TerryTryon

Then there's the whole "existential guilt" thing. If I spend a weekend in Italy, I can do the tourist thing in Naples, or I can do Venice, but I can't do both. If I do Naples, I will be sorry to miss Venice. The volcano or canals? That's life.

The whole discusssion so far is really about the limitations that existence imposes. Can you have a a really big rock you can't move? Yeah. But, can you really move it when nobody's looking? No. Does that forfiet your omnipotence? Once again, yeah. Nothing can claim existence without accepting limits on its power.

Not as sexy as "The Problem of Evil" but just as devastating.

fishbulb

No. Since you do not define omnipotence, you have no idea what it means. You have undefined the term and thus rendered it meaningless. You therefore cannot say anything at all about omnipotence.

If you do not define omnipotence, you cannot discuss it. Either you accept the usual definition of the term, in which case it remains a paradoxical concept, or you offer an alternative definition. But if you do the latter, you are not addressing the original point. In any event, if you do not want to either accept the common definition of omnipotence or provide your own, you really shouldn't be discussing it, since nothing you can say will be at all meaningful. Hence, word games.

The coherence of this statement depends on the definition of omnipotence. If omnopotence means possessing unlimited power, then the statement is logically inconsistent, because having unlimited power means being able to do anything. But the second clause states that God can't lift every stone. So the statement is logically inconsistent. Therefore, it is meaningless to ask whether it is true or false.

If you don't define omnipotence this way, then you have to provide an alternative definition. If you don't define omnipotence, then your statement is meaningless because it includes an undefined term.

If you define omnipotence as being able to do anything that is logically possible, you cause a paradox. As I have shown, there are many propositions which are logically possibly true, but the combination of which are not logically possibly true. Therefore, being able to do everything that is logically possible requires that you also be able to do things which are paradoxical.

If you just say that omnipotence doesn't require you be able to do anything that is logically possible, then you have said nothing at all; you have not defined your term, you have just mentioned a feature that is not part of your definition. It is like me saying that something does not have to be worth nine cents in order to be a dime. It tells you nothing about what a dime is worth. In fact, it doesn't even preclude a dime being worth nine cents (though it would if I made the slightly meaningful statement that a dime cannot be worth nine cents). As you have no definition of omnipotence, anything you say about it is gobledygook. Word games.

It suggests that this being cannot create a stone too heavy for him to lift. This is a specific limitation of this being's power. But being able to create a stone too heavy for anyone to lift is a logically possible power. So, this being lacks at least one logically possible power.

But you have not said what it does include. Can an omnipotent being create a stone too heavy for it to lift? Can it lift any stone? Can it do neither? You have said absolutely nothing about what an omnipotent being can do. You "solve" the paradox of omnipotence by undefining omnipotent and then saying, "see, now there is no problem." But all you have done is avoid the problem by insisting that certain words have no meaning. Word games.

Darkblade

I am not sure whether many people either read or understood my previous post in this thread, due to my use of many layers of parentheses, but I already provided the solution to the ongoing problem in this thread. If you accept the god-concept’s omnipotence to be limited to both what is logically possible and what is (logically) comprehensible and coherent, the problem is solved. God could then (excepting theoretical time traveling abilities) only do or create (comprehensibly and coherently specified) finite things (things with a (specified) finite range of (specified,) quantitized, finite qualities (or a (specified) range of qualities), and only in a finite, probably nonzero, amount of time. Just because something “infinite” can be “imagined”, does not mean that it can really be conceived of well enough to do or create. So, God could create a finite rock, which would be attracted to another finite mass, which is (arbitrarily?) defined as down, and then God would have to wait a finite amount of time to build up the force needed to lift it. This does not solve the (in my opinion) more ridiculous problems of how God would implement its omnipotence (through a mentally controlled ubermachine?), or how it gained it. Obviously, because my solutions are naturalistic, theists will not likely agree with them, especially because their god would then have to lose its precious “free will” (unless they are hypocritical ).

