fatherphil

i guess as humans, we have a need to try to explain things beyond our comprehension

fishbulb

Classically, god was never thought to be unmanipulatable either. Gods were typically seen as superhuman, but not transcendent. A god that is merely a superhuman being can be manipulated and thwarted by mere mortals and, indeed, legends tell of just such a thing happening.

I suspect that the idea of a transcendant god developed as an attempt to deny humanity the ability to influence--i.e. exert power over--god (or the gods). The attempt has always been awkward both because it has required the fabrication of an alternate reality for god to exist apart from the confines of the mortal universe and because it is seemingly contradicted by the Bible and other canonical sources. The result tends to be a long and tortured line of reasoning to get from the supposed facts to the desired conclusion.

There is nothing self-contradictory about that. We humans create things that we cannot lift all the time. What is contradictory are the statements that god can create a rock so heavy that even he cannot lift it, and that god can lift any rock. The two statements are paradoxical, but if either one is false then the other could, logically, be true.

The "anything logically possible" explanation is a dodge because there are innumerable things which, individually, are logically possible but which, collectively, are not. Therefore, a god would not be able to do everything that is logically possible but, rather, only a particular set of things which, together, are logically possible. But that tells us nothing about what those things are.

The question can be used to make believers in an omnipotent god bite the bullet and either agree that god can do both even though it makes no sense, or that god can do one but not the other. If they agree to the latter, then they have agreed that there are things--possibly significant things--that god cannot do.

ex-xian

I was only talking about the abilities of a supposed god. The question is a self-contradiction, given that god is omnipotent.
In my opinion, an omni-max god falls prey to self-contradiction, but I imagine that a xian would reply that god's omnipotence is limited and defined by his other attributes.

Milton

It is impossible to separate any attribute of God from the others.

You can say "a rock can be moved", that is true, a rock can be moved. That would be an individually possible thing. But once you add a person to it, that person is supposed be equiped for the move. So, if you say that Gary Coleman can carry a rock as heavey as the statue of Liberty on his shoulders, that doesn't sound so logical as just saying that rock can be moved, don't you agree?

So, if you say "can God create a heavy rock", then it is logical to say yes. But if you say that He can't move it, then you are relying on God's attributes. The same as you would rely on Gary Coleman's physical abilities, when saying that he can carry such rock on his shoulders.

Volker.Doormann

You say, there is a false premise ie, that Christians eschew the rules of logic. I agree, that Christians eschew the rules of logic, and it is obvious from my posting, that I agree. Then you says, that this eschewing of the rules of logic by Christians - on that I agree - should disprove my arguments with a 'no' and with a new assertion, that there should something are based on this false premise, and that I should take this premise as base. But that is not true. Still your assertion. I do not care about the lack on logic in Christianity. I have argued with logic to the claim of omni_potence, and why this is inherent contradictional, and therefore beyond the range of logic. You have two times not replied on this using arguments and/or logic.
EOD.

fishbulb

I'm not quite sure I understand what you're saying here.

I suspect that you are right, but I think that such a tack essentially boils down to a statement of definition--god is tautologically omnipotent--but it doesn't elaborate on what that actually means. God could (and we are supposing that there is such a thing as god, for argument's sake) be far, far more feeble than any commonly-held concept and still be "omnipotent" simply because it has been defined thusly. At that point, the discussion is not about what a god can or cannot do, but rather about what to call things.

fishbulb

I am not sure what you mean by this.

The assertion that "Gary Coleman can carry a rock as heavy as the Statue of Liberty on his shoulders" is unreasonable, but it is not illogical.

If being able to move a rock is an attribute, then so is being able to create one. If you can't know that god can lift such-and-such a rock because you can't know particular attributes of god, then you can't know that god can create such-and-such a rock either.

It is sensible for me to conclude that it is not possible for Gary Coleman to carry around Lady Liberty because I know roughly how heavy the statue is and roughly how much weight a human being can carry, and I know that the statue is many orders of magnitude heavier than the carrying capacity of even the strongest, most sturdily-built humans. On the other hand, I do not even know that a god exists. Assuming that one does, and that it is both capable of creating and lifting things at all, I do not have any idea of what the creating and lifting capabilities of such a being would be. It would therefore be most sensible for me to say that I do not know if there is a limit to how heavy a rock this god could create, if there is a limit to how heavy a rock this god could lift, or both. The sensible conclusion would be that I have no idea what the limits of such a god's powers are.

trientalis

Can God create a plot so complicated even He can't follow it?

(Raymond Chandler could.)

ex-xian

No, you've misunderstood me two times. I said that your argument was based on a false premise. That false premise is that xianity willfully and knowingly ignores the rules of logic. Specifially the law of non-contradiction.

ex-xian

Hmm...me neither. I think I meant that you were drawing a false analogy. The fact that humans can make things they can't life wouldn't apply as an analogy to god making something, since is omnipotent. His omnipotence would allow him to do anything logically possible, but creating something such that it is more powerful than himself would fall prey to contradiction, and thus god isn't able to do it.
That's true, and is a good topic for philosophy, but from the perspective of the monotheistic religions god has been sufficiently defined for this discussion.