James Brown
Veteran Member
Sounds like situational ethics. The bugaboo of Evangelical Apologists.
Of course you can. It just have to be frozen.I can't walk on water.
No. Show me where I've said God makes contradictions come true. (Use examples from my posts)
I've only seen atheists asserting that using their diluted strawman definition of omnipotence.
Why are you trying to change the topic from omnipotence to omniscience?
But since you ask, I think God can selectively access knowledge at will. And He can afford not to worry or think about how an infinite number of factual variables will eventually play out in the future. So, yes, He can be willfully ignorant.
Omni
Potent
This is so easy to understand.
What part of 'omni' needs explaining? It literally means ALL
There is no wiggle room. No exceptions.
Some of us poor old atheists are having trouble understanding what "no exceptions" means. If an omnipotent being cannot make contradictions come true then the being is subject to logic and we have to make exceptions for anything that violates the rules of logic. What am I missing here?
You made a snarky post about the "married bachelor" problem but I notice you never answered it. Can an omnipotent being create a married bachelor, or is that another exception to the things it can do?
While I'm at it I might also point out that you already brought omniscience into this thread.
It's easy to assert stuff. Anyone can do that. The hard part, and what you seem to find terribly inconvenient, is defending it.
omnipotence is not an incoherent concept, unless one doesn't not have a non-secular (i.e. religious) faith that it isn't not incoherent.
Show me a hypothetical example of a contradiction caused to become true by an omnipotent being. Until then your circular straw arguments are merely saying...omnipotent beings can't do things which are impossible for omnipotent beings because they aren't really omnipotent.
Yes an omnipotent being can make a married bachelor in the same way as SCOTUS can change the definition of marriage.
Logically impossible for two men to be married to each other? Husband and husband?
Of course you can. It just have to be frozen.I can't walk on water.
There you go again.
You are asking me to defend whether God can flaggle a snuffin - words you invented - and when I say yes you accuse ME of vocabulary manipulation.
Of course not.Of course you can. It just have to be frozen.I can't walk on water.
Then do you think it now being plausible : Jesus did it and therefore is real?
There you go again.
You are asking me to defend whether God can flaggle a snuffin - words you invented - and when I say yes you accuse ME of vocabulary manipulation.
Can an omnipotent being create a person who is both married and not married at the same time without changing the common usage definition of the word "marriage?" Can an omnipotent being create a square circle without changing the definitions of square and circle? Can an omnipotent being engender a logical contradiction?
So I'll repeat the question:
Can an omnipotent being create a person who is both married and not married at the same time without changing the common usage definition of the word "marriage?" Can an omnipotent being create a square circle without changing the definitions of square and circle? Can an omnipotent being engender a logical contradiction?
Jon,
While I applaud your efforts I feel like each of these is an attempt to find a semantic loophole rather than a solution. I would also argue that creating an alternative universe or bubble universes in which opposite truths exist are not logical contradictions. Like arguing that a same-sex couple can be married in one jurisdiction but not in another they do not represent logical contradictions, but rather mutually exclusive local situations.
Bear in mind that I still have no dog in the hunt. I'm fine with the definition of omnipotence including the ability to do that which is logically impossible. I'm just trying to explore the implications of such a state of affairs via thought experiments. Sometimes an experiment blows up in your face. Doesn't mean you should stop experimenting.
Finally (and I promise this is not meant to sound snarky) I was asking those questions specifically of Lion IRC in hopes of getting a better understanding of that one poster's personal definition of the word "omnipotence." While your input is welcome I really wasn't looking for explanations of how it could be done so much as whether these are all things Lion IRC believes an omnipotent being would be able to do.
So I'll repeat the question:
Can an omnipotent being create a person who is both married and not married at the same time without changing the common usage definition of the word "marriage?" Can an omnipotent being create a square circle without changing the definitions of square and circle? Can an omnipotent being engender a logical contradiction?
Let me take these:
1. This is fairly easy since it already exists. A gay couple is married in some jurisdictions while unmarried in others. So this already exists.
