Video: the incoherence of omnipotence

[Cheerful Charlie]

As per Descartes, God creates all the laws and rules of the Universe, the very logic of the Universe. And, God is good, perfectly good. Descartes was an orthodox Catholic.

If God is good, he will wish to eliminate moral evil. he would create man with a good nature such as God enjoys, and free will as God enjoys. Man then would of his own free will never do moral evil. We don't live in such a Universe.

The old free will defence fails. Plantinga: "Maybe all beings suffer from transworld depravity". Of course this is just a hypothesis meant to make room for evil in a world where God exists. If we create a mere "possibility" such as transworld depravity, depravity that exists for every sentient being in all possible worlds, we must consider transworld sanctity. Why would a perfectly good, a super-omnipotent God actualize a world where transworld depravity exists rather than a world of transworld sanctity?

A truly super-omnipotent God has no limits except for his own free will goodness. With such a God, we cannot have unknown and unknowable limitations, and his goodness would not accept anything less that a world free from moral evil.

Omnipotence in the end is a concept that is obviously incoherent and obviously not factual. We end up with desperate Plantingian defences, based on straw men and bad faith hypotheses, like the concept of transworld depravity. Which Plantinga by the way admits he does not believe in, it is just a feeble straw man aimed at atheists.

 

[Underseer]

It really does sound like a variation on the "god is beyond logic" argument, doesn't it?

If god is beyond logic, then we have no means of discerning good arguments from bad arguments. If we cannot tell good arguments from bad arguments in a discussion about god, then not only has the claim of god's existence not been proven, but it can't be proven, and thus it is never reasonable to accept the claim that god is real.

Logic (we've so far gained) is logically limited to the natural world (experience etc...) I say obviously. We have scientific mind bogglers with questions that defies logical understanding.

Edit: Would the human logic as it is, in the physical world,think it will (or not) understand "more than" just the natural world?

Again, logic is the only tool we have for separating good arguments from bad arguments.

If you declare your truth claim to be "beyond logic" then you are saying we cannot try to figure out which arguments are good and which arguments are bad. At that point, why insist that your claim is true at all if you are going to give up the only means we have of establishing its truth?

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As per Descartes, God creates all the laws and rules of the Universe, the very logic of the Universe. And, God is good, perfectly good. Descartes was an orthodox Catholic.

If God is good, he will wish to eliminate moral evil. he would create man with a good nature such as God enjoys, and free will as God enjoys. Man then would of his own free will never do moral evil. We don't live in such a Universe.

The old free will defence fails. Plantinga: "Maybe all beings suffer from transworld depravity". Of course this is just a hypothesis meant to make room for evil in a world where God exists. If we create a mere "possibility" such as transworld depravity, depravity that exists for every sentient being in all possible worlds, we must consider transworld sanctity. Why would a perfectly good, a super-omnipotent God actualize a world where transworld depravity exists rather than a world of transworld sanctity?

A truly super-omnipotent God has no limits except for his own free will goodness. With such a God, we cannot have unknown and unknowable limitations, and his goodness would not accept anything less that a world free from moral evil.

Omnipotence in the end is a concept that is obviously incoherent and obviously not factual. We end up with desperate Plantingian defences, based on straw men and bad faith hypotheses, like the concept of transworld depravity. Which Plantinga by the way admits he does not believe in, it is just a feeble straw man aimed at atheists.

It's not a hypothesis. At best it's a  just-so story (ad hoc fallacy). To count as a hypothesis, it would need to be falsifiable.

 

[ruby sparks]

Would the human logic as it is, in the physical world, think it will (or not) understand "more than" just the natural world?

There's more than the natural world? Who knew? Where is it? Can I get a ticket?

 

[Learner]

Would the human logic as it is, in the physical world, think it will (or not) understand "more than" just the natural world?

There's more than the natural world? Who knew? Where is it? Can I get a ticket?

If you want it in the form of erm... dark matter or vibrating strings?.. then I suppose so.

 

[bilby]

Would the human logic as it is, in the physical world, think it will (or not) understand "more than" just the natural world?

There's more than the natural world? Who knew? Where is it? Can I get a ticket?

