All Powerful God?

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
41

[quote]bigflamer wrote:
BlairM wrote:
bigflamer wrote:
orion wrote:
hmm

If you want to play around with this:

Is God all powerful or all knowing?

He can`t be both you know, i.e can he decide to do something different than he already knows he will do?

This is something I have wrestled with in the past. If god knows what all of our destinies are, then would god knowingly create a soul, that he would knowingly only condemn to “hell”?

Not if you also believe in an all loving god.

Since I do believe there is a god, and that he is all powerful/all knowing, then there can be no such thing as sin, right? If all things are created from god, then aren’t all things gods will?, and if everything that happens is gods will, then how can gods own will be “sinfull”?

So, there can be no “good” or “evil”, only gods will.

Let me tell ya, this led to an interesting conversation with my VERY catholic mother. She’s probably saying a rosary for me right now :-]

You’ve forgotten about the whole freewill thing. Our will may not be Gods will, be we have the freedom to make our own choices, even if it goes against what he desires for us.

If god is aware in advance of what decisions we will make, and still desires for them to happen, then free will cannot be. If he knows that we will have decisions to make, however he isn’t aware of what our decision will be, then that sort of shoots a hole in the whole “all powerfull god” thing then huh.

I believe that he is all knowing though, and that we are all guided by his will. I believe that all of our lives are mapped out in advance of our being born, in accordance to what our souls need to experience and learn.
[/quote]

Think you sort of missed everything I said. I said he knows in advance what decisions we’ll make, not that they’re the ones he wants us to make. And I think I made it plan that he knows what they will be. That was sort of my whole premise.

As it is described in the Bible? Hell is merely the absence of God. If you reject God, then you reject Heaven. If you don’t go to Heaven, then where do you go? A place that is absent of God, and that we choose to call hell.

Where there is no good left. It is a terrible place, because there is not one good thing in it.

Like I said, its your choice. He knows what you are going to choose, but he is not going to say “Oh, you chose that, so now you’re just not going to exist.” He doesn’t will anyone to go to hell just because they choose to go there.

I think whoever believes in Jesus and accepts his gift will go to heaven. Thats means Buddhists, no. Jews, depends. I’ve met some who believe that, some who do not.

Not allowing it to happen would be taking away the right he gave you to say “no, I don’t want you or your gift, scram.”

If you stand at the edge of cliff and say you are going to jump, I tell you not to, yet you do and I don’t stop you, it is simply you exerting your will and myself giving you the freedom to make that decision. It doesn’t change my will.

I guess you can say that it is his will to give you the freedom of having your own.

Because he allows them to, because he gave you free will to do it. Its not believing he is not all powerful, it is believing that even though he has the power to make us do whatever, he still allows us to make our own choices. He is all powerful, and could shoot down our will in an instant, but despite this power still gives you the freedom to make your own choices.

Likewise, I doubt we will find middle ground on this, but discussion keeps the mental arteries from hardening :slight_smile:

Its not about a life of poor decisions. If you read the Bible, Jesus hung out with the prostitutes, murderers, and tax collectors. He rebuked the “holier than thou” types when they tried to tell him that those people were worthless.

I can’t reiterate enough, he doesn’t damn one person to hell. Its the opposite, he sits there waiting for you to accept the awesome gift he has for you. He’s there with his arms open, offering to take every thing for you. And as bad as it hurts, he loves you enough to let you decide what you want, because forcing you to love him and accept his gift
isn’t true love at all.

Sir, I don’t believe you will burn in hell for poor decisions. If that was the case, every one of us would be, because not one person is perfect, or anywhere close to it. I believe that a person only goes to hell when they reject the gift of not going there. A free pass, a simple “yes, I believe, and I accept” and not one thing more. That is the beauty of forgiveness: it doesn’t matter whats been done, it doesn’t matter what you do. Forgiveness and salvation are given to anyone who wants it.

So do I. I believe he forgives them if YOU ASK HIM> If you don’t ask for it, then you must not want it.

