The omnipotency paradox is a contradiction.

I'm not a creationist. Can't you see how ridiculous you're being? You're getting blue in the face arguing your beliefs and condemning those that would do the same.

You had not made it clear in particular what you were talking about. We were discussing the concept of nothing and yet again you have failed to seriously address the points I tried to convey in my posts, instead choosing to label them as stupid and condemn them. Everything I posted made sense and to me seemed well within context of the discussion.

You talk about human ignorance - are you are aware that those people who consider nothing as possible could very well choose to talk of the ignorance of those who do not accept that there can be nothing? They could also say that the universe expanding into something is stupid, unless that something is nothing. Just because it is unknown does not mean that it is not nothing.

I'd like to know how you know what you know, what you're basing these statements on. As I just showed, points of argument that are relatively general and accusational can easily be reversed and spouted by anyone. Are you perhaps being close minded yourself by dismissing the concept of nothing? It is a long pondered philosophical and scientific subject with a long history and a ripe heritage and, as of yet, no absolute conclusions seem to have been reached.

You are doing nothing but expressing your beliefs and then backing them up with your opinion and insults, that's worse than any creationist I've heard arguing.

 

RAPE! RAPE!
HE'S TRYING TO RAPE ME WITH HIS FAITH!!!!

Mr "My cup can't sing and dance" wants me to be fucking serious now!

If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck... it's a religious rapist!

 

I've never known anybody to seem so threatened by nothing.

 

Those who don't truly understand themselves or what they believe to be true are often threatened by those who seem to.

 

Hm, I wonder what he'll be like in the debate about 911 I'm sure we'll have in my Charlie Sheen thread?

I'm not even religious... A rapist, maybe, but not a religious one.

 

I'm sure I'll be a completely unreasonable jackass.

I'm watching some of your recommended videos, good stuff, I still don't like you.

 

When you speak about power/ability and you say that such is limited by nothing, then you imply that the power/ability that he doesn't have is in-existent.

This example does no good to this debate.

Do you see why it is not a paradox to say that god can create a problem impossible for him to solve, when we also say that 'nothing' is impossible for god.

 

I'd call it hyperbole. How could any mortal know the extent and limits of God's power, unless they simply believe what God tells them or think that if a lot of power is good, limitless power must be better. I don't see a problem though that the phrase means God can't do anything logically contradictory, like white darkness, or even that God can set limits on His own power if He wants to.

 

How could any mortal know that it would be impossible to know gods power???

How could you as a mortal attempt to describe that which you condemn mortals to be incapable of understanding!!

That ridiculous and absurd.

Limits do not exist for god, thus it would be impossible to impose limits on himself.

Look either god is an all powerful unlimited entity or he isn't.

Omnipotence states that limitations cannot apply to gods powers.

Nothing can limit god, or in other words IN-EXISTENT THINGS CAN LIMIT GOD.

People who buy into this paradox have to choose; is god limited by nothing or not???

And if he is not, he is not omnipotent and if he isn't then he is.

There is no paradox, it is simply to choose whether god is limited by nothing or not.

 

Not really. It's quite possible to determine that someone is powerful, by seeing what (s)he does. But to conclude that (s)he is all powerful requires a leap of faith or inference. To a newly discovered tribe of Indians in the Amazon, we might seem like gods. We can fly, take photographs, project our images on television, etc. The Indians might assume that if we can do all that, we can do anything and everything. But they'd be wrong.

Why? (S)he can decide not to use the power, and stick to that decision because (s)he wants to. The key is choice.

And the chicken either came first or it didn't.

What does "Omnipotence" know about anything? "Omnipotence" is just a concept. Hartshorne says it's consistent with self-limitation (Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes) and presents good reasons for doing so. On what basis do you say he's wrong? Wikipedia? Concepts are useful or not useful, not right or wrong. If we define omnipotence in such a way that it requires things that are logically impossible, like being able to make square circles, then we render it useless as a concept that we can apply in the real world, and would have to invent some other concept to describe a being who's as powerful as can possibly be but not as powerful as couldn't logically be.

What is the point of your argument? To show internal contradictions in the perceived attributes of God? In that case, you'd have to find people who actually believe that God can do literally anything, whether self-contradictory or not, and show them that their position is untenable. So far, however, I haven't run into anyone taking that position. What we have instead are people like myself and Hartshorne, who believe it's still possible to speak of am omnipotent god without excluding self-limitation from the concept of omnipotence. This gets you into an argument about concepts and definitions which is hard to win and seems a bit pointless.

