No more rocks for God please

[Jimbo07]

[swiki]Omnipotence Paradox[/swiki]

Not a good argument.

Dr. A, I've always liked the "Omnipotence is Logically Meaningless," argument.

Any God worth his salt (that is, that I would consent to worshipping) must be able to actualize rational absurdities in the blink of an eye... otherwise, he is merely very powerful.

 

[Alkatran]

[swiki]Omnipotence Paradox[/swiki]

Not a good argument.

Clearest article I've ever read on it.

Is God more powerful than a Turing machine?

 

[LawnOven]

All 'god' would have to do in order to make a rock, blah blah blah, would be: make a rock, and then totally turn down his god muscles so he was really weak and could not lift said rock. So I guess the answer is 'yes'.

 

[Kopji]

it's a mystery

 

[Mosquito]

Here's another one: could god create a curved perfectly straight line?

I think this was done in "Flatterland", so it is not necessarily a good argument.

It was a question of perspective, I think.


Mosquito - Flatter than thou

 

[Jekyll]

Clearest article I've ever read on it.

Is God more powerful than a Turing machine?

Yes, he can have an oracle if he wants.

 

[Darat]

It's extremely clear that subtraction over the integers is meant. If they insist, then specifically state you're using Z.

But you wanted something better. To make your replacement question work you need to include, at a minimum, the above explanation in your question so you end up with in my opinion something more-complicated and less clear which would therefore be less effective then the "Has God got big rocks?"" question. The reason we still have that question in that format is that it's simple and easy to understand and therefore a very good clear example of the paradox problem.

If you want to replace it your replacement has to be, again in my opinion, an even clearer example.

 

[Darat]

Clearest article I've ever read on it....snip...

It needed a bit of editing

 

[RandFan]

Aquinus sufficently dealth with this. Can god make a square circle? No, because once a squre becomes a circle it ceases to be a square. Can god make it so that X = ~X? No.

I used to posit the too big rock for god "paradox" until I read Aquinus. Dumb argument. Really dumb argument. Assumes that the abstract concept of omnipotence includes the ability to be not omnipotent.

Now, I differ from Aquinus in that I think the notion of omnipotence to be untenible. A better thought experiment to consider the problems inherent in the idea of omnipotence is to interject omnicence and simply ask if god can change his mind?

Does god know what he will do tomorrow? Yes.
Can he write it down? Yes.
Having written it down can he change his mind and do something else? No.
God is powerless to change.

 

[RandFan]

[swiki]Omnipotence Paradox[/swiki]

Not a good argument.

Sure, beat everyone else to the punch. Killjoy.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

"Can God subtract exactly 4 from 5 and get 0?"

But this immediately brings up the question whether god can do something illogical. We can eliminate this issue if we simply say no, he cannot. Does that then make him not omnipotent?

Edited to add: Oh, according to the Wiki article, modern-day omnipotence cannot defy logic. How convenient.

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Here's another one: could god create a curved perfectly straight line?

I think the answer here is no, simply by definition.

~~ Paul

 

[Darat]

I think the answer here is no, simply by definition.

~~ Paul

No just another variant of the paradox.

Whenever this paradox comes up I find myself in a minority here because I can absolutely and 100% accept a believer in a omnipotent God answer to these types of paradoxes i.e. a simple "yes" and that ends the discussion.

To me this is why it is a rather pointless (albeit you can have some fun playing with it) argument because it all depends on how you define "God".

Aquinus like so many others when faced with a tough question about his God just redefined his God so the problem disappeared, you do see signs that he realised he had in fact diminished his God, so like many he tried to put the fault onto humans. In the end his solution was just handwaving and a "Don't ask silly questions" - which is how the "modern theoligians" the SkepticWiki article mentions also try to deal with the problem.

(By the way I am of course being rather disparaging of Aquinus as he was a most remarkable and obviously incredibly intelligent bloke.)

 

[Megalodon]

The answer to all those questions is "Yes, and also vice versa"

It's a meaningless question, much like "does the friction of Santa's sledge contribute to Global Warming?". But nevertheless, any fundie with a minimal of brain power (rare but existent) will tear it to pieces.

