mentholated

Jesus christ on a stick, man, is that all you're going to say?


At least put some humor in it.

Kerostasis

@Mentholated:
Huh? I don't follow. He asked a complicated question, and I just wanted to make sure I gave an answer worthy of the question. So after some thought, here's Part 1.

This touches on the nature of Free Will, what it means to be All Powerful, and the Aspects of God's personality. So lets start with the meaning of Omnipotence.

The classic question about Omnipotence is, can an Omnipotent being solve paradoxes? That is, given that he can do anything, can he also perform tasks that are, by their very nature, impossible? Logicians enjoy dreaming up examples of such tasks, but allow me to use as my example the task of "making a set of parallel lines that also cross each other".

This seems, on its face, to be impossible. But the funny thing about paradoxes is that often enough, when the problem is looked at from a different angle or a higher vantage point, it ceases to be impossible. We humans have already determined that this particular example of a paradoxical task can in fact be completed by moving to Non-Euclidean Geometry, even though it was impossible within the bounds of normal Euclidean Geometry.

A being who was All-Powerful and All-Knowing could reasonably be expected to grasp the higher-angle solution to any Paradox that was solvable in such a way, and indeed I suspect that many of what we would consider impossible tasks would fall into such a category. (In fact several other Christian beliefs require God to have answered just this kind of Paradox, such as the doctrine of the Trinity). But not all paradoxes would be solvable this way -- there is no reason to assume that a logically self-contradictory statement must be within the bounds of an All-powerful being for him to remain All-Powerful, just so long as he still posesses the power to perform all tasks that are performable.

.......

Which brings us back to the particular example at hand. Supposing Evil to be "that which is Against or Apart From God", and supposing Free Will to be "the Independence to decide to act With or Against God", creating a Free Will that lacked the ability to go Against God would not actually fulfill the definition of Free Will. God could certainly create a limited Independence that could choose many things but would never choose to act Against God, but you would then not call that Independence "Free Will". You would give it some other name. So it seems that creating something that simultaneously met and failed to meet our definition of Free Will is not just impossible but logically inconsistent, and therefore God would not need to be able to perform such a task in order to remain Omnipotent.

------------

This brings us to the second question: WHY God would choose to create a Free Will that was capable of Evil. However I think I'll leave that for Part 2 and come back to it in a bit.

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Embiggener

Interesting, this reminds me of a quote from a great philosopher

"Could Jesus microwave a burrito so hot that even he could not eat it?"

H J Simpson

SmokingTarpan

So you've stated the following:
- Some tasks are incapable of being performed, even by God.
- As long as God is capable of performing all tasks able to be performed, God is All Powerful.

You have, essentially, redefined God- which also means that you should no longer follow Christianity (see next paragraph). While I completely disagree with your definition of Omnipotence, I do agree with your underlying logic. However, whether you and I agree on that is completely irrelevant because of the following.

According to Christian theology, there's nothing that God cannot do or know. Saying that there is a task that cannot be performed even by God, then, results in one or both of the following conclusions:

1) God is incapable of performing some task, thus is not All Powerful as Christian theology claims.
2) God does not know how to perform some task, thus is not All Knowing as Christian theology claims.

So which is it? There are some things that even God cannot do, or there are some things that even God does not know how to do? The answer doesn't matter, because either way you've now put a limit on a being which Christianity holds as limitless. That contradicts the most major of the religion's underlying tenets, which is substantial reason to doubt Christianity's beliefs.

Note something very important that I might not have made clear to this point: I'm not arguing against the existence of a Higher Power (I personally believe a Higher Power exists). My arguments are against the existence and validity of the Christian God and religion, as well as any other religion by a different name that makes the same underlying claims.

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[squadl]
"I am the prettiest african-american, vietnamese..cong..person." -SugarNCamo

Kerostasis

Sure, no problem. Thanks for clearing up our starting point.

Small caveat -- There's lots of Christian Theologists who often disagree with each other. That said, back to the main point.

Hm. I'm still thinking through this, so take this as a stream-of-thought argument. It might change by the end.

Suppose we look at it from a slightly different angle. If a request is logically non-consistent with itself, does it still count as a task? For example, suppose I set to you the task of "failing to complete this task". Is that really a task? Its an interesting excercise in logic, but it doesn't really ASK anything of you. Your response has no bearing on whether the logician watching us will ultimately decide that the task is complete or not. The conditions of the task look only at themselves, not at your attempts to complete it. (Interestingly, I believe a computer would determine that task to be complete.)

Or suppose I ask you to fetch me a zzrl. The problem isn't so much that zzrls dont exist yet, its that I havent bothered to define the label, so the request is meaningless -- which is different from impossible.

