Jet Grind

Well, welcome to the boards!

You're absulutely right, they do contradict...in the defintions that you've presented. A theist can dodge the contradiction simply by changing the defintions. If find that whenever you hand a theists the ball (so to speak), they simply run with it until you get too tired to chase them any longer and give up (read: they constantly rationalize the arguments you throw at them and attempt to force you to disprove them). That's why I take the position of a weak atheist/skeptical agnostic, I can just throw the argument into the theists lap by saying "If God really exists, why haven't I heard an argument for it's existence that could hold water?"

AsimovsProtege

Thanks for the welcome, guys...or girls!

"God can do anything that doesn't conflict with his divine nature. As Webster puts it, virtually all powerful - not - can do absolutely anything imaginable including that which is logically impossible.

Now, as you said - yes God is all good. Because he is all good, its impossible, by the laws of his own being and nature that have existed for eternity, for Him to do wrong."

If God cannot do anything that doesn't conflict with his divine nature, that is a limitation, and by our definition of the word, cannot be omnipotent. Therefore, if God is not all-powerful, then what is he?

Conchobar

What exactly is God? How can we argue about the existence of God if none of us can define that of which we are debating?

There are several different quasi-definitions of God used on the various forums. The classic type is the anthropomorphic god. This God usually has a human personality with human emotions, human virtues, and human vices. These are manifested by jealousy, anger, rage, love, mercy, capriciousness, justice and injustice, insecurity (need for adoration as assurance of his supremacy), and forgiveness. He is omnipotent, omniscient, and the creator of all reality. This anthropomorphic god can range from the minimal anthropomorphism of Monotheistic Allah, to the marked human raging Monotheistic JHWH, to the every human Jesus Christ who is a God-human hybrid in a trinity that believers pretend to be Monotheism.

There are relatively undefined or poorly defined gods such as the one recognised by Deists, Unitarians, and Bahai’s. This god is conscious but clearly not human. He or She may or may not have emotions. That is not defined. He/She has but one function. That is to create the universe and the rules by which it runs.

Then there is the totally undefined God, not of a particular religious school of thought. People say they believe in a god-creator but say that nothing can be known about this god.

Another kind of god, believed by rare European and many American scientists, possibly to avert the charge of Atheism is the Inanimate God. This god is defined, as perhaps Steven Hawking would say, as the elementary forces of nature and the unified field theory of reality. This god is not a conscious being. It has no personality. It is incapable of thinking (cognition). It knows nothing. But its action results in the formation of universes, beginning with a big bang from a tiny singularity, and accounts for all of the properties of energy and matter. Those innate properties account for the evolution of matter from energy and nanoparticles, and the evolution of life from atoms combining into a series of increasingly complex molecules.

Life (animal) evolves through stages of mobility, which requires some self-awareness and reactivity to cognition and intelligence. Intelligence is merely an animal behaviour evolved in stages for adaptation. This adaptation includes finding food, finding reproductive mates, and avoiding predators. As such thinking and intelligence is not necessary for a creator god who needs no food, needs no reproductive mates, and need fear no predators. Such a creator-god needs intelligence no more than a rock needs a computer keyboard.

This then gets us to the question facing Atheists. In countries like the USA where Atheists are widely hated, would they be better off claiming to be theists. When asked to elaborate on God, they could reply with a Hawking style definition. They would be eligible to join the Boy Scouts of America, and previously Atheistic war veterans (10%) could join the Veterans of Foreign Wars now denied to them.

Conchobar

Jinto

If God chooses to do no wrong, and has never done wrong, and never will do wrong... then he qualifies as omnibenevolent. Now, an actual inability to do wrong would nessecarily make him omnibenevolent, but the reverse is not nessecarily true.

Oh far from it... it's just a verifiable fact that 99.99999999% of it is uninhabitable to humans, and the .00000001% of it that we call Earth is clogged with utter morons. Now, to me, that represents a problem.

Magus55

God is perfect, holy, good, righteous, sinless, etc. etc. We can do things that are wrong, because we are going against God's nature by doing them. That doesn't dismiss, or hinder omnipotence. God doing wrong is impossible - by his very own nature. Doing wrong is not making you more powerful than God, because things that are wrong - are below what God can do. Being able to do nothing but good is more powerful than being able to do some good, and some bad. Good is more powerful and greater than evil, therefore by having no evil side, God is more powerful and greater than humans. You being able to do wrong makes you less than God, not greater.

Magus55

Wrong, its not a limitation - humans being able to do evil is a limitation. Being all good, is being complete. Evil is bad. Since God can't commit evil, he isn't held back or limited by it. As i said in the previous post, evil is weaker than good - being completely good, makes you greater than anything that is both evil and good. The limitations fall on us, not God.

And again, what do you have to compare omnipotence too? How can you say God is not all powerful when we have no all powerful standard to set it to? Omnipotence is held only by God, therefore his divine nature is what defines omnipotence - not humans. If God can't do it, its below the standards of what God can do or logically impossible even for an omnipotent being. Omnipotence does not mean you can exist within a pardox and defy that which is logically impossible.

Jinto

And again, what do you have to compare omnipotence too? How can you say God is all powerful when we have no all powerful standard to set it to?

Magus55

This is a hypothetical here. Obviously you all don't even believe in God, so its irrelevant anyway. Assuming the Christian God exists, and the Bible is true - God said he is all powerful - and nothing in existence is greater than He is.

Mageth

If god is perfect, omnipotent, and incapable of doing wrong, why did he repent for making man shortly before drowning the world in Noah's flood? And who the hell did he repent to?

Appius

It does not say that the Lord repented to anyone in fact it says "it repented the Lord", which means that he was sorry. So if one looks at the verse with this in mind he receives:
"And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart."
Now the statements that "Lord was sorry" and it grieved him at his heart are intertwined. If you trust the gospel of Mark it explains it all. For instance, Mark 3:5 reads:
"And when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, he saith unto the man, stretch forth thine hand."
So one sees that the Lord was sorry that the humans during Noahs day's did not believe in him, and their ways had stirred up his just anger.