Omniscience and Omnipotence are incompatible

Discussion in 'Religion Archives' started by James R, May 18, 2012.

  1. Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    Sarkus,


    Way to go with the limiting of the infinite.

    Every being has the will and capacity that suits his ability, so it stands to reason that Gods' Will matches His infinite ability.

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    Who say's there IS anything else?
    How can you even contemplate there being anything else?

    Back to the first point.

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    Obviously I caught you by surprise with the OP quote, and now you're trying usuccessfully to incorporate it into your reasoning. But to no avail.

    Regarding ''square circles''.

    If everybody from birth was taught that a hexagon, or pentogon, was called a ''square circle'', would it be a ''square circle''?

    jan.
     
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  3. Big Chiller Registered Senior Member

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    Concepts like square circles or absolutely strictly immovable objects are ultimately meaningless because even with many scientific observations we begin to see that even objects at rest are never devoid of motion.
     
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  5. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    Got to agree. People who resort to "can god make a square circle" or "can god create an object so large that he can't lift it" need to revaluate their objections, as these are meaningless concepts.
     
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  7. kx000 Valued Senior Member

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    I think God is all-powerful, and I think he knows everything except the knowledge stating the God knows everything.

    It was his free will that he made his choices. He choose to act originally, he choose to look into the future. He knows he will do it in the future so maybe the future is determined, but he still has to freely choose to do all those things that lead to the future.
     
  8. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    I put words in your mouth? I quoted you. Here it is again:
    (For someone making an accusation about putting words in other people's mouths, why would you then put words in my mouth, as if I "assumed myself victorious"? This is a discussion. You should respect how they work. You made a claim. I showed how it was fallacious. That is not a "victory". You're trying to evade the discussion with this meta. ...Getting back on topic now...)


    God not "needing" to change his mind does not resolve the issue of a God that can't be all-powerful and all-knowing.

    In a nutshell: If he is all-knowing, then he knows the next action he will take. If he knows it, then he cannot (whether or not he chooses to) do something different. It is a direct contradiction. The OP's postulate still stands as valid, both before and after your addition of there being "no need to change his mind". Thus, it has no bearing.

    Anyway, it doesn't really require you conceding the point. As long as it has been pointed out, everyone else here knows your statement doesn't address the OP's conjecture.

    We can move on.
     
    Last edited: May 20, 2012
  9. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    Heaven forbid that the OP be discussed!!!!!!
     
  10. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    Because pursuing an irrational, paradoxical line of reasoning is really meaningful and is really proof of the pursuer's supreme intelligence ...
     
  11. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Which means he is not all-powerful. He is constrained by having to do what his future holds. He sees himself turn left instead of right. He is constrained from choosing to turn right.
     
  12. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Frankly, I think my MWI conjecture holds the answer.

    He sees his future holding all possible actions (he sees himself turning left, right and neither, and all points in between).
    He is free to choose his future(he can choose to turn left, right, neither, or any point in between) without invalidating what he saw.

    QED
     
  13. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    Limiting the infinite does not necessarily produce a finite... if we limit the infinite set of whole numbers to just the even numbers, it is still infinite.
    So you are saying square circles are possible for God? That he can create a rock he can't lift etc?
    If you are claiming that there is only what God likes, then your choice of words are misleading - not to mention anthropomorphic.
    To use a term such as "like" implies there is also "dislike".
    Not at all. You merely fail to understand your own words.
    To include something does not necessarily limit it to that.

    As said, if you wish to define omnipotence in a way that does limit it, then do so. Your issue then would be whether your definition is accepted, or whether there is scriptoral reference to it, etc.

    It would be labelled as such, yes, but it would no longer refer to the concept in question. And it is the concept, not the label, that is significant here.
     
  14. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    First one must conclude that, as defined, the line of reasoning does lead to a paradox or not.

    Then one can try to establish a solution, or merely conclude that it is a paradox (with the terms as currently understood by those claiming the paradox).

    If one wishes to conclude that it is a paradox, but that it doesn't apply to God... again, feel free to argue that.


    But maybe I missed your point.
     
  15. Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    Sarkus,


    Limiting the infinite means knowing the infinite in its infinite capacity.
    Doesn't it?


    I don't recall using the term ''like''.
    I prefer to us the term ''Will''. The OP post used the term ''like''
    But could God act as though He dislikes? don't see why not.


    You said It's not a matter of "want to" but of being able to.
    If He can do anything He likes, which the OP agrees, then it is you who fail not only to understand the post, subject matter, but form concepts based on this failure.

    It would be a waste of time to put a limit on Gods' abilities. One can only assume with all that power, He has at least the greastest of human abilities, and then some.


    Yes. He can create any illusion.
    Some Christian believe Jesus was God Himself in the flesh, and it was therefore written that God had died on the cross (from christian perspective), yet God didn't die on the cross.
    So God died, which is accepted as real, while simultaneosly not dying, which is also accepted as real.

    2 questions.

    How would anyone know it would no longer refer to the concept?
    And can you imagine a square circle?

    If you cannot even imagine one, then it purely a label. A putting together of 2 symbols for no purpose other than to trick.

    jan.
     