Boogymen of Christianity? Scare people into believing, is that it? Hell is simply a place with total absence of God.

Imagine this world: there are good things, and there are bad things. Good things: when people love you, when someone offers you help, when communities work together, when gyms get rid of smith machines.

Bad things: that guy who left his toddler daughter in a park in her underwear in subzero weather, where she wandered around before freezing to death. Rapist, thieves, murders.

Now imagine this world, minus all the good things. Where you have no love, and your life is nothing but pain and torment. That is Hell. Its lacking all the good things.

No one wants this for someone else. It only makes sense that Christians want others to avoid it.

As for those “Christians” who use hell as a scare tactic, try to bully people into believing out of fear…yeah, I despise those people. It would take a whole other topic for me to rant about them.

God is all forgiving IF YOU ASK FOR IT. If you don’t ask for it, then you don’t want it. You don’t have to work for it, because you could never be good enough to meet Gods standards. And if you ask for it, there is no need to work at getting better, because its not about that.

Ask to be saved, and you automatically are, no matter what you have done. Don’t ask for it, and you can never do enough work to earn it. It all comes down to just saying “yes, I accept” or “no, I do not.”

There’s no need to work for it. Its already there. All you have to do is say yes, and nothing you’ve ever done or ever will do will matter.

Dude, I hate religion. Hate it. I do not have religion.

Religion is mans way of trying to be good of enough for God through acts. Religion is complicating something simple. Religion is saying that you must do certain things, certain ways, at certain times. Religion is saying that you can’t listen to certain music, or that you can’t talk a certain way, or act a certain way, or drink, or smoke, or enjoy life.

I reiterate, I hate religion.

It all comes down to a God who loves you enough to give you the choice to NOT love him, who cares enough to forgive you unconditionally if you ask for it, and is powerful enough to love you despite anything you could ever do.

Have a good night man, and happy lifting.

42

nephorm wrote:

Many people struggle with this idea, but, for some reason or another, this aspect of Christianity never really caused me difficulty. In any case–in addition to Nephorm’s excellent explanation–I think CS Lewis proves very adroit at tackling this question in Mere Christianity (anyone interested in Christian theology, for whatever reason, should read the book).

He likes to use parallelisms to make his points and the one he uses with respect to God’s relation to time is, I think, helpful:

"That is difficult, I know. Let me try to give something, not the same,
but a bit like it. Suppose I am writing a novel. I write “Mary laid down her work; next moment came a knock at the door!” For Mary who has to live in the imaginary time of my story there is no interval between putting down the work and hearing the knock. But I, who am Mary’s maker, do not live in that imaginary time at all. Between writing the first half of that sentence and the second, I might sit down for three hours and think steadily about Mary.

I could think about Mary as if she were the only character in the book and
for as long as I pleased, and the hours I spent in doing so would not appear in Mary’s time (the time inside the story) at all."

Obviously that analogy soon fails because it simply removes God to a different time line, but he acknowledges the deficiancy.

Lewis then goes on to explain, as does Nephorm, that if God exists outside and above the line of time, he doesn’t experience past, present or future as we, who are on the line, do. For him, every snippet of time is experienced in much the same way we experience the present.

In other words, he doesn’t “see” the future–he doesn’t have a crystal ball that allows him to take a glimpse at events that haven’t yet happened. He knows what we are going to do only because, for him, we’ve already done it and are, in fact, doing it now (as Lewis puts it, “with Him it is, so to speak, still 1920 and already 1960”).

He watched me wreck my car two years from now just as he’s watching me type this sentence–I wouldn’t say I lack the free will to type now whatever I want just because God is watching me type, nor, then, can I say I lack free will when I wreck my car two years from now. It’s all the same for him.

43

[quote]nephorm wrote:
BIG_DAWS wrote:
I heard this the other day in Philosophy and it really made me think…so here it is. If God is all powerful (which we presume that he is), than can God himself create a stone in which he cannot pick up?

