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Infinitely Powerful

Just thinking said:
Not really.

A great deal of power ≠ infinite power (omnipotent -- a commonly accepted and proclaimed qualifiier).
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I always like to think about things like this. Suppose God could do everything except he just cannot get how to tie a square knot? Just can't get it to work!

He wouldn't be omnipotent, but close.

Similarly, suppose the person everyone calls god isn't really god, but is actually a powerful deceiver? Suppose he has all the abilities of God, BUT would lose to God in an armwrestling match.

Good examples of non-omnipotent gods.
 
Just thinking said:
Not really.

A great deal of power ≠ infinite power (omnipotent -- a commonly accepted and proclaimed qualifiier).
Click to expand...

Well, now, though I think that it is true that great power is not omnipotence, except in the loosest vernacular sense (just so people like Iacchus don't go rushing to the dictionary and point out that it is possible to use it that way, it is, but we KNOW that isn't what's meant in this thread!) and that the power to destroy everything is not by definition omnipotence; nontehtless it is also true that there is more than one way to define omnipotence, and this thread has dealt almost exclusively with one: the idea that omnipotence means the power to do anything we can imagine being done. But there is another legitimate sense to the word, which comes closer to what Iacchus is talking about, and that is absolute contingency. It is within the bounds of the term to speak of omnipotence as meaning absolute power over everything that exists, without adding speculative powers to create what has not been or cannot be created. This includes the idea of some scholastics such as Ockham that the universe depends absolutely on the will of God to exist, even though under that power it operates logically, according to its own laws. The ability both to create a universe and to uncreate it is a form of omnipotence that does not need resolution of the paradox of unliftable stones and the like. Of course it is also as speculative, unproven, and faith-driven as any other idea about God, but at least it skirts some of the problems we've seen in this thread.
 
pgwenthold said:
I always like to think about things like this. Suppose God could do everything except he just cannot get how to tie a square knot? Just can't get it to work!

He wouldn't be omnipotent, but close.

Similarly, suppose the person everyone calls god isn't really god, but is actually a powerful deceiver? Suppose he has all the abilities of God, BUT would lose to God in an armwrestling match.

Good examples of non-omnipotent gods.
Click to expand...

You'd make a good Gnostic!
 
Just thinking said:
Not really.

A great deal of power ≠ infinite power (omnipotent -- a commonly accepted and proclaimed qualifiier).
Click to expand...
And what I'm saying is we have no way of assessing this ... outside of the parameters of our own existence that is.
 
Iacchus said:
And what I'm saying is we have no way of assessing this ... outside of the parameters of our own existence that is.
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So, it would then seem to me to put one's money on A good deal of power rather than infinite -- as infinities have a way of contradicting themselves.
 
Just thinking said:
So, it would then seem to me to put one's money on A good deal of power rather than infinite -- as infinities have a way of contradicting themselves.
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Beats me? :confused: About all I could say is that God is all-powerful with respect to the Universe as we know it.
 
Belz... said:
Would you stop derailing threads with your silly theory already ?
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Belz... said:
Tsk, tsk, Iacchus. First you have to show that God exis...

Oh, wait. Evidence... can't have that. Got it.
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No offense to Just thinking, but first you have to eliminate all the unnecessary garbage to even consider the possibility. Whereas most of the arguments against God are just that.
 
kmortis said:
Do dreams count as evidence? IF so, he's got it in spades.

Ahh, to walk across the plateaus of Leng again.......
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Sorry if I don't appear to be as learned as you do. Let's just say I'm more of the home grown variety and, that I do learn from my mistakes. This implies a certain amount of humility, at the very least.
 
Iacchus said:
No offense to Just thinking, but first you have to eliminate all the unnecessary garbage to even consider the possibility. Whereas most of the arguments against God are just that.
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"Argument" is a word that's alien to you, Iacchus. How can you consider the complete lack of evidence in favor of a God, the contradictions in terms, the logical impossibilities and the incompatibility with all known laws of physics NOT to be arguments against Gunderscored ?
 
Belz... said:
"Argument" is a word that's alien to you, Iacchus. How can you consider the complete lack of evidence in favor of a God, the contradictions in terms, the logical impossibilities and the incompatibility with all known laws of physics NOT to be arguments against Gunderscored ?
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"I" -- that part of me which is self-aware -- am the evidence.
 
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Iacchus said:
Sorry if I don't appear to be as learned as you do. Let's just say I'm more of the home grown variety and, that I do learn from my mistakes. This implies a certain amount of humility, at the very least.
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:big:
Now that's one of the funniest things you've ever said. Considering how you have refused at every turn all the people here offering to help you understand your misconceptions dreams, the mind, geometry, time, the Big Bang, mathematics, logic et. al., to then claim you learn from your mistakes is... well... a mistake.
 
Tricky said:
:big:
Now that's one of the funniest things you've ever said. Considering how you have refused at every turn all the people here offering to help you understand your misconceptions dreams, the mind, geometry, time, the Big Bang, mathematics, logic et. al., to then claim you learn from your mistakes is... well... a mistake.
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well, at least he learned from it.

:nope:
 
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