A couple of questions?

Yah hi i am new, i read a couple of forums and found it really interesting and well here i am. So yah a well known questions about god that i would like to have answered.Can god create a rock to heavy for himself to lift?I like to prove that god does not exist by using the tool of athiest, which also happens to be the holy bible, the book of christians. sit down, read it, its riddled with unexplainable contradictions. dont belive me? lets argue, i will trade all of my star wars card if u can explain one of these contradictions ( except boba fet, no matter how sure i am i never trade the FET man!)

Quoting compmage, from "Why omnipotent is a paradox."

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As far as I can reason, an omnipotent God is an impossiblity unless you are willing to embrase a paradox.

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Can God create a rock to heavy for him to lift?

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This question leads to a paradox. God can not be capable of both feats since they are mutually exclusive.

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Some people subscribe to the idea that omnipotence means being able to to everything that is logically possible as opposed to everything at all and, they say, since the above is not logically possible it does not contradict God's omnipotence.

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However, this question is actually the combination of two logically possible actions. These being:

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1) Creating a rock to large for anyone to lift.
2) Lifting any possible rock.

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Therefore a God capable of any logically possible action would be capable of both of these, which again leads to a paradox. Ergo, God can not be omnipotent without also being paradoxical.

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Further discussion takes off from there. Of course, there's up string also.Moose

Quoting myself, from message 52 of the topic mentioned in message 2:

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As I see it, a truely omnipotent creator would be able to further manipulate anything of her/his creation, regardless of the magnitude of the item.

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To the omnipotent God, no matter how large the rock, it can still be made larger, and it can always be moved.

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Thus the situation of God not being able to create of rock to large for her/him to move is a situation of God being omnipotent.

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Nobody replied to this, at the other location.Moose

yes but is it logically to walk on water? is it logically to stand above time? is it logically possible to rise from the dead? i can go on .......

You digress from the original question, but anyhow...Walk on water? I almost slipped, but I did walk across a patch of ice earlier today.Stand above time? I seem to rarely do anything on time. I'm usually running at least 15 minutes late.Rise from the dead? Many times, I've gotten back to feet, after kneeling at a grave site.Moose

Walking on water is not even physically impossible - for some insects.To be logically impossible something must entail a contradiction - so even rising from the dead is not logically impossible. "Standing above time" does not produce a contradiction in itself but may contradict other ideas about God.Going back to the old question of "Can God create a rock he cannot lift". It is widely accepted that omnipotence does not require the ability to do things that are logically impossible. Anyone who insists otherwise is not likely to accept the fact that logical impossibility is an absolute limit anyway, which makes this argument rather ineffective.If there is a rock God cannot lift, then God is not omnipotent - since lifting a rock is logically possible. On the other hand ceasing to be omnipotent is also logically possible. So the answer is a conditional "yes" - an omnipotent being can create a rock they are incapable of lifing provided they give up a portion of their power (with regard to lifting rocks).

minnemooseus quotes compmage:

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However, this question is actually the combination of two logically possible actions. These being:

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1) Creating a rock to large for anyone to lift.
2) Lifting any possible rock.

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Therefore a God capable of any logically possible action would be capable of both of these, which again leads to a paradox.

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No, the first is a negative statement, not a positive one. It states what cannot be done. If we are to allow negative statements like that, then we need to set up a set of axioms and see what falls out of them.The two statements are mutually exclusive, which is what you were complaining about in the first place.So choose which one you want. If we agree that omnipotent is really only talking about "logically possible," then one of those statements, by its very nature, is not logically possible.After all, "logically possible" can only be understood in the context of the system in which it operates. Some systems allow certain things to be logically possible while other systems prohibit them.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

Yes, an Omnipotent being can create a rock too heavy for him to lift, but in doing so he removes his own Omnipotence.It's largely irrelevant however, because the God described in the bible is not omnipotent (in several places, the bible describes god as being unable to do certain things).

"It's largely irrelevant however, because the God described in the bible is not omnipotent (in several places, the bible describes god as being unable to do certain things)."Logical contradiction includes that which is against the nature of a being. In this case God. Yes the Bible says there are things God can't do (e.g. lie), but those are always things that are outside of God's nature. Were God to do said actions, God would cease to be God. Therefore, Omnipotence is not at issue with those biblical examples.------------------
God is a comedian playing for an audience afraid to laugh ~ Voltaire

Not in the slightest. Logical contradiction only entails two or more well-formed statments that when joined with AND cannot produce a truth value of 1. It has nothing to do with the "nature" of the objects which might be described in the statements. Heck, the objects don't even need to be real to construct well-formed statements. "All squizzles are blundort" is a well-formed logical statement.

So God has a nature that she cannot violate. Doesn't sound so omnipotent to me.

Allow me to rephrase that:God by definition of who He is (and I am going from the Christian God, since the first post ref the Bible) cannot sin. Therefore, questions actions that God cannot do seems, if not a logical contradiction, pointless. Besides, the term "omnipotence" has been redefined by the church to include LCs, as well as those things which are outside of the Divinve nature. Heck, some early chruch teaching said God was so powerful and perfect that He could not answer prayer. This being against the nature of God as detailed in the BIble, and common sense, was done away with, as people re-visited the ideas of the divine attributes.

Your revision is acceptible. My only point was that logical contradictions are properties of joined statements and it is irrelevant what the referent objects of those statements are. If you have the statement "All of God's actions are non-sins" joined with "God's action X is a sin" you have a logical contradiction. "God's action X is a sin" is not a logical contradiction per se unless it is joined with another well-formed statement such as above. Still, in the example above you're sort of defining away the problem and begging the question. I may have grounds to reject "All of God's actions are non-sins" as a premise.

I don't see how the first is a negative statement. I am also not sure why it would make any difference. For the argument to work the first statement must not contradict itself, which it doesn't. Both actions are logically possible. There is nothing contradictory about creating a rock to large for any being to lift. There is also nothing contradictory in being able to lift any rock. The contradiction only comes about when both are said to exist in the same universe (system).If god can perform any action that is logically possible then he should be able to do both, since both, taken alone, are logically possible. However, given that these actions are mutually exclusive, god can therefore not perform all logically possible actions.------------------
Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in
this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely
conceives it, wants it, and loves it.
- Mikhail Bakunin, God and the State, from The Columbian Dictionary of Quotations

compmage responds to me:

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No, the first is a negative statement, not a positive one. It states what cannot be done.

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I don't see how the first is a negative statement.

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It states what cannot be done: The rock cannot be lifted.

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Both actions are logically possible.

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Not necessarily. It depends upon the axioms of the system. Essentially, your system comes down to A and ~A. There are rocks that can be lifted and there are rocks that cannot be lifted. Rather than go with two, mutually contradictory statements, we need to step back and ask a different question:Can there exist a rock that is too heavy to lift? If the answer to this question is yes, then the claim that god can lift any rock is a logical contradiction and not logically possible. If the answer to this question is no, then the claim that god can create a rock too heavy to lift is a logical contradiction and not logically possible.So one of your statements is not logically possible, we just don't know which.

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If god can perform any action that is logically possible then he should be able to do both, since both, taken alone, are logically possible.

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No, because both are mutually exclusive answers to the same question. Thus, if one is logically possible, that necessarily makes the other logically impossible.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!