This is why most ‘philosophy’ departments suck.[/quote]

Precisely. This is why I study philosophy on my own, and not in school.

44

[quote]nephorm wrote:
BIG_DAWS wrote:
I heard this the other day in Philosophy and it really made me think…so here it is. If God is all powerful (which we presume that he is), than can God himself create a stone in which he cannot pick up?

This is why most ‘philosophy’ departments suck.[/quote]

Precisely. This is why I study philosophy on my own, and not in school.

45

One the whole concept of God controlling our free will, and God being outside time, thats a concept that was fairly well-discussed before Christian theology reached its height during and after the renaissance.

It was common among the Peripatetic and other more spiritual and Sufi-esque Islamic philosophers who came before like Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd, and Imam Ghazzali (I dont remember their European names). It’s also discussed obviously in Aristotle’s works, which is where most Islamic falsayuf and rationalistic Christian philosophies are thought to have stemmed from. I’m not sure about Plato though.

But anyway, since this is such an interesting topic, I think (well more like what I think from what I’ve read) that God yes, controls our destinies and everything is written (that is common in our scriptures). Which of course raises the paradoxical question of why would God allow us to go to hell?

Coming from an FFB, who’s abolished a lot of bad habits besides eating junk, I think that the actualy mercy of God lies in the fact that we have such a strong and rationalistic concept of self-control. We are able to plan ahead, to fix ourselves. So when we actually believe in God, we plan to do good deeds, help others, live a life of love, peace, mercy and giving. In this way we are more ‘capable’ of going to heaven. In this way, we have paved our way to heaven, and God has also written our way to heaven.

Whereas the other side, if you don’t believe as strongly, or you belief is erroneous, you see no harm in disobedience and go on around following your desires and temptations. In this way, you have paved your way to hell for being ignorant/lack of knowledge/apathetic. God therefore has also decreed you must go to hell for your lack of effort/lack of belief.

Of course there are many exceptions, issues with this and many new paradoxes etc. as this is simply a discussion.
But I guess it helps to understand the whole issue, and build upon it from there.

But w/e, God knows best, and may he forgive me if I innovate.

46

[quote]BIG_DAWS wrote:
im not sure some of you are quite understanding what i said so i’ll restate. If God is all powerful, can he create a stone that is too heavy even for him to pick up? If he can create it than he wont be able to pick it up…therefore not all powerful. If he cannot create it…not all powerful either.

hmm[/quote]

Is the professor aware of the term, “categorical fallacy”? Is BIG DAWS aware of the term, “categorical fallacy”?

From the web:

“This fallacy is to place some concept, idea, or entity a into some category, set, or group to which it could truthfully belong only if it were non-A. It is to believe that some A can belong to a set composed only of members of non-A.”

Me now: In other words, the question put forth by BIG DAWS is a question that only applies to non-God (non-A). The word “heavy” does not apply to the Omnipotent Creator any more than the word “smart” applies to a stone. Could a stone be so erudite that it could write a 1,000 page doctoral dissertation on psychometrics? Obviously, intelligence quotients (or lack thereof) do not apply to stones.

Also, what force is going to make a stone “heavy” to Omnipotence. Its heaviness or lightness is completely irrelevant. For Omnipotence, does it really matter whether the stone is 2 pounds or 2 tons?

One author wrote: "Now, a square circle is a self-contradictory concept. The category of ability does not apply to creating a contradiction, since a contradiction is not something to be created–a contradiction is nothing. Therefore, it is meaningless to ask whether God can create a square circle, since it is nothing to be done at all.

The omnipotence of God is defined as his ability to create what he wills and to exercise complete control over his creation. God does not act contrary to his own will or nature, and he does not perform contradictions, since contradictions are nothing to be performed."

Me (extol7extol) now: Likewise, an asinine question such as, “Can God lie?” is met with the Biblical answer that God does not do what is in contradiction to Himself. This ignorant question perhaps seeks to challenge the coherence of Biblical theism and does not realize that God does not lie because He is Truth (see John 14:6).

