rainbow walking

APok, first off - wrong = sin, or evil.

rw: Not necessarily. Sin is interpreted as disobedience to God. There are many cases where we can do wrong by our fellow man without actually incurring sin. For instance, since you referenced the bible, Jesus is said to have vanished from his parents sight for an extensive time, long enough to cause them worry, yet he is also depicted as having lived a sinless life. From his parents point of view he was wrong to cause them such worry and was likely punished for it.

AP: So, if anything god does, even if man judges it to be wrong, turns out to be good anyways...therefore, God cannot do any wrong.

Therefore, there is a contradiction.

rw: The only possible contradiction I see this leading to is a contradiction between man's judgment and God's. This has no bearing on there being a contradiction in god's attributes.

AP: Your argument also fails in that God deemed what is right and what is wrong, and he never changes, and never lies...according to the bible. So, our judgement of what is right and what is wrong comes from God. [/B][/QUOTE]

rw: That's a good point, but even if true it doesn't follow that man is FORCED to judge according to god's standards, so it doesn't really prove anything. According to the bible god established the moral concept and a set of specifics apropos to the Hebrews but this was. by no means. exhaustive in scope. There are alot of things he apparently left for man to establish according to man's circumstances. That's why Americans have a morality based on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; a set of precepts foriegn to the Hebrews in their time. According to your interpretation if god establishes something it's set in stone and absolutely cannot be abrogated. This is just not bourn out in reality. My argument stands.

AsimovsProtege

"What I think Magus is saying is that when you apply omnipotence to God you have to take his other natures into account. Thus even though God is omnipotent he also is holy; therefore, if God were to make a promise he would keep it-he can not break it. Whereas omnipotence without holiness means he could make a promise and then break it. However, I could have just miscontrued his ideas completely."


An omnipotent being cannot have a nature. If something cannot go against it's nature, it has a limitation, if it's limited in some way, it's not omnipotent.

Jinto

I'm aware of that.

This is my point: in every example, the bible states "God said 'I am the almighty,'" and not "God is the almighty." It is possible to claim that you are almighty when you are not, so even if we accepted the Bible as true, this is still not proof of God's omnipotence.

AsimovsProtege

well, god also says he never lies, that he can do no evil, that he can never be tempted, nor tempt anyone, and that he never changes, so you can't really tell whether or not he's lying, except take his word for it. And even if the bible said "God is Almighty" The bible is the word of God, so it would be just like saying "I am Almighty", correct?

So, if you take the assumption that he is almighty, then we circle all the way back to our original argument.

winstonjen

No, Xians tend to say, "But those acts aren't evil, because GAWD did them!! Don't question him!"

:boohoo: :boohoo:

Mageth

Appius:

Which gives one a background on why God was repenting. He was repenting because man had sinned.

I'll repeat: what the bible clearly says Jehovah was sorry for, repented for, was making man in the first place. Read Gen. 6:6-7. You can't escape the plain reading of the text.

AsimovsProtege

"I'll repeat: what the bible clearly says Jehovah was sorry for, repented for, was making man in the first place. Read Gen. 6:6-7. You can't escape the plain reading of the text."

It's impossible for an almighty being to be sorry for doing something. He knows everything that will happen, therefore, if he knew he was going to kill off humans in the next few thousand years, he wouldn't have made them. he would have made a more pleasing race of humans

Jinto

This assumes that God isn't evil and isn't an idiot.

Mageth

It's impossible for an almighty being to be sorry for doing something. He knows everything that will happen, therefore, if he knew he was going to kill off humans in the next few thousand years, he wouldn't have made them. he would have made a more pleasing race of humans

Yeah, a damn puzzling thing, isn't it? Could it be that it's all a fairy tale?

fishbulb

I would be wary about even trying to argue about omni-traits. If someone defines god, or anything else, in terms of unlimited traits (infinite, omnipotent, timeless, omniscient, perfect, or any other "trait" that implies a quality without limit) you should suspect that this person does not really understand the thing he or she is trying to describe.

The problem with omni-traits is that they are abstract. It is impossible to imagine a being which is literally all-powerful; we can't understand what that would actually mean. Likewise, we can't understand what it means for something to be literally "perfect," notwithstanding cases where "perfect" is used as part of a term to mean something very specific (such as a "perfect game" in baseball, which is a different kind of thing).

Abstract concepts are useful notions to have, but you can't instantiate them. You can have a concept of an infinite mass, but you can't actually have something that has an infinite mass. Likewise, you can have an abstract notion about a perfect sth. (day, being, ice cream cone, job, vacation, etc.), and you could compare different things and make a judgement about which one came closest to the abstract idea, but you could never concretely describe a thing that was literally perfect.

In short, if someone proposes the existence of a god with omni-traits, I would call his bluff and demand a concrete explanation of what he actually meant. Oftentimes, you will find that he is simply using "omnipotent" as a euphamism for "very powerful", or "perfect" as a euphamism for "has very few flaws." These are not the same things at all (though they are nearly as vague and nonspecific).