fishbulb

Soma:

Then which is it? Can God lift any rock, but is unable to create an unliftable rock, or can he lift any rock and thus not be able to create an unliftable one?

Your "revised" definition is essentially the same as it was. You have added words without changing the meaning. You have failed to enumerate which powers are possible and which ones are not. Clearly, immovable object and irresistable force cannot logically co-exist, but if only one is possible, which one and why?

Or are you going to ignore your own caveat about logical contradictions and say that God can do whichever he pleases because he is omnipotent?

I have little more to say on this matter. If you cannot define your terms clearly and *concretely*, then you cannot have a meaningful discussion of them.

That is--what's the word I'm looking for...bullshit. What people understand God to be is based on mythology, theology and culture. You know it and Aquinas knew it. Are you suggesting that he meant to say that Jesus didn't necessarily exist and that the Bible might just be a made up story, but that there was nonetheless an intelligent creator at work? Does anyone really go to church every Sunday and pray to some unnamed creator, and pay homage to Jesus even though they don't really believe the man existed?

The cosmological argument invites us to believe in Christianity (or whatever other religion is is invoked on behalf of) but it doesn't directly address it. It is intentionally deceptive in addition to being circular.

In the first place, there is no need to accept a prime mover argument. There is no reason to conclude that something could not have possibly come from nothing. We have no reason to suppose that it did, but we also have no reason to suppose that it did not.

Secondly, even if we do accept the notion that there had to be something that has existed for all time, it is completely irrelevant to any question of the existence of God. If we accept the premise, then all we can conclude is that something has been around forever. To argue that it does not matter whether that thing is God or not torpedoes the entire argument as a proof of God, which is how the argument is presented.


Saying it isn't so doesn't mean it isn't so. Moreover, you now introduce new nonsense terms. What does it mean for God or anything else to be "subordinate to morality" or to "what is good and evil?" You just make up terms and claim they prove your point, but you apparently can't even explain what they mean.

You understand the source of the God is good argument, don't you? The asseertion is made that God loves us and cares for us and looks out for us. Objectors point out that, if God really exists and is so powerful that he can do anything he wants, his actions certainly don't seem like that of a loving, caring protector. In fact, they can seem downright cruel and sadistic. The typical counterresponse to that is that we are like children and don't always understand that the things God does may seem bad but are ultimately for our benefit. This restatement is then countered by pointing out that even children can see when an adult is being vindictive, sadistically cruel, or negligent, and that there is no way that any loving or caring being could justify that. Allowing babies to be born with fatal birth defects, allowing starvation and disease to ravage peaceful populations, and deciding to kill every living thing on the planet except for one man, his family, and some animals all fall into that category.

The final retreat is to say that God can do whatever he likes because he's God. But that is a far cry from the benevolence argument. A more honest statement would be to say that God does things that we consider reprehensible and evil, but he is allowed to because he is God. But if this is the case, let us not pretend that he loves us or that he looks after us. You cannot be benevolently looking after someone at the same time you are slowly and painfully killing them. If we were to judge God, we would judge him to be evil or, at best, indifferent and uncaring. You can argue that we are not competent to judge God, but then you have to argue why.

xian

"Power, in regards to what is imaginable to the human mind is indeed subjective. The supernatural is defined to have capabilities due to our own ignorance in understanding the way the universe works. For example, gods of the past were so powerful, they hurled lightning bolts at the ground. "


a human mind is perfectly capable of imagining an objective proposition.

"For example, gods of the past were so powerful, they hurled lightning bolts at the ground. "

But any potential God that can defeat those Gods would be objectively greater. If hurling a lightning bolt represents a limit of power, this is not a subjective proposition but an objective one.

Unlimited power cannot logically be ascribed to two co-existing beings. Unlimited power does not represent a subjective quantity, but an objective one. If it was subjective, then it would be fully limited, and furthermore, it wouldn't even exist (since existence requires objectivity)

xian

your belittling remarks make constructive reasonable dialogue impossible. you can find another "xian" to pick on because I have nothing to do with posts that seek to intimidate, belittle, and criticize. ad-hominem post ignored.

Kvalhion

I am not trying to establish co-existing beings. I am pointing out why the IPU is a valid contradiction to your concept of a god.

Even if we both vaguely claim "my god has the ultimate power in the universe", there are terms (which you chose not to address) that are not simply vague and undefined. My idea of what is good is quite specific. I am willing to guess that your idea of good is not the same as my idea of good. Thus, when I say the IPU is the "ultimate" good, and you say your god is the "ultimate" good, they are not one in the same because good is a subjective term.

Remember, what is good to one thing is inherently not good to another. This only further proves the point that you are defining your own idea of your own god.

Philosoft

I don't think this analogy works. The planet Earth also has locality as one of its necessary properties.

It depends if your GPB has the property of locality. If I conceive of two beings with otherwise equal attributes, your GPB and the IPU, but assign them different locations, I necessarily have two beings. If your GPB does not possess the property of locality, you have exceeded the scope of the term "being."

xian

ahh! I see what you are saying. But even though we may define Good in a particular way that does not match, that is not to say that there does not exist a definition of good that does not depend upon our subjective determinism. I define good one way....you define good another way....neither of us may have defined it the greatest possible way. It seems that you are saying that "good" can only exist as a subjective proposition. However, that statement itself is an objective proposition.

I recognize your postulation that good may only have a subjective definition, but I do not think this is neccessarily the case. logical definition for Good in regards to the GPB will be relative to itself, though I think that humans have general ideas about what is "good" that are agreeable- even if the particulars of that defintion may differ.

xian

when the GPB has infinite attributes assigned to it, locality as in "contained to a point in time and space" becomes a misnomer

Clutch

False. Infinity is consistent with boundedness. See the kids' webpage on infinity to which I've referred you several times now.

xian

ad-hominem post ignored.

Philosoft

Then it isn't a being, it is something else. For a thing to have concrete existence, it must be located somewhere. Implicit in your claim is the idea that a being can exist without locality. As this ignores an essential property of "being," you must now show, at the very least by induction, that a being can lack locality.