2. I am not sure how you are defining square and circle to be honest. Let's go with square having four straight sides and circle having all points equidistant from a single point. All I need to do now take a square and play with the geometry of the space so that the distances along the sides remain unchanged but he distances to the centre point become equal. It is a slightly weird space, but I could certainly do this in a computer simulation and actually give you a working metric.
3. This one is "easy". Just create a second universe with different logical laws. Then you will have logical statements in one universe which are logical contradictions in the other. You could even do this locally, wherever and whenever needed via little bubble universes.
Who said that we were arguing over that? Omnipotence and omniscience are assumed properties of your omnimax god.First of all, because you claim your god to be simultaneously omnipotent and omniscient.Why are you trying to change the topic from omnipotence to omniscience?
No, we aren't arguing whether God actually is omnipotent.
God's omniscience prevents him from doing doing anything other than what he knows he will do in the future. Beings who do not know the future must still do what God knows they will do, but they have the luxury of not being omniscient in that respect....Secondly, because you run into exactly the same problem with any "omni" property--the possibility that it is inherently limited by future events.
How is an omnipotent being "limited" by future events over which it has absolute control?
As Atheos pointed out, you yourself have explicitly claimed that omnipotence entails omniscience, so I don't see why you are trying to argue this point. Anyway, if God could somehow render himself ignorant at some point in time, then he could not possibly be either omniscient or omnipotent. God would never know, at any given point in time, whether he actually knew the future or had rendered himself ignorant of some aspect of it. The fact is that God cannot logically cancel his omnipotence or omniscience. He is stuck with those properties, like it or not....Thirdly, because omnipotence actually entails omniscience. Being ignorant of the future would render an omnipotent being vulnerable to events in that future--e.g. a whimsical decision to cancel or limit its power of omnipotence.
Why does an omnipotent being have to worry about "future events"? What? An outbreak of measles scares God?
Copernicus said:...God's omniscience prevents him from doing doing anything other than what he knows he will do in the future
Jon,
While I applaud your efforts I feel like each of these is an attempt to find a semantic loophole rather than a solution. I would also argue that creating an alternative universe or bubble universes in which opposite truths exist are not logical contradictions. Like arguing that a same-sex couple can be married in one jurisdiction but not in another they do not represent logical contradictions, but rather mutually exclusive local situations.
Bear in mind that I still have no dog in the hunt. I'm fine with the definition of omnipotence including the ability to do that which is logically impossible. I'm just trying to explore the implications of such a state of affairs via thought experiments. Sometimes an experiment blows up in your face. Doesn't mean you should stop experimenting.
Finally (and I promise this is not meant to sound snarky) I was asking those questions specifically of Lion IRC in hopes of getting a better understanding of that one poster's personal definition of the word "omnipotence." While your input is welcome I really wasn't looking for explanations of how it could be done so much as whether these are all things Lion IRC believes an omnipotent being would be able to do.
Are you still doing this? I thought you where too intelligent to think omnipotence should include illogical.There you go again.
You are asking me to defend whether God can flaggle a snuffin - words you invented - and when I say yes you accuse ME of vocabulary manipulation.
It is evident to me that you didn't read my post. I didn't bring "God" into the discussion other than referring to a claim you made on the first page of the thread (which seems ironic given you recently wagged your digital finger at anti-apologists who can't just let this be a secular discussion - something I'm trying to do). I didn't ask you to defend whether anyone can flaggle a snuffin and I didn't invent the words. You used them in this thread before I ever did, not that I'm accusing you of inventing them either.
I am not asking you to defend anything. Admittedly I did before when I thought I understood your definition of omnipotence. Right now (as I stated in my previous post) I'm just trying to understand what you mean when you use the word. I freely admit that I evidently misunderstood you before. Mea Culpa.
So I'll repeat the question:
Can an omnipotent being create a person who is both married and not married at the same time without changing the common usage definition of the word "marriage?" Can an omnipotent being create a square circle without changing the definitions of square and circle? Can an omnipotent being engender a logical contradiction?