Clarification On Logical Disproof of God

[Paranormal Inquirer]

Since my last thread on this didn't go as well as I hoped, I thought I would just make another one and type directly what a logic major replied to me with. I sent him the standard illogical and contradicting attributes of God.
His reply (with mine in quotes):

1) Omnipotence is impossible because God would, at a minimum, be unable to
limit his powers, e.g., make a stone he cannot lift; if he could make such
a stone, then his inability to lift it would defeat his omnipotence;

I think this is an error like the 'what happens when an irresistible force
meets an immovable object' quasi-problem. 'A stone that a God cannot lift'
is a logical contradiction, as it can be unpacked to 'An object that a
being who can do anything cannot do a certain thing to'. I've never heard a
theologian or religious leader claim that God can make a square circle, or
any other incoherent notions. This isn't lack of omnipotence: God can make
anything, but this isn't a thing at all.

2) God's omnipotence conflicts with his omniscience, because if God knows
everything that is going to happen in advance, he cannot do anything in the
present; he must simply watch the future unfold as previously foreseen,
because changing anything would falsify his prior belief concerning the
future;

This assumes that God is in time, which is the common objection. However, I
have another which I prefer. If God allows radically free will, then he can
know everything without knowing the future completely: because, as above,
the future simply does not exist until, well, it does.

3) God's omnipotence precludes him from having knowledge of any sensations
or emotions associated with weakness, e.g., fear, frustration, despair,
sickness, etc., and thus conflicts with him omniscience;
4) God's omniscience precludes him from having knowledge of any emotions
associated with surprise or anticipation, and thus conflicts with itself;
5) God's omniscience conflicts with his disembodiedness, since a being
without a body could not know how to drive, swim, or perform any activity
associated with having a body;
6) God's omniscience conflicts with his omnibenevolence, since a morally
perfect god could not have knowledge of feelings of hate, lust, or envy, or
cruelty, etc.

All of these assume the only way any being can know anything is by
personally experiencing them. I don't think this is logically certain, by
any means. God is generally seen as having an immediate, non-sensory
knowledge of all sorts of things, not experiencing them like humans.

7) God's omniscience and omnipotence conflict with his omnibenevolence,
since a god who could prevent evil would do so unless he were unable to do
so or unaware of the evil.

The problem of evil is complex: but I don't think a strictly logical
version of it stands up. First, and most trivially, you need to ascertain
that evil exists, which isn't contained in the concept of God.

More substantially, it isn't clearly true that an omnibenevolent being
would always stop evil if it could. Particularly important here is that
there may be goods for which evil are necessary. I'm not talking about the
idea that if we didn't have sickle cell anaemia then malaria would be
worse, as that obviously assumes limited power. But the goods of courage,
of overcoming evil, of compassion etc. seem to rely on evil: and they seem
pretty clearly to be important goods. Free will is a kind of special case
here: to have it doesn't always involve evil like the examples above, but
must make evil possible if it is meaningfully free.

Logical disproof of God:

God is perfect.
Perfection does not create imperfection.
God's creation has many imperfections, rebellious fallen angels, man's sinful nature, birth defects, etc.
Therefore, the described God does not exist.

Proof?

Claiming that omnipotence doesn't include the ability to do the illogical is rather farcical when we're asked to believe that He walked on water and restored sight to the blind through prayer and that snakes and donkeys talked.
Such miraculous things involve circumventing the laws of nature, as equally illogical as making square circles.

I think the waters are muddied because God is sometimes shown as outside of normal causation etc.: but those aren't strictly logical. I think the rock question is really a pseudo-question, it's just not as obvious as some. 'Can God make a rock that isn't a rock' is, I think, effectively identical, but hardly seen as a knock-down of theism.
The laws of nature aren't logically necessary. There's no inherent contradiction in the idea of breaking a natural law, unless you define natural laws as unbreakable, which is arbitrary.


There's much more but I'll just leave this for now.

 

[leon_heller]

It's impossible to prove or disprove the existence of a deity. Roman Catholics even admit that in the Catechism (or they did before I saw the light and became an atheist), stating that the existence of God is a matter of faith.

Leon

 

[Darat]

...snip...

I think this is an error like the 'what happens when an irresistible force
meets an immovable object' quasi-problem. 'A stone that a God cannot lift'
is a logical contradiction, as it can be unpacked to 'An object that a
being who can do anything cannot do a certain thing to'. I've never heard a
theologian or religious leader claim that God can make a square circle, or
any other incoherent notions. This isn't lack of omnipotence: God can make
anything, but this isn't a thing at all.