Another example of a categorical fallacy is the question: “Could God–since we presume that He is omnipotent–make Himself cease to exist?”

On a related note: One poster spoke of their god as not “forcing” anyone to be saved (or something along those lines). Said poster is not speaking for the God of the Bible. “Force” is much too weak a term. For if an allegedly “Omnipotent” God has to force, then he would show himself stronger than the one whom he successfully “forced” but he would not show himself omnipotent. The Omnipotent Creator of which the Bible speaks, actively controls His entire creation. God actively causes men to do what they do, say, and think. Anyways, just like the term “heavy”, the term “force” only applies to those who are not the omnipotent God of Scripture. Man has a will to be sure, but it is by no means free from God in any sense. God actively determines and controls the will of man. A man thinks and chooses. And God causes what a man so chooses and so thinks.

47

[quote]BlairM wrote:
bigflamer wrote:
BlairM wrote:
bigflamer wrote:
orion wrote:
hmm

If you want to play around with this:

Is God all powerful or all knowing?

He can`t be both you know, i.e can he decide to do something different than he already knows he will do?

This is something I have wrestled with in the past. If god knows what all of our destinies are, then would god knowingly create a soul, that he would knowingly only condemn to “hell”?

Not if you also believe in an all loving god.

Since I do believe there is a god, and that he is all powerful/all knowing, then there can be no such thing as sin, right? If all things are created from god, then aren’t all things gods will?, and if everything that happens is gods will, then how can gods own will be “sinfull”?

So, there can be no “good” or “evil”, only gods will.

Let me tell ya, this led to an interesting conversation with my VERY catholic mother. She’s probably saying a rosary for me right now :-]

You’ve forgotten about the whole freewill thing. Our will may not be Gods will, be we have the freedom to make our own choices, even if it goes against what he desires for us.

If god is aware in advance of what decisions we will make, and still desires for them to happen, then free will cannot be. If he knows that we will have decisions to make, however he isn’t aware of what our decision will be, then that sort of shoots a hole in the whole “all powerfull god” thing then huh.

I believe that he is all knowing though, and that we are all guided by his will. I believe that all of our lives are mapped out in advance of our being born, in accordance to what our souls need to experience and learn.

Think you sort of missed everything I said. I said he knows in advance what decisions we’ll make, not that they’re the ones he wants us to make. And I think I made it plan that he knows what they will be. That was sort of my whole premise.[/quote]

I understand your premise, however I think you don’t understand mine.

My premise is that since god understands what we will do in advance, he has a choice to not create us, and therefore not allow such “sinfull” acts to transpire. Since he still allows such “sinful” acts t happen, they are inherintly his will.

Since god is all powerful, all things that happen are his will. Either that, or god is not all powerful, and I don’t think that either of us believe that.

[quote]As it is described in the Bible? Hell is merely the absence of God. If you reject God, then you reject Heaven. If you don’t go to Heaven, then where do you go? A place that is absent of God, and that we choose to call hell.

Where there is no good left. It is a terrible place, because there is not one good thing in it.[/quote]

I totally agree with this premise and do not buy into the concept of eternal damnation.

[quote]Like I said, its your choice. He knows what you are going to choose, but he is not going to say “Oh, you chose that, so now you’re just not going to exist.” He doesn’t will anyone to go to hell just because they choose to go there.

As a matter of fact, he went out of his way to die to save everyone so all they had to do was accept his gift.

That might be true, but it all depends on how much stock you put into your version of the bible. The Jews don’t believe this, are they bound for hell? The Buddhists?

I think whoever believes in Jesus and accepts his gift will go to heaven. Thats means Buddhists, no. Jews, depends. I’ve met some who believe that, some who do not.

That is so completely ridiculas that it nakes my teeth hurt. Are you implying that practicioners of the most peacefull religion in the world (Buddhists)are bound for hell because they don’t acept Jesus?

Good grief. That sounds like religious dogma to me.