If you want it in the form of erm... dark matter or vibrating strings?.. then I suppose so.

Dark matter and strings either exist, and are a part of the natural world; Or they don't and are not.

Everything that can in any way influence the natural world is part of the natural world BY DEFINITION. If there is a God or Gods, then those too must be part of the natural world, if they exist and interact (or interacted) with it. 'Supernatural' is a meaningless word.

 

[Learner]

Dark matter and strings either exist, and are a part of the natural world; Or they don't and are not.

Everything that can in any way influence the natural world is part of the natural world BY DEFINITION. If there is a God or Gods, then those too must be part of the natural world, if they exist and interact (or interacted) with it. 'Supernatural' is a meaningless word.

If God influences the natural world then I could agree. God is a natural entity by this context and therefore all that is invisible / unobservable (existing) to the naked eye is also natural. Supernatural would be meaningless or should be just a word to mean super-hard-to-see.

 

[bilby]

If you want it in the form of erm... dark matter or vibrating strings?.. then I suppose so.

Dark matter and strings either exist, and are a part of the natural world; Or they don't and are not.

Everything that can in any way influence the natural world is part of the natural world BY DEFINITION. If there is a God or Gods, then those too must be part of the natural world, if they exist and interact (or interacted) with it. 'Supernatural' is a meaningless word.

If God influences the natural world then I would agree. God is a natural entity by the context and therefore all that is invisible / unobservable to the naked eye is also natural. Supernatural just means super-hard-to-see.

Nope. Supernatural doesn't mean ANYTHING coherent. If something is super hard to see, you can call it that. If you are an astrophysicist, you might simply call it 'dark', and in 'dark matter' and 'dark energy'. But no matter how hard it is to see, if it has any effect on reality, it is part of the natural world, and if it is not part of the natural world it is indistinguishable from nonexistent.

If God influences the natural world, then God exists, and vice-versa.

Of course, we cannot simply assume that God does influence the natural world; If we are rational, we will need evidence for this influence. After all, astrophysicists didn't just assume that dark matter exists; they saw evidence that galaxies move in ways that cannot be fully explained by only the matter they can see, and hypothesized that there is therefore more matter out there, that they cannot see. It remains to be seen whether that hypothesis is correct, or whether some other natural phenomenon is responsible for the observed movement of galaxies.

Anyone can look at galaxies and see that they move as predicted by the 'dark matter' hypothesis. Are there any phenomena that anyone can look at which are predicted by the 'God' hypothesis (but not by any simpler or better evidenced hypotheses)? I am not aware of any.

 

[Learner]

Nope. Supernatural doesn't mean ANYTHING coherent. If something is super hard to see, you can call it that. If you are an astrophysicist, you might simply call it 'dark', and in 'dark matter' and 'dark energy'. But no matter how hard it is to see, if it has any effect on reality, it is part of the natural world, and if it is not part of the natural world it is indistinguishable from nonexistent.

Thats what I mean with the word by your "context". You could use the word to mean hard-to-see. (if its meaningless)

 

[Learner]

If God influences the natural world, then God exists, and vice-versa.

Of course, we cannot simply assume that God does influence the natural world; If we are rational, we will need evidence for this influence. After all, astrophysicists didn't just assume that dark matter exists; they saw evidence that galaxies move in ways that cannot be fully explained by only the matter they can see, and hypothesized that there is therefore more matter out there, that they cannot see. It remains to be seen whether that hypothesis is correct, or whether some other natural phenomenon is responsible for the observed movement of galaxies.

I remember sometime ago (in my agnostic former self) the electric /plasma universe theory which has its merits. It did seem to have a better explanation back then and I do sometimes hear it still mentioned although things may have changed a bit (if at all advanced further).

Anyone can look at galaxies and see that they move as predicted by the 'dark matter' hypothesis. Are there any phenomena that anyone can look at which are predicted by the 'God' hypothesis (but not by any simpler or better evidenced hypotheses)? I am not aware of any.

So it was what they saw that was evidential to make the theory for dark matter. We have a valid observation perspective just as you would for dark matter and that is the universe has a mechanised functionality for the existence of physical life.

