Talk:Omnipotence paradox/Archive 3

message: The God of the Bible (whose existence is presumed, not debated)is not, in fact, capable of doing anything conceivable. For example, it says that God cannot sin since that would contradict His character, which the Bible says is morally perfect. If God's creating an unliftable rock would violate His perfection (and it would), then He clearly can't do it. It would seem, therefore, that the scriptures support an "essentially" omnipotent Creator. We do run into a problem with trying to apply human logic (which is limited by nature) to an "unlimited" being. While it's not logical that the biblical God can create and unliftable rock, not all of His ways and activities can be pinned down by our own wisdom and understanding of the universe. For instance, the article mentions an omnipotent god who becomes subject to his creation's natural laws. Well, in the Bible, that would be Jesus. Yet, Jesus wasn't completely under natural laws as is evidenced by His miracles. The article mentions that a god who could subject himself to natural laws by divesting himself of his powers, only to regain them, would render logic meaningless. This is precisely what happens with Jesus. He had to "empty" Himself to become a man, yet was able to regain those same godly powers upon His resurrection. Rather than this disproving God's existence, it only shows how limited our logic and understanding is when trying to understand a Being whose ways are above ours.Jlujan69 23:21, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  God's "essential" omnipotence 

message: The article mentions that the paradox has been applied to Christianity, and gives several conditional resolutions to the paradox.  It does not, however, give the conditional resolution that the Christian Bible gives, which is to say that God's "omnipotence" is defined not by having the ability to do anything, but by having all power.  The Bible makes it clear that God cannot do certain things.  Lying, for example, is not possible for God according to the epistle to the Hebrews:
Heb 6:17  So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, 
Heb 6:18  so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. 
Heb 6:19  We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, 
Heb 6:20  where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. 
Neither can God "deny himself":
2Ti 2:13  if we are faithless, he remains faithful-- for he cannot deny himself. 
That is to say, he must be true to his own nature.  Thus, Christianity does not posit a being that is omnipotent in the sense that the Omnipotence Paradox questions and therefore it is irrelevant to the question of the existence of the Christian God.
Aaronimo 18:07, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Christianity mentioned, but its answer not given 

