whole point of my post, Fresco. I think I would have been better off in religion after all, my fellow skeptics are just as close minded as the zealots.
Upon what basis do you think yourself justified in considering anyone who has posed here to be your fellow?
By the way, I'm an atheist. While I am open to the idea of the existence of a higher being, it is glaringly obvious to me that the current mainstream religions (Or any religion for that matter) don't have a clue about what omnipotence really means. (hence this thread)
And this is *not* a thread to discuss current religions and it's followers, but the nature of omnipotence, hence the title.
Eryemil
The point of your post is surely the applicability of "logic" to religious concepts. If we are talking about traditional binary logic it fails spectacularly with "the infinite regress". This doesn't seem to bother most believers except those "scientific ones" who move to the ad hoc position of a "non-interventionist God". This allows them to take on board "multivalued logics" involving probability functions....but of course this side steps the "omnipotence issue". If theres something I have missed in this please outline what you mean.
I remember being dragged into a debate about omnipotnce once. You cannot be sure if God is omnipotent if you yourself are not omnipotent.
It is logically impossible to disprove his omnipotence or prove it. This, I remember, "real life", vehemently denied.
To... Oh wait. No, we were talking about omniscience. It was omniscience that we were arguing over. Oh well, I think I can apply my old arguments to this topic.
Anyway, to prove or disprove omnipotence, you have to be able to know what is impossible to do. If you can do anything, even the impossible, then you are omnipotent, but you must be able to know what is impossible.
To be able to see if God can do anything even the impossible, you must be able to test it, and to test it, you must know how to test it. In order to know how, you must know everything that is possible and impossible to do or at least have access to that information.
Since we do not have access to that information, it is impossible to test the hypothesis of God being omnipotent.
No, that doesn't seem to be work for this argument. I wonder what my original argument against God being omnipotent and omniscient were?
Finally...
...we're getting somewhere.
One of the points I tried to make with my post is that if there is a god then humans could never understand its nature.
Quote:Anyway, to prove or disprove omnipotence, you have to be able to know what is impossible to do. If you can do anything, even the impossible, then you are omnipotent, but you must be able to know what is impossible.
Mainstream religion goes out of it's way to define god, yet it is obvious humans can't define an omnipotent being. The way you put it makes some sense, an omnipotent god would be so utterly alien to us yet how can God (Christian Elohim/Jehova) be so human and all-powerful at the same time?
I'm trying not to deviate into another argument against religion.
Yet many practising religious people would say they have such an understanding and not only that, some say they have even spoken to God.
Re: The Logistics of Omnipotence
Eryemil wrote:Believers claim that god is omnipotent, but for a being to truly be omnipotent it'd have to exist in a state where even a logical fallacy (ex. Can god create a rock that he couldn't lift?) would be possible.
No, that's not true. Your question "can god create a rock so big that even he cannot pick it up" is a well-known conundrum, but Leibniz, for instance, would respond: the question makes no sense. The question, in effect, posits the existence of a thing that is a "god-unliftable rock." Yet if god is indeed omnipotent, then there is no rock that he cannot lift. Therefore, there is no thing that fits the description of a "god-unliftable rock." It is a null set. Furthermore, god cannot simply fill that set with a member -- not because he isn't omnipotent, but because such a thing is logically incomprehensible. It would be as if you were asking "can god run faster than yellow" or "can god yell louder than time." The question simply makes no sense.
Eryemil
Consider also that some would even claim that "logical paradoxes" point the way to "spiritual enlightenment". I refer to Zen Koans such as "What is the sound of one hand clapping ?"
Your premise that "logic" is necessary for "religious understanding" would seem to be flawed.
I
Well, you just made my point. It makes no sense to *us* but we aren't god are we? If god is restricted by human logic then is they're not omnipotent are they?
God is constantly referred to as all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing, all-present etc.
To restrict being like that with a human lack of understanding seems a bit short-sighted. By the way, I'm pretty sure is the phrase is 'Can God *create* a rock that he couldn't lift?' I'm not sure if I specified that in my first post. Either way this being would be restricted by human logic.
And fresco, I'm pretty sure I specifically noted in my post that I was referring to the omnipotence of mainstream monotheistic deities.
An omnipotent God could not know he was omnipotent. He can only know he is omnipotent as far as he knows.
He cannot discount the possibility that he, and all that he knows and supposedly created, were actually created or allowed to be by a greater God who can move in universes of which he is unaware and unable to reach. His feeling of omnipotence -and all the evidence for it, including the realization that there is nothing he knows of of which he is not aware- could have been programmed into him by the greater God, who, in turn, cannot know whether or not he is omnipotent, or created by a yet higher "God".
Perhaps the God on some level actually IS omnipotent; but he cannot know for certain that he is, as he has no way to disproving the possibility that he might not be.
From this it follows that no God can truly be omnipotent, since there is always at least one thing -his own omnipotence- about which he can never be certain.
Yes! Thank you Greyfan, you've made my day, this is the kind of feedback I've been asking for.
I've thought about this subject quite a bit but hadn't yet arrived to the conclusion you mention, it makes sense though I do feel a brainstorm is afoot. :]
Re: The Logistics of Omnipotence
Eryemil wrote:Humans are entirely logical creatures, our reasoning depends solely it.
you obviously never met one
Greyfan expounds the "infinite regress" argument.
Once this has been mentioned all talk of "logic" as applied to "religious understanding" becomes a trivial "strawman" issue irrespective of whether we confine such talk to monotheism.
We are merely dressing up Russells paradox with religious examples.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/p/par-russ.htm
The "logicality" or otherwise of a "deity" seems to me to be irrelevent to my consideration of myself as an atheist. My rejection of "a deity" comes from its lack of
functionality for me not its logicality (or meta-logicality).
Once again I'm left wondering at the purpose of your posts, fresco. Honestly no offence intended but you haven't actually contributed anything to my question. If you think it has no merit or it is foolish then why post at all?
Have patience Eryemil, it's your best resource at this point. Don't be so quick to condemn / condone / dismiss.
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