...snip...

It's a semantic argument not a logic argument and one that is centuries old; your position is that most famously associated with Aquinas, its counter with Descartes.

 

[Darat]

Just a note since you seem to be using a definition of God that seems to be a generally held Christian definition of God remember, as leon_heller says, that logic does not apply to that definition.

 

[Paranormal Inquirer]

I'm an atheist, so let's make that clear. But even with that said, I only posted this because many of the (possibly fallacious) arguments many atheists on here make to disprove a tri omni god.

I was the one being quoted in my original post.

 

[slingblade]

One cannot prove a negative such as this, however. Most of us here, and so by extension, a good portion of all atheists and skeptics, do not prove that God does not exist. They use the arguments you've presented to counter the arguments of theists or believers who say "God does exist, and here's why," or who use Pascal's Wager.

Countering a positive argument with a negative one is not proving the negative, or disproving the positive. It simply shows how and why the positive argument doesn't work or is flawed.

 

[Darat]

Very well put Slingblade.

 

[Lanzy]

Maybe try starting a "smaller" thread?

 

[Beerina]

It's a semantic argument not a logic argument and one that is centuries old; your position is that most famously associated with Aquinas, its counter with Descartes.

Now that I think about it, the paradox seems to be a variant example of the Goedel halting problem.

 

[Darat]

Can you expand on that?

 

[Robin]

Claiming that omnipotence doesn't include the ability to do the illogical is rather farcical when we're asked to believe that He walked on water and restored sight to the blind through prayer and that snakes and donkeys talked.
Such miraculous things involve circumventing the laws of nature, as equally illogical as making square circles.

Walking on water is not logically impossible - for example mosquitos do it all the time. Restoring sight through prayer is not logically impossible. Talking snakes and donkeys are not logically impossible.

One would suppose the inventor of reality to have the source code to make changes and kludges as they became necessary.

 

[Robin]

I think this is an error like the 'what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object' quasi-problem. 'A stone that a God cannot lift' is a logical contradiction, as it can be unpacked to 'An object that a being who can do anything cannot do a certain thing to'.

No, as I have often pointed out before it is not a logical contradiction because God is not defined as a being who can do anything, but a being who can do any intrinsically possible thing.

So it packs out as 'An object that a being who can do any intrinsically possible thing cannot do a certain thing to'. which is not a contradiction and very definitely could be considered a thing.

So we can have, for example, an object that God cannot break. If this object was impossible then we would have a God that cannot guarantee that an object will endure, which seems even less powerful than a God that cannot break everything.

If there is no such thing as an object that cannot be destroyed, how then do theologians insist that there will be Kingdom that cannot be destroyed?

To define an object that God cannot break is simple and it could be the most delicate glass figurine or anything at all. It is simply an object about which God has said "this will not be broken". In that case nobody, not even God can break it.

And finally, let me point out for the umpteenth time that the "unliftable stone" argument is not an argument invented by atheists to demonstrate the non-existence of God.

It is an argument invented by Theists to illustrate the nature of omnipotence.

 

[Robin]

This assumes that God is in time, which is the common objection.

It is not, however, a valid objection since even if God is not in time, his participations in the world are. See my argument in the predecessor of this thread.

If God observes all times in the Universe equally then his first observation of the Universe must include an observation of each one of his own actions in that Universe.

So how can he react to something in the universe, for example a prayer, if his first knowledge of the prayer is simultaneous to the knowledge of his own response to it?

I have another which I prefer. If God allows radically free will, then he can know everything without knowing the future completely: because, as above, the future simply does not exist until, well, it does.

And yet the two most widely accepted theological treatments of free will, those of St Augustine and Molina, assume that human will is absolutely and inescapably deterministic.

St Augustine would have found the idea ridiculous that God could not determine what a mere human being would do in a given situation.

The problem of evil is complex: but I don't think a strictly logical version of it stands up. First, and most trivially, you need to ascertain that evil exists, which isn't contained in the concept of God.

In TGD Dawkins did not even consider the problem of evil as being a valid argument against the existence of God since it is so childishly easy for apologists to get round.

 

[Henners]

No, as I have often pointed out before it is not a logical contradiction because God is not defined as a being who can do anything, but a being who can do any intrinsically possible thing.