message: I am surprised that there is no discussion of this form of the omnipotence paradox on the page and it passed as a featured article. If it is on another page I suggest it should be moved here, as it seems quite relevant to the topic. A good discussion of the problem can be found in J.L. Mackie's 'Evil and Omnipotence', published in Mind, New Series, Vol. 64, No. 254. (Apr., 1955), pp. 200-212.
The argument suggests that belief in the traditional concept of God is self-contradictory. The basic premises:
* God is wholly good.
* God is omnipotent.
* Evil exists in the world.
Two further premises or "quasi-logical rules connecting the terms 'good', 'evil' and 'omnipotent'", as suggested by Mackie, are:
* Good is opposed to evil in such a way that a good thing will always eliminate evil.
* There are no limits to what an omnipotent thing can do.
The article goes on to evaluate the various possible solutions to the paradox, which obviously depend on the denial of one or more of the premises. Subtitles from Mackie's paper give you some idea:
* 'Good cannot exist without evil' or 'Evil is a necessary as a counterpart to good'
* Evil is necessary as a means to good
* The universe is better with some evil in it that it could be if there were no evil
* Evil is due to human free will
Also see http://www.seop.leeds.ac.uk/entries/omnipotence.
Should this discussion be incorporated into the article?
:Eh, I don't really think it should be incorporated in the article itself, but I'll gladly take a stab at it!
::Evil is due to human free will.
:This is the easiest one to debunk.  If god created humans, then god is inescapably responsible for everything we have ever or will ever do.  Even "giving" us "free will" changes nothing.  It just makes us indirectly controlled rather than directly.  The choice to make us was his; anything we have done could have been prevented by either not making us, or by making us in a way that would prevent some of our choices.  Ergo, we are not and have never been responsible for what we do; there is no such thing as "free will", and we only delude ourselves that our choices matter.  If god is omnipotent, then we are entirely his puppets.  I try to imagine what possible amusement mortals would provide an omnipotent being, and the only things I can come up with are unpleasant.  Perhaps we're slapstick entertainment.
::The universe is better with some evil in it that it could be if there were no evil.
:Hmm, I think this is really a part of the topmost argument, "good cannot exist without evil".  Here's why.  "The universe is better" essentially means "the universe contains more goodness".  I'm willing to accept this - perhaps good and evil, rather than opposite ends of an integer scale, are two things which can coexist and require or even feed off of each other.  However, if this is so, the two arguments are really the same thing:  good requires evil.  So I'll get to that last.
::Evil is necessary as a means to good.
:Ahh, the old doctrine of ends and means.  When I was in Sunday School, this was the most basic thing I was ever taught.  I am no longer religious, but my personal sense of morality is still defined by two things I learned there:  the Golden Rule, and the fallacy of the ends and means.  Simply put, the doctrine of the ends justifying the means is the very definition of negative morality, or amorality.  Using this solution essentially proposes a universe in which an omnipotent god who purports to be "good" justifies his momentary, evil actions by saying they support some future good.  But why would god need to, if he's omnipotent??  He could just make the good stuff happen right now, and skip over the bad stuff.  The ends justifying the means is a doctrine of placing pragmatism over morality; but everything is pragmatic for god, even the most insanely difficult things, because he's omnipotent.  Therefore god never has to make sacrifices in his moral standards due to restrictions of the world.  He is free to always choose the good act, every single time.  So there is no excuse on those grounds for god to allow evil into the world; nothing ties his hands.
:(For that matter, it always upset me greatly as a child that "ends justifying the means" was explained as evil to me, and in the same breath, god's allowing evil in the world was waved away with "man cannot know the mind of god", which was just a sneaky way of saying "god chooses evil now to accomplish good later", which makes no sense as I've shown.  They didn't much appreciate me in Sunday School after that.)
::Good cannot exist without evil' or 'Evil is a necessary as a counterpart to good
:Out of the three (I consider this and solution #3 to be essentially the same thing), this is probably the most sensible.  If in the entire history of the universe, no evil deeds had ever been committed, there would be no standard of comparison against which to measure good.  There would be nothing but the blank, featureless plain of god's perfect goodness.  Or, alternatively, if god were evil, the blank, featureless plain of god's perfect vileness.  All sensation and awareness (that we know of) is relative.  That is to say, we know something by knowing how different it is from something else.  
:We know a pan on the stove is hot because it's hotter than the air around it.  Everything we know, we know by comparison with something else.  Even the common (in my opinion childishly simple) Judeo-Christian view of Heaven - angels plucking harps on fluffy clouds - would have to have varying levels of goodness.  Would you have more fun harping, or listening?  Lying on a cloud, or standing on streets of gold?  One would be less "good" than the other - even if both were extremely good by mortal standards.  Likewise, Hell would have to have varying degrees of pain, or else there would be no suffering.  Without the comparison, no discernment is possible.  Therefore, I'd reason that without evil, we might be entirely surrounded by good but we would not be equipped to know it.  We would not recognize its worth because there would be no evil to make us appreciate this.  Therefore, the existence of evil makes us aware of, and appreciative of, the existence of good.
:Now, before you start thinking I've worked things out, here's the snag:  if this were the case, and god created evil so that we would know good, you have to wonder what possible motivation he could have for this.  Why is creating a few puny scraps of flesh like us, just so that we could exist and know good from evil, so important that it was worth creating the universe for?  If we accept that all goodness flows from god (as most deists do), then it stands to reason that the purpose of knowing goodness is to know god.  Therefore god is a narcissist!  He created Satan in order to have a shadow, to throw himself into sharp relief.  He created evil in order to provide contrast, to allow us to see him.  But what good to him is the recognition of inferior beings such as us?  Some may say to be loved, but please be serious.  Does it deeply matter to you whether your pet mouse loves you or not?  Now imagine a relationship infinitely more imbalanced in power than that.  God may love us - as a writer I can attest that creators can't help loving their creations, being reflections of themselves - but why would god care about receiving our love?  When a composer jots down a new theme, does he ever stop to wonder what his creation thinks of him?  Of course not - it's a thing, it's something he made.  It is contained entirely within him; it can never do anything he didn't plan for it.  Only a fool would expect something more from his creation than he put into it.
:This paints yet another disturbing picture of god: a preening narcissist, lonely and bored, who creates an entire universe, peoples it with comparatively worthless sacks of meat like us, and inflicts evil upon it in order to drive them to worship him.  This reminds me less of a father figure than of a boy trapping bugs in a mason jar.  Far better, ethically, to never even create us, if he couldn't come up with any better reason for it than this self-adoring waste of his time.  Not really consistent with the concept of a perfectly good god.
:In any case, I've ventured afield a bit, and I'm straying a bit out of philosophy and too far into theology.  Still, these are essentially the thoughts I have on the matter.  The solution to the paradox is there is no solution.  An omnipotent, perfectly good god would not have created a universe with evil in it.  Therefore god must either be not entirely good, or not entirely potent.  Kasreyn 15:42, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There is also the veiw that god allows evil, not because it make the universe better, but that if he did not, then we would not have free will. If there was nothing else to choose, then we could be nothing but slaves to his will, whereas, if given the choice between good and evil, and we choose good, then we (not he, as he already knows) can trully know that we love him. In this case, the very fact that he allows evil as an alternative choice to him makes him more good, and he has no need to partake in it. The definaition of what free will actually is does come to play in this, but under the assumption that we do have it, this is the best explanation I have heard. Aerken 18:44, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Evil and Omnipotence 

message: I'm not sure who posted the above, but there are more than one attempted resolutions to the "problem of evil."  Greg Bahnsen provides one reprinted here.
Aaronimo 20:38, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  More than one resolution to the Problem of Evil 

message: i dont want to make a large problem where there isnt really one. in the intro when it mentions the false dilemna and varying degrees of omnipotence, i think this sticks out as a bizarre idea to the reader, because omnipotence means "total power", not varying degrees of power. im sure it makes sense and is described well by heagel, maybe a link to an explanation? Spencerk 20:59, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Varying degrees

message: Presumably an omnipotent being can do whatever they like, by merit of being able to destroy our laws of logic (and, come to that, us). --The1exile 19:31, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Isn't this a false argument? 