 

[bilby]

If God influences the natural world, then God exists, and vice-versa.

Of course, we cannot simply assume that God does influence the natural world; If we are rational, we will need evidence for this influence. After all, astrophysicists didn't just assume that dark matter exists; they saw evidence that galaxies move in ways that cannot be fully explained by only the matter they can see, and hypothesized that there is therefore more matter out there, that they cannot see. It remains to be seen whether that hypothesis is correct, or whether some other natural phenomenon is responsible for the observed movement of galaxies.

I remember sometime ago (in my agnostic former self) the electric /plasma universe theory which has its merits. It did seem to have a better explanation back then and I do sometimes hear it still mentioned although things may have changed a bit (if at all advanced further).

Anyone can look at galaxies and see that they move as predicted by the 'dark matter' hypothesis. Are there any phenomena that anyone can look at which are predicted by the 'God' hypothesis (but not by any simpler or better evidenced hypotheses)? I am not aware of any.

So it was what they saw that was evidential to make the theory for dark matter. We have a valid observation perspective just as you would for dark matter and that is the universe has a mechanised functionality for the existence of physical life.

How is that evidence for anything other than what is observed?

There's nothing special about life from a physical or chemical perspective; it's just complex cyclical chemistry, and the complexity is readily explained by the action of natural selection over time.

Nothing is missing from this model; there are no unexplained phenomena that cannot be explained without recourse to an unseen but intelligent agency.

There are no God shaped gaps, so why would we hypothesise something that is needless and unparsimonious?

 

[Juma]

He told me.

How? How do you know it was the god of abraham? How do you it wasnt Loke? Or satan?

satan and loki don't claim omnipotence.

So satan and loki wouldnt lie?

 

[Juma]

why not shut down the conversation by asking if God can (in theory, if He wanted,) render Himself no longer omnipotent? The answer is yes. Because if God can't do that then He isn't omnipotent QED.

LOL. That is truly godlike logic.... circularbat least.
Why dont you simply state that you dont care about logic at all? You believe in god and reason doesnt come into it. So why arguing?

 

[Lion IRC]

I'm not.
I don't need to.
Omni means omni.
If others want to argue for a new definition that's for them.
Folks are changing the definition of words pretty often these days.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Folks are changing the definition of words pretty often these days.

Well, the veracity of that statement really depends on how one defines "words".

 

[Kharakov]

Folks are changing the definition of words pretty often these days.

Well, the veracity of that statement really depends on how one defines "words".

It depends on what the word word means.


How many words mean themselves?

 

[bilby]

Folks are changing the definition of words pretty often these days.

Well, the veracity of that statement really depends on how one defines "words".

It depends on what the word word means.


How many words mean themselves?

Only 'themselves'.

 

[James Brown]

One might make the case for 'theirselves', but I don't want to be self-referential.

 

[Kharakov]

It depends on what the word word means.


How many words mean themselves?

Only 'themselves'.

That's an interesting answer to the phrase "How many"- the implication is that themselves means at least one, but if it meant one, then one would also mean themselves. So it must mean two, in addition to its meaning themselves.


How many of those do you want? Themselves please.

Wut? I would like themselves.

Ok. How many? Themselves.


I really think some words need to work on themselves.

 

[Atheos]

Language is constantly evolving, which means new meanings become attached to words on a regular basis.

Ruby Sparks has already pointed out that "omni" doesn't necessarily mean "all" in the absolute sense that Lion IRC keeps insisting on. An animal can be an omnivore even if it can't eat cyanide. If it is true as she stated (I haven't bothered attempting to research it) that the word "omnipotent" was applied to ancient Emperors then it is (ironically) such people as Lion IRC who is changing the meaning.

But all that is irrelevant. Words are tools, not our masters.

Lion IRC, I'll just ask you directly: Can the god you believe in tell a lie? Or do you believe in the god described in Titus 1:2 who cannot lie?

 

[ruby sparks]

It depends on what the word word means.


How many words mean themselves?

Only 'themselves'.

That's an interesting answer to the phrase "How many"....

If people could like themselves more, they'd be more able to just be themselves.

Two words in that sentence mean themselves. I'm not telling you which two. You have to guess.