...and I believe it was Arthur C Clarke who pointed out that such a God, being limited by the speed of light, could have hell literally breaking loose 10 light years distant, and be unable to deal with the matter for 10 years.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

I think this is an error like the 'what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object' quasi-problem. 'A stone that a God cannot lift' is a logical contradiction, as it can be unpacked to 'An object that a
being who can do anything cannot do a certain thing to'. I've never heard a
theologian or religious leader claim that God can make a square circle, or
any other incoherent notions. This isn't lack of omnipotence: God can make
anything, but this isn't a thing at all.

I'd say this argument at best demonstrates that the idea of omnipotence is not a simple one and that people who want to claim that God is omnipotent owe us some clearer explanation of what exactly they think omnipotence is. It's probably a philosophical argument in the perjorative sense however.

This assumes that God is in time, which is the common objection. However, I
have another which I prefer. If God allows radically free will, then he can
know everything without knowing the future completely: because, as above,
the future simply does not exist until, well, it does.

I said earlier that people claiming that God is omnipotent owe us some explanation of what they mean by that: claiming that God is "not in time" creates a similar obligation in spades, and I'm pretty sure that the idea of a God that is "not in time" is incompatible with free will. Otherwise God can't know what will happen in the future, but a being that is "not in time" could not be constrained by features of time like something not having happened yet.

All of these assume the only way any being can know anything is by
personally experiencing them. I don't think this is logically certain, by
any means. God is generally seen as having an immediate, non-sensory
knowledge of all sorts of things, not experiencing them like humans.

I don't find any of those argument about personal experience compelling myself, either.

The problem of evil is complex: but I don't think a strictly logical
version of it stands up. First, and most trivially, you need to ascertain
that evil exists, which isn't contained in the concept of God.

More substantially, it isn't clearly true that an omnibenevolent being
would always stop evil if it could. Particularly important here is that
there may be goods for which evil are necessary. I'm not talking about the
idea that if we didn't have sickle cell anaemia then malaria would be
worse, as that obviously assumes limited power. But the goods of courage,
of overcoming evil, of compassion etc. seem to rely on evil: and they seem
pretty clearly to be important goods. Free will is a kind of special case
here: to have it doesn't always involve evil like the examples above, but
must make evil possible if it is meaningfully free.

At this point you've chucked all meaning in the term "good" out the window in an effort to escape the opposing argument. If I allowed a rape to take place that I could have prevented nobody would take remotely seriously the argument that I had done a good thing because it gave the rape victim the opportunity to be courageous, to receive the compassion of others, that I had extended to the rapist the opportunity to exercise their free will and blah blah blah.

The argument does not become any more compelling just because you apply it to God, and make it millions of rapes and murders instead of just one.

 

[Radrook]

What's so impossible about making a stone you can't lift in order to prove you can't do it given the modified circumstances? Who said that an omnipotent being is unable to modify his power to demonstrate something?

 

[Henners]

What's so impossible about making a stone you can't lift in order to prove you can't do it given the modified circumstances? Who said that an omnipotent being is unable to modify his power to demonstrate something?

... and if I can think what you are thinking, how does that make it real?

 

[Beerina]

Now that I think about it, the paradox seems to be a variant example of the Goedel halting problem.

Can you expand on that?

Recall that for the halting problem, the usual example is just the proof's demonstration itself:

1. All "programs" can be given a unique enumerated number.
2. One such machine is the one that can decide if another halts.
3. Create a 2nd based on the first that halts if fed a machine as input that does not halt, and vice versa.
4. Feed this 2th machine a copy of itself.

If it decides that it, itself, would halt, it doesn't halt, and vice versa.


God creates a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it. But he can lift it because he can do anything.

It's not so much the halting issue directly as it is the self-reference issue, which, IIRC, seems to be at the core of the Goedel issue, which was that some logical statements, which seem that they must be globally either true or false cannot be, rather than that some program may or may not halt and how can we tell.

 

[Robin]

What's so impossible about making a stone you can't lift in order to prove you can't do it given the modified circumstances? Who said that an omnipotent being is unable to modify his power to demonstrate something?

As I point out above, the unliftable rock argument was devised by Christian theologians in order to demonstrate a point about omnipotence.

It was never an argument by Atheists to disprove the existence of God.

 

[Robin]

God creates a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it. But he can lift it because he can do anything.

But he can't do anything and nobody ever suggested he could.

Omnipotence is defined as being able to do any intrinsically possible thing. Naturally it is intrinsically impossible to lift a rock that he has created as unliftable, and therefore he is still omnipotent and there is no contradiction.

By the way, I think you mean Turing, don't you?