Jove

Ok, these are just random thoughts that have been bouncing around my head recently, and have somehow managed to coalesce into some sort of theorem.

Ok, so if a deity is defined as "the most powerful possible being", than the properties that make it as such become part of the physics that make up our reality. Ergo, the properties that make it "the most powerful possible being" become quantifiable.

As such, it becomes possible to have a being more powerful than the "most powerful possible being", by just increasing, adding, making more potent, etc. the quantifiable properties/physics that make it TMPPB. And so on, to infinite regress.

So, it's not possible to have a most powerful possible being...

I know I probably committed eleventy logical fallacies here, but meh. What do you guys think?

7thangel

Hehehehehehehe.....and where will the source of potence by which you increase/add to make things more potent?

diana

One could ask the same of God: whence his "source of potence"?

Jove: I think you have a point. But wouldn't there be a point where the greatest possible being would no longer be possible?

d

Jove

I don't know. It depends on what laws of physics that make a deity powerful.

You mean, where infinite regress would end?

Hmm...

I was thinking more along the lines of numbers and "+1".

If you had a being that was defined as "all-powerful", you could have a being that was defined as "all-powerful, and capable of nullifying anything done by any other being". And then, you could have a being defined that was all-powerful, and capable of nullifying anything done by the second being.

And so on.

And so on.

Any suggestions for polishing this argument up?

SlateGreySky

Jove,

It's not entirely clear to me why it's the case that all "powers" of a deity are quantifiable, but even supposing that such is the case, I don't think that this necessitates the possibility of a perpetual "+1" deity, so to speak (that is, of an infinite regress).

It seems possible for God to possess all existing powers. Even if they are quantifiable, so what? If your argument is that there are other possible powers, then we don't need to worry about those, because they don't actually exist, right? Couldn't it just be the case that God possesses all actually existing powers, quantifiable or not?

fishbulb

Jove, I wouldn't worry too much about trying to analyze and counter this definition of God because it is completely made-up. There is no basis in observable fact or even in historical mythology for an all-powerful god. Even the most Holy Bible seems to portray God as a being of limited power. I can't quote you passages, but I suspect that others here would be more than happy to oblige.

I'm not entirely sure where this idea of "most powerful being imaginable" started: whether it was made up by Anselm for his ontological argument, or whether it goes back further in time. At any rate, even if there is a single god who created the universe, it does not follow that this god has unlimited power, nor does it follow, as some have suggested, that his power is limited but only to that which is logical. (If a god created everything that we know as reality, then that god is beyond our reality and we therefore can't make any assumptions whatsoever about what it might be like.) There is no basis for either of these assertions, and it is niether necessary to analyze them nor possible to do so rationally.

phil

You cannot have a MOST powerful being with only finite powers. In order to have a most powerful being, that being would have to have infinite power. They would truly have to be omnipotent.

-phil

Delphi

Jove,

By definition, an "all-powerful" being is unnullifyable. If you could nullify the powers of a being, it would no logner be "all-powerful", because it would lack the power to stop the "all-poweful, and capable of nullitying anything done by any other being" being from nullify it.

I think when most people define God as "all-powerful", what they mean is "able to do all things"; and I would add that what they really mean is "able to do all possible things". It seems logically concievable to me that there is a being that is able to do all possible things. If there are a limited number of possible things to do in the universe, then one does not have to worry about an infinite regress. If there are an infinite number of possible things to do in this universe, then is it acceptable to just say that God is also infinite?

Don't be fooled Jove, the premise that a diety exists and that that diety is defined as "the most powerful possible being" is a perfectly good place to start a discussion. People do it every day, regardless of who the first person was to "make it up". fishbulb may disagree with this premise, but that is a completely different arguement, and as I undersatnd it, not what you were asking.

Again, Jove, don't be fooled, it is perfectly acceptable to start a discussion on the premise that we can use logic to understand things about god (i.e. god created the universe, therefore god must be a creator of some sorts). There are plenty of people who do believe that god is outsise the bounds of logic, and therefore you cannot discuss god in a rational manner, but again, that was not your question.

Hope I have been some help Jove. You'll find that in philosophy there are people who will disagree with your premises, and that makes for an often confusing and off topic debate. However, I would encourage you to never let anyone take from you your right to have a discussion about something using the premises you want to use. In many philosophical works, the author's start off by defining their premises and then arguing from there. If you wish to argue those other points (can we know anything about god from what we experience in the world, is god outside of reason, is there evidence that god is "all-powerful), then I would suggest you start a new post.

fishbulb

You can make up whatever premises you like, but if your notions are created from whole cloth, you are just chattering idly about metaphysical what-ifs. It does not matter that lots of people believe something; lots of people believe very weird things indeed.

I'm not trying to fool anyone. I simply state that if someone puts forward an argument based on unsupported premises then there is no reason to bother addressing that argument. It does not matter how cogent an argument is if its premises are incorrect. If there is no evidence to support the notion that the premises are correct, there is no reason to suspect that they are, even if a lot of people happen to believe it.

theophilus

You have (unintentionally, I'm sure) stumbled on an important point here.
The ONLY required characteristic for "godhood" is power, i.e., more power than anyone else.
Love, kindness, mercy, etc., are not inherent qualities of "godness."
The God of scripture, has these attributes, but his authority comes from the fact that he is Almighty.
So, theism, per se, cannot be denied because of the absence of specific attributes.