Theli

Ofcourse it is a failure of the gods. Omnipotent gods would not need an external "safeguard" to protect them, if they actually were omnipotent they should be able to protect themselfs.

Taffy Lewis

fishbulb,

I was a bit surprised that you would say this since in my last post I said:

The problem isn't that omnipotence has no definition. The problem is that the definitions which are usually offered are too general to tell us very much about what such power involves.

With regard to statement (S), you say:

But if you can't claim it is true or false then you can't claim it is necessarily false that God can be omnipotent and create a stone he can't lift.

But you seem to argue for this very claim when you say:

If something is paradoxical that just means that it is logically impossible. And saying that a being is omnipotent and that there exists a stone too heavy for him to lift is logically impossible is equivalent to saying that (S) is false.


The expression "being able to create a stone too heavy for anyone to lift" is misleading due to the term "anyone". Being able to create a stone too heavy to lift by a being with unlimited lifting ability isn't a logically possible power. It is only a logically possible power if the "anyone" referred to has limited lifting power.

Think of the solution to the paradox this way. Suppose I have unlimited stone creating power and you have unlimited stone lifting power. If my power to create stones is unlimited that would seem to mean that I can create an unlimited number of stones of an unlimited variety of size, shape, mass, color, texture, etc. And similarly if your power to lift stones is unlimited that means you can lift an unlimited number of stones of an unlimited variety of size, shape, etc. Now I can't create a stone that you cannot lift. But I can still create an unlimited number and variety of stones. It's just that I can't create a stone the description of which is nonsensical. I also cannot create a stone which is shaped like a spherical cube. But this also doesn't imply that my stone creating power is limited.

Therefore, lacking the ability to create a stone which you cannot lift does not imply that my stone creating power is limited. If it did then I would not be capable of creating an unlimited number and variety of stones.

This suggests that having unlimited power does not entail being able to do anything logically possible.

fishbulb

There are many things that are logically possible, but the combination of these things is logically impossible.

Power 1: the ability to create a stone too heavy for any being to lift.

Power 2: the ability to lift any stone.

For argument's sake, our working definition of omnipotence: the power to do anything that is logically possible.

Power 1 is logically possible so, given our definition, an omnipotent being must possess it. Power 2 is logically possible so, given our definition, an omnipotent being must possess it.

The fact that power 1 and power 2 together is paradoxical doesn't mean that you can deny either power 1 or power 2 to an omnipotent being, having defined him thusly. Instead, it can be deduced that an omnipotent being, as per our definition of omnipotence, possesses paradoxical powers.

If you define "unlimited stone creating ability" as the ability to create unlimited stones in any (actually) possible combinations of shape, size, etc. But this is a far cry from the assertion that you can create a stone so heavy that no being can lift it.

A "spherical cube" is a paradoxical concept, but a "stone that no being can lift" is not. A "being that can lift any stone" is also not paradoxical. A universe in which there exists both a being that can lift any stone and a stone that no being can lift is paradoxical. So, if you ASSUME that there exists a being that can lift any stone, an unliftable stone is a paradoxical concept. Likewise, if you ASSUME that there exists a stone that cannot be lifted, a being that can lift any stone is a paradoxical concept. But there is no basis for either assumption. If you want to grant one or ther other, then you have to have a good reason for making that assumption.

Any way you want to spin it, either not being able to lift any stone or not being able to create a stone so heavy you can lift it it is a limit to your power. If you were omnipotent, you would be able to create a stone so heavy I could not lift it. You would also be able to lift any stone, no matter how heavy. The fact that the two powers are paradoxical is a problem, but it is a problem with the notion of unlimited power.

Either you have unlimited power or you have limited power. If you have limited power, there are certain things you can do and there are certain things you cannot do. If you have unlimited power, there is nothing you cannot do. But this causes any number of paradoxes.