If someone goes to Hell, it is because they chose to reject him, and his gift. It was their choice.

If it is their choice, did God know in advance that he/she would reject him? Did he still allow this to happen? Does allowing this happen make it his will?

I think it does.

Not allowing it to happen would be taking away the right he gave you to say “no, I don’t want you or your gift, scram.”

If you stand at the edge of cliff and say you are going to jump, I tell you not to, yet you do and I don’t stop you, it is simply you exerting your will and myself giving you the freedom to make that decision. It doesn’t change my will.

I guess you can say that it is his will to give you the freedom of having your own.

He is not bound to time. He knows everything that you will do, from the first time you crap to the last breath you take. He was there when you were born, and at the same time, there when you died. He knows every choice you made during your life. He knows what you believe when you die, and where you will go as a result of this.

Because of this, he knows when you are born whether you will choose or reject him, but this is only because you made that choice during your life. He may want you to love him and choose heaven, but if you don’t want that, its up to you. He’s not going to deprive you of your choose by eliminating your existence or forcing you to choose what he wants.

Because of all this, not all things that happen are Gods will.

How can anything happen that’s not of the will of an all powerful god? To think otherwise is to believe in a less than all powerful god.

Because he allows them to, because he gave you free will to do it. Its not believing he is not all powerful, it is believing that even though he has the power to make us do whatever, he still allows us to make our own choices. He is all powerful, and could shoot down our will in an instant, but despite this power still gives you the freedom to make your own choices.

They are the will of people, who he loved enough to give freedom over their own actions. Therefore, sinful things are not his will, but our own.

He didn’t make you to reject him and go to Hell. You choose that. He was there when you died, knowing all the choices that YOU made.

He may know where you are going, but only because you made the choice to go there.

I doubt that you and I are going to find some sort of middle ground here, but it’s great discussion nonetheless.

I choose not to believe in a god that would create my soul only to damn me to an eternity of hellfire for a single life of poor decisions. Do you really believe that I might burn for eternity, just because I may have doubts about god at the time of my death?

Likewise, I doubt we will find middle ground on this, but discussion keeps the mental arteries from hardening :slight_smile:

Its not about a life of poor decisions. If you read the Bible, Jesus hung out with the prostitutes, murderers, and tax collectors. He rebuked the “holier than thou” types when they tried to tell him that those people were worthless.

I can’t reiterate enough, he doesn’t damn one person to hell. Its the opposite, he sits there waiting for you to accept the awesome gift he has for you. He’s there with his arms open, offering to take every thing for you. And as bad as it hurts, he loves you enough to let you decide what you want, because forcing you to love him and accept his gift
isn’t true love at all.

Sir, I don’t believe you will burn in hell for poor decisions. If that was the case, every one of us would be, because not one person is perfect, or anywhere close to it. I believe that a person only goes to hell when they reject the gift of not going there. A free pass, a simple “yes, I believe, and I accept” and not one thing more. That is the beauty of forgiveness: it doesn’t matter whats been done, it doesn’t matter what you do. Forgiveness and salvation are given to anyone who wants it.

I believe in a supremely loving god that forgives ALL of our sins. Even the really bad ones.

So do I. I believe he forgives them if YOU ASK HIM> If you don’t ask for it, then you must not want it.

I believe that “hell”, and “damnation”, are the boogymen of christianity.

Boogymen of Christianity? Scare people into believing, is that it? Hell is simply a place with total absence of God.

Imagine this world: there are good things, and there are bad things. Good things: when people love you, when someone offers you help, when communities work together, when gyms get rid of smith machines.

Bad things: that guy who left his toddler daughter in a park in her underwear in subzero weather, where she wandered around before freezing to death. Rapist, thieves, murders.

Now imagine this world, minus all the good things. Where you have no love, and your life is nothing but pain and torment. That is Hell. Its lacking all the good things.

No one wants this for someone else. It only makes sense that Christians want others to avoid it.