message: For what it's worth, I wonder if omniscience is prequisite for omnipotence.  I've often fantasized about having unlimited power, but run into trouble when I realized that I did not know enough about how the human body functioned for such a fantasy to not be too unrealilistic.  - Adam H.
Added May 6 2006
:The trouble with that is that functional omniscience leads inevitably to total inaction.  If god knows everything (past, present, and future), then he knows the outcome of any of his actions - even ramifications billions of years into the future - as soon as he acts.  Put more simply, in the first nanosecond after the Big Bang, he already knew everything.  When he was speaking to Abram and telling him that his people would number like the grains of sand, he already knew the Holocaust was going to happen.  Think on that for a while.  Now pose yourself this question:  if you're god, and you can do anything, but you already know everything that will happen, including all possible consequences of your own actions throughout all of time, then what is the point of taking any action at all?  All you need to do is imagine it, because being omniscient, you don't need to actually do it to find out what will happen.  If there really is an omniscient being, I kind of feel sorry for it.  It would never understand curiosity, the drive to learn and grow.  In fact, it probably wouldn't be capable of a personality as we have - to have a personality, you have to have desires, and an omniscient, omnipotent god would have none.
:So we get to the second problem.  Being omnipotent, god can do anything.  This makes him utterly responsible for everything that has ever or will ever happen, and tidily does away with the concept of "free will".  Even if god "gave" man free will, giving that free will was god's choice, therefore everything man does using his free will is god's fault, too.  So god is entirely, 100%, responsible for every event throughout time.  Next, god is omniscient and has no need to do something in order to see what will happen.  To god, the universe is a movie that someone has told him the ending to before he even bought his ticket.  No point in going to the theater then.  So god has no reason to do anything.  But if god is entirely apathetic, and never did anything...  then how did the universe arise?
:Summation:  there cannot be an omnipotent, omniscient creator of the universe.  I suppose it might be remotely possible that a creator who is only one of those two - but not both - might exist.  One way or the other, though, free will is rubbish.  Hope this provides someone with some pleasant rumination.  Kasreyn 14:45, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Omniscience is necessary for Omnipotence 

message: Aristotle believed in geocentrism, but not in a flat earth. But I´m not sure if the example is based on Aristotle science or geocentrism and a the believe in a flat earth, so i dont know which part of it needs to be corrected. --84.134.72.203 15:38, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aristotle 

message: The Essentially Omnipotent definition is a vacuous definition. It is equivalently, an Omnipotent entity is omnipotent except when it logically can't be omnipotent.
Well guess what? I am omnipotent except when I logically can't be omnipotent. I am also green except when I logically can't be green. And on Tuesdays I am a dog except when I logically can't be a dog.
The definition of Essentially Anything is a vacuous class of definitions.
However much of the stuff in this section is worthwhile stuff. CHF 08:59, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Essentially Omnipotent is Vacuous 

message: I think that if you can't truly defy logic then you're not omnipotent, because true omnipotence is the ability to do anything, so yeah 83.250.206.156 15:43, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Real omnipotence? 

message: I didn't see it mentioned in the article but... isn't an omnipotent being beyond our comprehension especially if your talking about a God who created humans? That seems ridicously obvious, a being that is totally beyond us certaintly can't be explained through our own logic. 
: That's a notion that leads to what is known historically as Negative theology, the notion that nothing can be said about God except negations. Yet when people say that God is omnipotent, they aren't engaging in Negative Theology -- they are trying to say something positive. The paradox in question is an examination of that effort. If paradox is misguided for the reason you suggest, then presumably the statement "God is omnipotent" is also misguided, because it is an attempt to use human language and logic to say something positive about Him too. --Christofurio 15:20, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Or possibly ignosticism, the belief that the question of whether god does or does not exist is meaningless because it can have no observable consequences.  Kasreyn 14:35, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Beyond Understanding 

message: The mention of the grandfather paradox seems to me spurious, and has the whiff of 'original research' (by a non-philosopher) about it.
Similarly the section starting "One can also attempt to resolve the paradox by postulating that omnipotence does not necessarily demand that a being must be able to do all things at all times" seems misconceived & 'original research' to me. Including the discussion of the physics of lifting stones - this was presumably written by a physicist, not a philosopher; it's irrelevant to the philosophical issue. (I hope this stuff wasn't in there when it was a featured article.)
IMHO someone should delete much of this; but I'll leave it for someone else to do. 84.70.132.186 23:00, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Original research