klw@iwlc8.UUCP (kin wong) (09/11/84)
In reply to my article on omnipotence, I believe Wayne has missed my point. I am not trying to creat illogical things like can God creat a rock too heavy for Him to lift, which I believe belong to illogical statements like can there be a round square. I agree that physical law stems from observation (plus perhaps whatever intuition that the scientists have). My point, to restate it, would be something like given that light travels at such and such a speed in such and such a medium, then either it hold true regardless of any being's will (ie no one can change it) or it doesn't. The first case would imply no omnipotence. Even more interesting here (which just occured to me) is that, when I said changing the speed of light in a certain medium, I do not mean tempering the medium in some ways (such as doping it with other medium) to obtain a change in the speed of light, for that simply means that you have light travelling in a new medium..., which just perhaps (??) left nothing to DO the "changing" except one's "will" ... Sorry folks, may be I'm not making much sense here... I do not know if I myself am falling into what Jay Rosenberg called "pseudo-paradoxes" in saying the above, to me it does not seem so. I have tried to discuss through the realm of what is logical , the statements below does not help: >Therefore the question, can God create a rock too heavy for >him to lift?, is impossible for us to answer. If you would like >to know the answer, follow his commandments, read the Bible, go >to church, and ask God for wisdom and the strength to be a true >Christian. > My disagreement with the above is quite simple, the sender implies that by reading the Bible, going to church ..., etc one would be able "to know the answer", but if that is the case, I wish he would give the answer to me (ie post it to the net) -- I assume that he does what he suggested, i.e. read the Bible, go to church... etc. More fundamentally, the first statement ("impossible for us to answer..") is logically inconsistent with the second ("to know the answer..."). My point in posting the omnipotence article is simply a matter of intellectual curiosity. I am not trying to prove or disprove existence of some particular "God",(but fine if that is the end result), since I think absence of one (omnipotence) does not imply absence of the other; and on the other hand,even if one has proven that "God" exists, one would still have to find out if "God" is Christian, Muslim, favors humans over other animals,.. etc. I would like to point out that if there is an omnipotent being, then there can be one and only one, and I give my reasons as follows: 1) X is omnipotent and we assume that Y is also omnipotent; 2) X is omnipotent ==> X is capable of destroying Y; 3) this means Y is not capable of defending Y-self; 4) that means the assumption that Y is omnipotent is wrong. Similarly, if Y is omnipotent, then X is not. Aha, but this leads me to this contradiction: If X is omnipotent, then X is capable of creating another being that is also omnipotent, which contradicts the above.. ??? kin wong (..ihnp4!iwlc8!klw)