Copernicus
Industrial Grade Linguist
Learner, Lion, or Tom, do any of you believe that an omnimax God can create a four-sided triangle? Why or why not?
Well, it depends what definition of omnipotence you use.
If you define omnipotence as being able to override the rules of logic then yes, he can create a four-sided triangle because that's a thing now as a result of his deciding that it's a thing. If you define omnipotence as being able to do anything that's logically possible, then he cannot because a four-sided triangle is not a thing which is logically possible. Either way, there's no issue.
Well, I totally disagree with your claim that there is no issue, if you attribute radically different senses to omnipotence. If you claim that God can do anything that is logically possible, then you run into all sorts of problems with the way that its meaning interacts with the concept of omniscience. We've been discussing in detail about what some of those problems are. However, Lion seems to take the bizarre position that omnipotence means that God can do logically impossible things. In that case, one ends up with a proof that God does not exist.
Here's the problem. Logic operates independently of physical reality, which is what omnipotence is all about. The rules of logic depend on the way we define words and symbols. So you can define the word "triangle" to refer to a four-sided figure, but that doesn't require omnipotence, only a willingness to change the meaning of a word. Anybody can change a convention. But triangles cannot have four sides by virtue of how we conventionally define the concept of a triangle. Presumably, God can force people to believe that triangles have four sides, but that would not actually be contravening the laws of logic. It would just be making people change a convention of word usage.