As for those “Christians” who use hell as a scare tactic, try to bully people into believing out of fear…yeah, I despise those people. It would take a whole other topic for me to rant about them.

I believe that the concept of reincarnation fits well into the concept of a god that is all forgiving, and allows our souls to progress over time.

God is all forgiving IF YOU ASK FOR IT. If you don’t ask for it, then you don’t want it. You don’t have to work for it, because you could never be good enough to meet Gods standards. And if you ask for it, there is no need to work at getting better, because its not about that.

Ask to be saved, and you automatically are, no matter what you have done. Don’t ask for it, and you can never do enough work to earn it. It all comes down to just saying “yes, I accept” or “no, I do not.”

There’s no need to work for it. Its already there. All you have to do is say yes, and nothing you’ve ever done or ever will do will matter.

Overall, I believe that organized religion is not for me :-]

Dude, I hate religion. Hate it. I do not have religion.

Religion is mans way of trying to be good of enough for God through acts. Religion is complicating something simple. Religion is saying that you must do certain things, certain ways, at certain times. Religion is saying that you can’t listen to certain music, or that you can’t talk a certain way, or act a certain way, or drink, or smoke, or enjoy life.

I reiterate, I hate religion.

It all comes down to a God who loves you enough to give you the choice to NOT love him, who cares enough to forgive you unconditionally if you ask for it, and is powerful enough to love you despite anything you could ever do.

Have a good night man, and happy lifting. [/quote]

Let me ask you this, do you believe that humankind even has the power to defy God?

I think not.

48

[quote]extol7extol wrote:
Me (extol7extol) now: Likewise, an asinine question such as, “Can God lie?” is met with the Biblical answer that God does not do what is in contradiction to Himself. This ignorant question perhaps seeks to challenge the coherence of Biblical theism and does not realize that God does not lie because He is Truth (see John 14:6).
[/quote]

What proof is there, other than the Bible, that God cannot lie if he so chose to?

I see no contradiction (informal fallacy) with the following statement: A being with unlimited power could lie if that being so chose to.

If you choose to define the concept of God as a being that cannot lie, then you simultaneously define a being that cannot have unlimited power. A God with this definition would be restrained (i.e. non-omnipotent).

If God has unlimited power AND freewill, then God could lie if he so chose to.

I don’t see how this is a categorical fallacy.

I see no contradiction (informal fallacy) with the following statement: A being having unlimited power AND freewill could, if it so chose, will himself to exist no longer.

Again, if you choose to define the concept of God as a being that cannot will his own non-existence, then you simultaneously define a being that cannot have unlimited power. A God with this definition would be restrained (i.e. non-omnipotent).

…

Neither of the above two arguments are “non-sequiters”. Neither fit the concept “it does not follow”.

…

Ultimately, this whole exercise is nothing more than a silly semantics game.

How do you define the word/concept “omnipotence”?

How do you define the word/concept “God”?

…

P.S. If you want to pretend to argue like a Doctoral level philosopher, using terms like ‘asinine’ is ill advised. At best, only a limited number of internet goofballs will ever take you seriously.

49

[quote]extol7extol wrote:
Me (extol7extol) now: Likewise, an asinine question such as, “Can God lie?” is met with the Biblical answer that God does not do what is in contradiction to Himself. This ignorant question perhaps seeks to challenge the coherence of Biblical theism and does not realize that God does not lie because He is Truth (see John 14:6).[/quote]

Jeremiah 4:10
Ah, Lord GOD! surely thou hast greatly deceived this people.

Jeremiah 20:7
O Lord, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived.

Ezekiel 14:9
And if a prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet.

2 Thessalonians 2:11
For this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie.

…he is Truthiness.

50

The only way to know God is from direct experience.

Also, I think you gents are making things WAY too complex (God is telling me this and I’m typing.): God created everything and lets it run. He doesn’t WANT to know what everyone is doing or control all our actions. Do you want to completely control YOUR children?