  16. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    Does it? How so?
    Then we're getting somewhere.
    How do I fail to understand? Where in my posts have I demonstrated a misunderstanding?
    You don't want to put a limit on God's abilities, yet you can't show how he can be both omnipotent and omniscient, at least without limiting those terms. :shrug:
    Not talking about illusions, but about the reality.
    And this is a square-circle... how?
    When one accepts that the same person is in three forms simultaneously (father, son and holy-spirit) and is also one, then the apparent death of the physical form of one of them is no longer illogical, because you have set the parameters on which the logic works.
    You have yet to do that with the square-circle, and not with omnipotence/omniscience.
    I'm not saying you couldn't do it... just that you haven't.

    1. Because the concept is of a logical impossibility, and if we use the label for a logical possibility then it no longer refers to the concept of impossibility. :shrug:
    2. No.

    Not to trick but to highlight logical impossibilities... two things that are incompatible. The concept is of logical impossibility, not of a square-circle per se.
     
  17. Rav Valued Senior Member

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    I'm not claiming that I possess definitive answers to some of the age old philosophical questions relating to the ultimate nature of existence. I was simply pointing out that reality is what it is, regardless of any religious ideas that someone like yourself wants to project onto it.

    In other words, having a particular definition of God doesn't mean much. All you have is a collection of ideas that ultimately derive from a greater collection of ideas developed over thousands of years, which themselves derive from the more primitive religious ideas that were developed among the small hunter/gatherer groups that were roaming the planet before the neolithic revolution.

    That's all you have. Reality, on the other hand, continues to be what it is (whatever that may be).

    What a ridiculous question. The only way your personal conception of God can be explained comprehensively, is from your perspective. But that doesn't somehow demonstrate that those ideas don't derive from religious ones. Of course they do. That was my point.

    Sorry, pretending that omnipotence and omniscience are concepts that can be considered separately from the being who possesses them is absurd. Such an abstract exercise is not nearly as useful, or relevant, as dealing directly with the fullness of the hypothetical reality that is being proposed as a true state of affairs.

    That does absolutely nothing to demonstrate that the qualities of omniscience and omnipotence are necessarily present as part of some transcendent reality. Try again.
     
  18. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    To be clear:
    God could act as though He dislikes,
    but that would still be to His liking.
     
  19. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    So you're basically saying that he is wrong and that nobody could possibly know what reality really is - except you.
    While all along, reality is whatever it is, regardless even of what you think about it ...
     
  20. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    15,058
    A lot depends on one's basic approach to conversation: does one conceptualize a conversation
    as debate (each party is trying to defeat the other),
    as dialectic (all parties, even though they disagree, work toward a resolution),
    as rhetoric (each party simply is talking at the other party, not with them), as sophistry (conversation is a matter of showing off and manipulating others),
    or as something else.


    I think whether something is seen and argued about as a paradox, a contradiction, an equality, or truth, or any other potentially problematic issue, depends precisely on how one conceptualizes the very act of communicating.

    That is something Schopenahuer pointed at in his "Art of Being Right." Logic is one thing. But in practice, it comes down to conversation between two (or more) individuals, and that changes the terms.
     
  21. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    And you think that to exclude such things as square circles is to define omnipotence in a that limits it?


    One can also think of it like that:
    How much horsepower does it or would it take to create a square circle?
    How much ore, work hours, electricity, HR managers, etc. etc. does it or would it take to create a square circle?
    Does this kind of question really make sense to you?



    If anything, it's those who believe that if God can't create square circles, this means that He is not omnipotent, that are devoted to magical thinking.
     
  22. Rav Valued Senior Member

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    As someone who often cracks the shits when you feel that people aren't reading your posts properly, perhaps you should take care to avoid committing the same offense.

     
  23. Rav Valued Senior Member

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    I tend to think that as products of nature ourselves, it is not unexpected that we would have the capacity to bring our faculties to bear on questions relating to the nature of existence, and have at least some success in divining certain truths. But we are not products of the universe at large so much as we are products of a particular environment within it. So in order to tackle greater or more fundamental realities that didn't have such a direct and specific impact upon shaping the scope and depth of those faculties, we need to teach ourselves some new tricks, and hope that they become valid extensions of those faculties for the purpose of divining greater truths. As we've learned, once we start investigating outside of the scope of our direct experience, our intuition often leads us wildly astray. Thank God, then, for the scientific method. How many claims have been made in the history of science that have been viciously dismissed as total nonsense, utter absurdities, because they conflicted so completely with what people already knew in their bones had to be true.

    But you already know all this. The point I want to make at the end of all that however, is that we really have no reason to expect that the truth about whatever transcendent reality might exist will be any less counterintuitive, any less completely foreign to us. In fact I think there are good reasons to believe that it would be much more so.

    But I do, in principle at least, agree that if there is some aspect of our being that is somehow analogous to a quality present as part of an actually existing transcendent reality, that perhaps 'tuning into' it somehow, would indeed be possible.

    I'd have to agree with most (perhaps all) of that.
     
    Last edited: May 20, 2012

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