People who assert that God is omnipotent but deny that omnipotence is paradoxical try to eat their cake and have it. The point of declaring God to be omnipotent is to say that there is no power that God doesn't have. If you say God isn't omnipotent, you admit that there are certain things he cannot do. But then you can't claim to know the extent of God's power -- how do you know that a non-omnipotent God is able to perform miracles, for example? Some believers just bite the bullet and say that, sure, God can both lift any stone and create a stone too heavy for him to lift. He's God and he isn't bound by the rules of logic. No need to worry about how it is possible to do both things. Others try to claim that God is omnipotent while trying to retain some rational limits on God's power. But rational limits are limits. Declaring that God can only have powers which are not only individually logically consistent but which, taken as a group, are logically consistent as well, means that it is not possible for God to have every power that is logically possible. He can't both lift any rock and create an unliftable rock; he can't both be indestructable and be able to destroy anything. At most, he can have one power from each group. At most. But there is no reasonable way to determine which, if either, power he has. There are an infinite number of possible logically consistent sets of powers that a being can have, and many of them are going to be equally powerful. Unless you are somehow able to justify which powers you think God has, you've essentially defined God's powers as being unknown. But that being the case, you ought not use the word omnipotent, which has a particular meaning, when there is a better word that describes God's powers: unknown.

Thomas Metcalf

Here's my definition of "omnipotent", straight from the horses' mouths, so to speak:

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(D3) x is omnipotent at t = df. (s)(it is possible for some agent to bring about s --> at t, x has it within his power to bring about s). [Hoffman and Rosencrantz, 172]
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There are some important qualifications, but they mostly just have to do with s being "unrestrictedly repeatable" (can happen, then not happen, then happen again, ad infinitum) and possibly brought about by someone. This is the definition presented by Hoffman and Rosencrantz in their recent The Divine Attributes (Blackwell, 2002), and I have no problem taking them to be the authorities, especially because they're theists.

The problem is that, while this definition is internally consistent, there are quite a few attributes that God is taken to have that are incompatible with His omnipotence. The best known is probably necessary moral perfection; see Morriston's "Omnipotence and necessary moral perfection: are they compatible?" in a recent Religious Studies and "Omnipotence and the Anselmian God" in a more recent Philo. God can't bring about the state of affairs "all innocent persons are maliciously tortured forever" because He is necessarily morally perfect.

So it's up to philosophers of religion to say whether H & R's definition matches something close enough to our concept of what omnipotence is. I happen to think it matches closely enough. Therefore, the paradox of the stone is no problem, because it is not possible for some agent to bring about "a stone exists that God cannot lift" at any time t.

Taffy Lewis

fishbulb,

Power 1 is not logically possible due to the expression "any being". If we take "any being" literally it will have to include beings which can lift any stone. Thus it should read:

Power 1: the ability to create a stone too heavy for beings who can lift any stone and beings who cannot lift just any stone.

This is clearly contradictory.

betzerdg

G-d exists outside of time and space.

G-d exists outside of our reality.

A rock is a "creation"..another god is a 'creation".

G-d exists outside of creation.

Scripture says that G-d spoke all things into existence.

Think of it this way....millions upon millions of vibrating strings or conductors of sound hold our universe together.

IF G-d ceased to exist....His word would cease to exist...and we would be just a black hole....or even more precise....

unexplainably non-existent.

YOu all seem to have a very limited and superficial concepts of the creator of the universe.....that you can argue such trite and retorical ideas that lead to NOTHING. YOu have way more time on your hands than I do. Sorry about your bad luck!

Shalom,

BEtzEr

Darkblade

You, betzerdg, seem to have very limited and superficial concepts about the reality of the universe.....that you can argue such trite and rhetorical ideas that lead to NOTHING. You waste way more time spouting nonsensical "truths" than I do. Sorry about your bad luck!

And don't say that I was mean. You said the same kind of things about all atheists. Sorry about your bad luck!