The whole thread has a medieval flavor, like the arguments over how many angels could dance on the head of a pin that gave Scholasticism a bad name. But if it keeps people out of the bars, I guess it's useful.

 

This was the original claim you made. Obviously its ridiculous and absurd because you yourself are a mortal and your commenting on the limits of gods power, exactly what mortals cannot do.

How is this at all relevant to the original claim.

Also, we are not talking about whether or not god is all powerful.....We are talking about an apparent paradox that realistically is just a contradiction and can be resolved.

All power means no limitation to do anything, limits cannot apply to an all powerful being. Either god is an all powerful being or an offshoot, such as an "All powerful being that has the power to overpower-himself"

Omnipotence is defined as All powerful, not the offshoot and this misunderstanding is where the paradox arises and ultimately where its resolved.

 

Obviously some of us don't see that way. I have already shown you why I can't resolve it with seemingly sound logic. I could apply truly sound logic (if what you say is true) then it would be neither a paradox or a contradiction, though one could still be lost in paradoxial extensions of that path of logic. Hence the debate in the thread.

Basically, just because something is not fundamentally a paradox does not mean that it can not be with certain logic that - usually speaking with philosophical license - is seemingly sound. The whole idea of the paths of thoughts that these musings take you down is not to debate the paradoxial nature, of for or against. The idea is to invoke a sense of "what if?" to consider other facets of existence, new ways of thinking about the world.

Sure, it is easy to sit back and criticise the work of others, it is the gift from the people who first pondered the realms of human thought, of the fabric of life and universe itself and of infinity. We can sit back today and turn an oven on with a remote control, a heady step from the primitive stone ovens of the past, just as we can sneer at their simple little ideas about god and man's purpose in life; while we have semantics and politics and nano-science, the collected works of the greatest minds for thousands of years. Among these minds are the men who considered the paradoxial nature of omnipotency.

So maybe you should look at the idea of a paradox in this particular instance more as a teaching aid than as a principle. A crowbar used by the brain itself to open the minds of those not up to your speed. The paradox is a gift, embrace it.

 

I don't see it that way.

 

Which is why I say

For goodness sake. What was the point of me writing you those lovely paragraphs if you're only going to pay attention to one sentence? I thought I acknowledged the fact that we are seeing it in different ways in my first sentence, the one before the one that you made bold.

 

Apparently my response went over your head. I am a mortal and as such have enough reasoning power to determine that just because someone does something demonstrating supernatural power doesn't show that said person has unlimited power.

The claim I was responding to was "Do you see why it is not a paradox to say that god can create a problem impossible for him to solve, when we also say that 'nothing' is impossible for god." What I suggested is that such claims about God are hyperbole; exaggeration intended to glorify God. You're being too analytical about it. It's also often said that "God is Love". We could get off on a discourse about the impossibility that Love, as ordinarily defined, could create or design the universe, as God is said to have done. But this would be silly, because "God is Love" isn't a descriptive term, it's hyperbole. But I happen to agree with your reasoning that it is logically not a paradox to say that god can create a problem impossible for him to solve, when we also claim that nothing is impossible for God.

I cited a prominent theologian who has a different concept of omnipotence. I suggested that it isn't useful to think that omnipotence implies the power to do logically contradictory things. Your original post states: "This concept thus is not a paradox, because the definition can be applied to any activity possible, including achieving the impossible challenge of succeeding to perform an activity to that he himself made impossible." I'd agree with that, if you prefer to look at it that way, although it's stated somewhat awkwardly. If you don't accept Hartshorne's definition, fine. But I ask again, what is your point in making such a big deal about all this? Just to present a logical exercise addressing the omnipotency paradox?

 

religion is a projection of human nature...i don't think we can accurately describe 'god' or what it is or isn't capable of 'doing'

 

A projection of human behaviour, you mean, surely?

We can all accurately describe our own ideas of god, it is remarkably easy. It is establishing evidence to back up those descriptions which is the hard part.

The idea of God opens new paths related to the concept of infinity. I can't remember who wrote of the gods playing chess with men as the pieces, while asking who it was that plays chess with Gods as the pieces.

A contradiction: In the beginning, there was nothing. Then God created the heavens and the earth. How was there nothing if God was there? Who/what created God?