fishbulb

I think you miss the point: if God can do something that is impossible, then "impossible" is a meaningless term. By definition, if something is impossible, it cannot be done. It is not an issue of negating one's omnipotence. The point is that omnipotence is a meaningless term, and it can only be discussed by rendering other terms, such as "impossible" meaningless as well. A discussion of a meaningless concept using meaningless words is gobbledygook. By defining God as omnipotent, believers are being extremely lazy: they are ascribing to God a quality that has no meaning, and they are doing it in an attempt to head off the logical inconstencies that, but for this denial, are inescapable.

The cosmological argument goes much further than this. It assumes that this uncaused entity must be God. As an argument for God, the argument is a non sequitur because, even if you accept the unsupported premise that nothing can spontaneously come into existence with no cause, nothing in the premise demonstrates why it has to be God or any other sentient entity that is the root of all existence. This is a dishonest argument that attempts to slip God through the back door because he clearly won't fit through the front. It is also a very sloppy ruse; it is not difficult to see that the argument begs the question.

Here you demonstrate precisely the point of the argument. This is a nonsensical sentence; its correctness depends on negating the meaning of the terms good and evil. If someone who does evil things is an evil being, and God does evil things, then he is, by definition, an evil being. Your statement is fundamentally dishonest because you redefine your terms when you talk about God, but you don't explicitly say that you redefine them. Denying that something is true does not make it false.

I hope that you realize that these arguments have never convinced anyone of anything. They appeal only to people who already believe and who are looking for anything they can to reinforce and validate their beliefs. To someone who is not already a believer, these arguments are nonsensical and have been since they were first proposed many centuries ago.

Jobar

xian:
There can be only one GPB. I do not know all the inctricacies of this beings attributes, and it is not necessary. The GPB is an objective being, and logically I know there can be only 1. Whether or not a limited, subjective, finite human being has a full grasp of the objective attributes of the GPB is irrelevant.

You need to start saying "at most one" instead of "only one". I don't think anyone would argue with that. Remember that 'possible' is not 'actual'.

The problem here, as others have pointed out in different words, is that 'greatest' is an absolute descriptor. Since (as believers are often wont to tell us) we limited and finite humans cannot know everything, no matter how vast the things we see or postulate, we cannot ever know they are 'greatest'. Therefore, you cannot define a GPB with any certainty.

Soma:
What if He simultaneously creates and lifts the rock? Has He negated His omnipotence if no time passes between creation and lifting of the rock?

Ha! Then you would have a virtual God, who could only exist for less than a quantum instant.

Soma:

The cosmological argument attempts to demonstrate the necessity of a prime mover which is itself unmoved. Without an unmoved prime mover, nothing would exist now. Every thing that has the potential to move will never be moved because an infinite number of things have yet to be moved. An infinite regression of causation is logically impossible, thus there must exist at least one unmoved thing which caused all movement.

Thing is movement.
Matter is energy.

Because of this, all this talk of unmoved movers is nonsensical. Soma, as a Vedantist you should know that.

Soma

I saw this coming, so I propose this: Omnipotence includes only those power which are not logically contradictory. In other words, omnipotence includes all possible powers.

The prime mover is the cause of all existence; God is the cause of all existence. Aquinas was correct to equate the two. He did not assume the prime mover is God, he clearly states that what man understands God to be is what the prime mover is.

Even if you reject the argument Aquinas makes of the prime mover being intelligent, you cannot reject the First and Second Ways without being intellectually dishonest. The necessity of an unmoved prime mover is essential (otherwise nothing would exist now). Whether the prime mover is an intelligent entity or something else is another issue.

I have redefined nothing. I argued in another thread that what is immoral to God is not immoral for God to do. This is because God is not subordinate to morality or what is good or evil.

A most untrue generalization...

Soma

You're going to have to clarify.

Clutch

Hmm, that's strange. I'm intellectually honest, yet I recognize that the First and Second Ways are basic fodder for Spot the Howler exercises. Ah, right on cue: there's the howler!

This has been comprehensively debunked so many times at II alone, over the past year alone, that it's rather sad to see yet another person uncritically dredging it up.

Autonemesis

Wow, that's the first time I have ever seen a believer admit that this First Cause bullshit is a red herring. Thanks for your honesty!

Blake

Hi, xian. If you're still there (I can't quite make you out through the clouds of Soma), there's something that struck me about this post on page 1:

I'm not a philosopher like Clutch, so I'm just going to agree for the sake of argument that you're right, two infinite beings cannot co-exist. So there is a GPB, and an IPU that has all the attributes the GPB has, except that She isn't infinite. I frankly don't see how that makes Her infinitely inferior. It doesn't seem like such a disadvantage to me to be the size of a unicorn if She is still eternal, all-powerful, all-good, and so forth.

Did you mean size when you said the GPB is infinite? If not, please tell me what you meant.

Blake

Oh, by the way, xian, I looked up the Law of Non-Contradiction. According to perhaps the most authoritative philosopher, it says "One cannot say of something that it is and that it is not in the same respect and at the same time."

He just says "something," so I think this Law can only be used to talk about one thing at a time--not to compare two things with each other. So we can't use it to compare the GPB and the IPU.

I still grant for the sake of argument your idea that it's intuitively impossible for two infinite beings to coexist, however.

K

xian:

Again I'd like to ask you why you call yourself xian while putting forth "proofs" that show that Jesus couldn't have been divine.

xian

a great response. perhaps the best atheist rebuttal so far. i respond to this with 2 points:

1. numbers are conceptual.
just like an infinite amount of points exist in any line segment, but there is no such thing as an actual infinite set in this universe.

2. the attributes of the GPB are neccessarily infinite in scope. This means that another being cannot possibly share those attributes without creating a contradiction that cannot exist. The GPB will have unlimited power, which means that it is philosophically impossible for another being of unlimited power to co-exist. To propose such a thing creates a philosophical absurdity that cannot exist in reality.

But existing in reality is always > than not existing. Therefore, if the GPB is to actually exist, it must be alone.