Seriously, God is just like a good parent. A good parent can’t prevent all the evil in the world, can’t keep a kid from stepping out in front of a truck all the time, on and on. If you think of God in this way (which is as close as I can put it in words), the answers are right there in front of you.

51

[quote]bigflamer wrote:
Our conversation right now was set in motion before either of us were born. How cool is that? :-][/quote]

Awesome. That means I’m not responsible for anything becuase its all God’s fault.

This is not an excuse to avoid responsibility for one’s choices at all.

52

[quote]Headhunter wrote:
The only way to know God is from direct experience.

Also, I think you gents are making things WAY too complex (God is telling me this and I’m typing.): God created everything and lets it run. He doesn’t WANT to know what everyone is doing or control all our actions. Do you want to completely control YOUR children?

Seriously, God is just like a good parent. A good parent can’t prevent all the evil in the world, can’t keep a kid from stepping out in front of a truck all the time, on and on. If you think of God in this way (which is as close as I can put it in words), the answers are right there in front of you.[/quote]

A god that “lets it run” without interfering is indistinguishable from no god at all.

It’s a defendable position, but then god is only required as an answer to “what started the universe?” for which any number of answers not requiring a supernatural deity can be imagined.

53

[quote]BIG_DAWS wrote:
I heard this the other day in Philosophy and it really made me think…so here it is. If God is all powerful (which we presume that he is), than can God himself create a stone in which he cannot pick up?

think about it[/quote]

I heard a philosopher give a talk on this once and he used some big words but basically he said that this is a logical contradiction. Say you were the best athlete in the world, you compete in a field of 100 athletes.

You win first place and last place because you are so amazing. I’m not sure this analogy fits but if you spend about 5 minutes really thinking about the God omnipotence claim I think you will be able to see the absurdity of the whole thing and its place in logical thinking.

54

[quote]nephorm wrote:
Hanzo wrote:
One answer is this, God is omnipotent wherefore he has the power to make himself non-omnipotent.

Or

God is not bound by logic, and so can create square circles, or square triangles, or can create a stone that he cannot lift yet can; the paradox would stand, yet still be so.

or

God can do anything that is not an absurdity; that is, omnipotence carries the meaning that God is capable of doing anything that is capable of being comprehended, but omnipotence does not depend on senseless speech.

But it strikes me that if anyone’s faith is really swayed by this sort of reasoning, it wasn’t very strong to begin with.[/quote]

yeah i agree, i just gave a somewhat nonsense answer to a somewhat nonsenical question.

55

[quote]BIG_DAWS wrote:
I heard this the other day in Philosophy and it really made me think…so here it is. If God is all powerful (which we presume that he is), than can God himself create a stone in which he cannot pick up?

think about it[/quote]

If God is everything that the Bible states than there is no way we could understand God’s answer to this question if He did answer it. All-knowing and All-powerful, etc are terms developed by man in attempts to classify what cannot be classified. Implying that God must fit into the natural order he created is shortsighted and arrogant.

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My God is Crom.

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[quote]wichita123 wrote:
I heard a philosopher give a talk on this once[/quote]

I guarantee you’ve never heard a philosopher give a talk.

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[quote]nephorm wrote:
I guarantee you’ve never heard a philosopher give a talk.[/quote]

LOL.

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[quote]Malevolence wrote:
My God is Crom.[/quote]

Hell yea!

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[quote]brucevangeorge wrote:
bigflamer wrote:
Our conversation right now was set in motion before either of us were born. How cool is that? :-]

Awesome. That means I’m not responsible for anything becuase its all God’s fault.[/quote]

Yup, I believe it is all Gods fault. I directly fault him for all of the beautiful occurrences in my life. I also directly fault him for the challenges I am experiencing, and have experienced in the past, so that I can develop and grow into a better person.

Yup, it’s all Gods fault :-]

I suppose that someone who was looking to scapegoat the problems in their life could see it that way. That’s not how I see it however. I have a strong faith that all of the experiences in my life were set in advance to help my eternal soul develop to a higher level, to better serve god.