 

[Bob Klase]

[swiki]Omnipotence Paradox[/swiki]

As long as we're talking about the christian god, this argument against the omnipotence paradox either proves that the bible is wrong, or it raises the omnipotence paradox against itself:

Most theologians who argue that God (as defined in the Christian religion) is omnipotent mean that he can bring about any state of affairs that are possible".

Matthew 19:26:

With men it is impossible; but to God all things are possible.

So, Matthew 19:26 is wrong. Or all things, including logical contradictions, are possible. (Or logical contradictions are not a part of "all things").

 

[drkitten]

So, Matthew 19:26 is wrong. Or all things, including logical contradictions, are possible. (Or logical contradictions are not a part of "all things").

Or you're not interpreting Matthew correctly. Recognizing that contradictions are not "things" is a good start.

C.S. Lewis had a good formulation for this. He pointed out (paraphrased), that a meaningless sentence will not gain meaning simply because someone chooses to prepend the phrase "God can." And it is meaningless to speak of creating a rock so heavy an omnipotent being cannot lift it.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

No just another variant of the paradox.

I'm not convinced. The definitions of "straight line" and "curved" are contradictory. God cannot create such a thing simply because there is no such thing by definition. Once he curves the line, it is no longer a straight line by definition.

But can't we come up with a task for god that isn't ruled out by definition, yet is mathematically or logically impossible?

~~ Paul

 

[Darat]

I'm not convinced. The definitions of "straight line" and "curved" are contradictory. God cannot create such a thing simply because there is no such thing by definition. Once he curves the line, it is no longer a straight line by definition.

But the answer is easy - "My God can create a curved perfectly straight line." - discussion is over.

You may say "but what about logic" and "but it's a contradiction" and I will answer "for man perhaps not for my God". Discussion over.

But can't we come up with a task for god that isn't ruled out by definition, yet is mathematically or logically impossible?

~~ Paul

But someone with faith would just respond with "Yes God can do that." whatever that "that" is.

This is why I said at the start the "Has God got big rocks" is the best example and why it has the stood the test of time.

There are only two possible (possible of course to us mere humans...) answers "yes" or "no".

If you say "no" then you have to (to keep the faith) come up with an answer like Aquinas did to explain why the limitation you are placing on your omnipotent God isn't really a limitation. In Aquinas case it was to assert the question itself as meaningless.

If you say "yes" then it's again just a matter of keeping the faith. In other words it is not an argument against their God since their God is not limited or constrained as humans are.

 

[Beerina]

Clearest article I've ever read on it.

Is God more powerful than a Turing machine?

The Church-Turing Thesis proposes there is a legitimate concept of "most powerful computational model that can perform, at most, a finite number of calculations in a finite period of time", and that the Turing machines (and every equivalent computational model like modern logic, math, most computer programming languages, etc.) are that model. This is not proven, which is why it's "only" a thesis.

When Penrose suggested (incorrectly IMHO) that there were tiling problems that humans could solve that a Turing machine could not, this was a fascinating development, because it suggested there either was something infinite in the "computation" the human mind performed, or it was still finite, but there was (at least one) layer greater than a Turing machine that was still finite in nature, and hence the Church-Turing thesis was false. Either development would have been fascinating. So, too, would "quantum computing", should that pan out, because that suggests one could do an infininte number of computations in a finite period of time, solving huge almost-prime factorizations, etc. This in turn would demonstrate the universe itself was on a higher level than a finite computational device.

But it's still all speculation at this time. The Turing machine is still "it" as far as anyone has demonstrated.

 

[Beerina]

So, Matthew 19:26 is wrong. Or all things, including logical contradictions, are possible. (Or logical contradictions are not a part of "all things").

Yes, but is this in the rock category, or in the camel-thru-the-eye-of-a-needle category of impossible?

Philosophers argue that "all things" means all things logically conceivable. When you ask about a square circle, that is actually a meaningless statement, and that you are not actually conceiving anything, even in the abstract.