cbostrum (04/07/83)
ralphs response to don requires a reply. in trying to even understand what omnipotence is there are severe problems. ralphs conception seems to make it possible that one can be omnipotent, and still fuck up when one tries to do something that we assume possible. (note that unlike descartes and other fruitcakes, i am not claiming that an omnipotent being can do the logically impossible. but it does seem true that an omnipotent being should do better than what it has apparently created to date. and not only that, but in the bible, to pick these gentlemens favorite putative impotent, rather, omnipotent being, it seems true that he should not get so upset with his results as the God depicted there does, if he were such hot stuff). you guys can not really expect us to take much of this seriously, can you? youll have to do a lot better, if thats the case. when will you admit that your views of god are not even coherent to yourselves? the initial god-views, that is, the highly anthropcentric ones, were coherent fer shure, but they were quite clearly false, so the lets-be-metaphorical game began and this tremendous incoherence arose.
djhawley (04/07/83)
I think you are insisting that God do the logically impossible.
Either that, or you are claiming an unbelievable intellect.
What God intends ( read "would have wanted to happen" ), and what happened
( due to free will ) differ. Although God knew what would happen,
apparently he was stuck with the logical impossibility of depriving free
beings ( in the moral sense ) of moral freedom.
Apparently, God felt it was worth it. You don't.
I recall that the issue of eternity was brought up ( I didn't ).
>From that standpoint ( putative eternal bliss/completion ),
1-1000 years of even total misery doesn't even register.
------------------
Sometimes I can't help but get the feeling that some of you anti-God
flamers ( I'm not using this as a prejorative ), would like to blame
the universe for a raw deal, and send your scream into the eternal NIL_PTR.
Curiously, some people ( christian theists - maybe others ) who feel there
is Something out there to hear the scream, don't tend to scream as much
as you would expect. Are they all deluded, brainwashed mindless peoploids,
living in pre-intellectual times ? That's one way of dismissing an
argument I guess.
A flaming we will go,
A flaming we will go,
Toasting 'mallows on the Net
A flaming we will go.
David Hawley.leichter (04/08/83)
Given the well-known paradoxes inherent in the very CONCEPT of omnipotence - can an omnipotent being create a rock so heavy he can't lift it, etc. - if you really want to REASON about omnipotence you have some serious problems to overcome. An interesting approach of at least one belief system - I'm afraid I really know nothing about them; I knew a believer very slightly in college and never even learned the name he gave his religion; it was some Christian group, however - is to say: God is omnipotent, and in fact the paradoxes are in inherent element of what God is: Any attempt to apply human reason to God will necessarily lead to paradoxes. This guy's position - he didn't state it very forcefully - was widely misunderstood. Most people's reaction was to say "well if your set of axioms about God leads to a contradiction, just choose another set of axioms, since you obviously chose wrong." This guy's position, though, was that you can NEVER choose right - logic is just inherently inadequate for talking about God. (Godel theory of theology?) The Jewish approach, as I learned it, never really talks about "omnipotence" in a big way. "All is in the hands of God but belief in God" - we have free will. God knows our inner-most secrets, but we still choose how we shall act. This is not to say that there aren't contradictions: God told the earliest Jews (Abraham, etc.) about the future of 400 years of slavery in Egypt. If the Egyptions had free will, suppose they had chosen not to enslave? What of the prediction? You really can't get away from the problems... -- Jerry decvax!yale-comix!leichter leichter@yale PS Well, you can get away from some of them by saying "we choose freely - i.e. God doesn't force our choices - but God knows what choices we will make". Actually, the consistency of free will with determinism is now widely argued in philosophical circles anyway... -- J