The_Ist

Sorry Bob, but I don’t see how this pertains to or negates what I said.

If God is all-loving, he wouldn’t be able to hate, or act out of hate, or be motivated by hate, because then he wouldn’t he all-loving. So it is logically impossible for God to hate, and his omnipotence isn’t undermined.

Perhaps you could further explain what you meant or put it another way. You may also want to consider my amended definition of omnipotence given below.

In case you couldn’t tell from my screen name, I am a theist. This statement of yours seems like quite an overgeneralization, and an incorrect one at that. Do you not think that Plato, Descartes, Kant, Keirkgaard, etc. had any relevant philosophical insights? They were theists.

Good point Philosoft, I will amend my definition. Let me try this: a being is omnipotent if it can perform any action that any hypothetical being could ever want to do, insofar as this action is not logically incompatible with that being’s other intrinsic positive attributes.

Consider your McEar example. McEar has one intrinsic positive attribute: the ability to scratch his ear. However, there are innumerable examples of actions I could want to do that would not be compatible with ear-scratching and that McEar cannot perfrom, so McEar is not omnipotent.

So suppose that one of God’s intrinsic positive attributes is love. I could want to hate someone, but the fact that hating someone is incompatible with God’s attribute of love rebuts the conclusion that God is not omnipotent due to his inability to hate.

Philosoft

I guess I'll leave this in Philosophy for now.


This appears to beg the question: Why does "omipotence" have to respect "intrinsic positive attributes"? If I can conceive of a being that can love and hate, does not that being have more power than the one that can only love?

What is the criteria by which we judge attributes? I can think of a situation wherein scratching one's ear might be undesirable.

So how do you expand the definition of "omnipotent" to exclude McEar?
I don't see how the argument supports the rebuttal unless there is a compelling reason why "omnipotence" should always respect positive attributes.

The_Ist

Heh, my apologies. Due to the fact that I did not explain what I meant by "positive attribute," you misunderstood my proposed definition of omnipotence. What I meant by "positive attribute" is something that is opposed to a "negative attribute." For example:

Negative attributes - non-red, non-holy, etc.
Positive attributes - red, holy, benevolent, etc.

Does this make more sense? There is probably some other term I should've used aside from "positive," but unfortunately I did not. With this in mind, I think you would surely have a different response to my previous post than the one given. Therefore, would you agree that the best course of action for this discussion is for you to post another response to my previous thread, with this fact being clarified?

ax

Well, I don't really have enough time at the moment to comment on your responses, but I found this thread ( http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...threadid=48682 ) relates to the subject. I think this conversation is moving towards "existance of god".
Thank you all for the input so far.

Nowhere357

Agreed. The statement "God exists" is also unfalsifiable, and I give it zero value. The difference IMO is that personal mental experiences actually do exist - whatever their nature, so they have some value at least. Sheesh, this is hard to talk about with clarity. Sorry.

trillian

God cannot be the all "everything" without contradicting himself and creating many paradoxes.

Theists want to make God the "best" of all that is "good". But being "everything" is more complex.

He must be the biggest and the smallest, the strongest and the weakest, capable of all good and all evil, colored all red and all blue. If he is incapable of any of these things by our standards, he CANNOT be everything. But God can do anything right? so....

If a person says that this is an anthropomorphic and earthly way of describing him, then there is no word in the english language which could fit him. He is indescribable by any human invention, including language. And even describing him as indescribable is wrong.

We cannot describe or envision the properties of a supernatural being anymore than I can teach my fish algebra.

Philosoft

Understood.
I had actually considered that you might have meant something like this by "positive." However, it doesn't appear to make much difference, as you still need to present a compelling reason why "omnipotence" must respect any limiting attributes at all. It seems that, at its most basic, your argument refutes itself:

(1) An omnipotent being can do all logically possible actions.
(2) God is an omnipotent being.
(3) God cannot hate/do evil/etc.
(4) ??

As you have noticed, maybe easiest way to resolve this is to modify (1), but your suggested modification, "An omnipotent being can do all logically possible actions that are consistent with its nature" is refuted by McEar. (3) appears potentially modifiable, but I think you'll find that fraught with problems, as well.

ax

Hmm, I think I understand now.
The Roman (or any other, almost), god, has a higher probibility of existing, out of all the possibilities of god(s).
Calling God "all powerful" and "everything incarnate" etc,hints (personally), of a group of humans, trying to make out how good he is.
(This is SO borderline philosophy forum).

Do you think, that a collective conciousness, may have all these abilities? eg: 1 all loving, 1 all hating, 1 all blue etc.
Similar to the trinity, but on a larger scale.

The_Ist

I’m not exactly sure what you mean. If God has attribute X, he cannot act so as to nullify this attribute. If he could, then we are talking about a being that cannot logically be described, but I do not think we are doing so.

I do not think I modified (1) in the way you portrayed it. I said that “a being is omnipotent if it can perform any action that any hypothetical being could ever want to do, insofar as this action is not logically incompatible with that being’s other intrinsic positive attributes.” McEar does not refute this definition, because he cannot perform actions that hypothetical beings could want to do and that do not contradict his positive attributes. McEar has one positive attribute: ear-scratching. There are obviously beings that want to do things aside from ear-scratching; since these things are not incompatible with McEar’s positive attribute of ear-scratching, and he can’t do them, he isn’t omnipotent. Now consider God. He cannot do something that you or I can do – hate. But he has the positive attribute of love, and since the act of hating is incompatible with this positive attribute, it does not nullify his omnipotence.

Dr. Retard

I disagree. Some people want to hate. Some people want to do evil. God can do neither. So there is an 'action' that a hypothetical (an actual!) being wants to do, and yet God can't do it. So, by your definition, God's not omnipotent.