Ok, having thought through that far, I think that last line is the key. A normally "impossible" task should still be doable by an Omnipotent Being, but a "meaningless" task is not. The Omnipotent one does not lack the power to complete the meaningless task, but the task has not yet been properly defined as to the application of that power. Otherwise you wind up with Chuck Norris-like tasks such as "Can God divide by zero?" God certainly does not lack the computational power to reach an answer, but thats not particularly helpful if we have not defined the process of division by zero. Division by zero is not impossible, but it is meaningless. Thats why our math papers report that answer as "does not exist" rather than "I don't know".

Re: the application to Free Will - asking for a construct which meets and also fails to meet a particular definition would be considered meaningless rather than impossible. In this case you have not yet decided what you want to ask for, and so it cannot be given to you -- not due to God's lack of power but due to your own indecisiveness.

Does this make any sense?

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Axis of Eeevil

FYI: much of the dogma and teachings of modern theologians that has made it's way into Catholicism and Protestantism doesn't jive with the teachings of the ancient Church, which was of the Orient (East), not the Occident (West).

It's important to note that the nature of God being discussed here is all within the context of the two post-Schism (the Great Schism of 1054) branches of Western Christianity, Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. These two branches differ, very much in some cases, from the original form as practiced in the first 1000 years of Christianity. In their concepts of the nature of God, the nature of Christ, the aim of the Christian life, life after death, and particularly the nature of free will, sin, and hell, the heterodox Christian churches have a very different understanding as compared to Eastern Orthodox Christianity.

The original Christian Church hasn't changed in dogma, or the original understanding of scripture, as written by the Holy Fathers, since the 7th and final Ecumenical Council met in Niceain 787, finalizing what Christianity is and is not. This is historical fact that can be found in any source on the History of Christianity.

Most people in English-speaking countries are either unaware that the original roots of Christianity have survived to this day, let alone that it flourishes and is growing, particularly in N. America. Those who are aware of its existence often think it is simply an ethnic "flavor" of Christianity.

I encountered Orthodoxy some years ago, thinking I knew what Christianity was. Before then, I had been told a hodge-podge of personal opinions, interpretations and supposition mixed with a lot of social pressure, fear and guilt. I knew that couldn't be Truth. Encountering Orthodoxy, I instantly felt a depth, a richness and a mysticism I had never encountered in Western Christianity. The difference between the Western and Eastern churches is best experienced, not intellectualized by the mind. This is a primary difference between East and West.

I don't say this to proselytize nor demean. I just wanted to interject this because it's important to know that everything we westerners hear or think about Christianity is almost certainly modern Western, not ancient Eastern.

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BeSiege82

Interesting Axis, what many of us forget is how and what the ancient church was. The ancient church was more unified and less caught up in this excess of things which are stumbling blocks. What I believe is the Bible- I believe it to be the living Word of God and an undying testimony to God's actions in this world and His will for us to come. I am a literalist- I take what the Bible says as true, but one must look at the original texts and then compare it to the newer translations of today.

I cannot say about anyone else, but I do know what it feels like when hypocrisy infiltrates the church- this is what we see today (IE the priests molesting children, the gays preaching [which is specifically forbidden in First or Second Timothy], and with hatred bestowed upon those who have not chosen to conform to the Bible [for we are told multiple times to love our neighbor as ourselves which would include our enemies]) and it ruins many of the prospective Christians and defiles the name of the church- so many of the churches are dead and worthless, only an empty shell...

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lTG-Irrl BeSiege82
A former platoon leader...

"Courage grows strong at the wound."
"Virescit Vulnere Virtus."

"{My grump-o-meter starts to make a high-pitched whine when I point it at your post, though.}" -- Axis

TheSkudDestroyer

Obviously guys, the answer lies in Scientology.

(Lets all laugh together [That way, we all believe that Scientology is silly!])

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|TG-6th|Skud
BMT Graduate - 320th Training Squadron, Flight 024 - MSgt Romero - "Kids no more!"
30 weeks Keesler AFB, 1W031 - Weather

CingularDuality

Dude. I've been clear for 11 years now.

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Requital

Jesus used the Jonah story as an example and put it on par with the validity of his resurrection. So, If Jesus is not God, then the story of Jonah is false and the Bible can not be trusted to be accurate.

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Requital

"So you've stated the following:
- Some tasks are incapable of being performed, even by God.
- As long as God is capable of performing all tasks able to be performed, God is All Powerful."


God is not omnipotent. He is limited by His character. God can not be contrary to Himself (there is a biblical passage that points this out), so if God is Good, he can't also be Evil. Some characteristics overlap but do not conflict.

So there is a difference between all powerful, or all knowing, and the limits of Character attributes. This is understood by how God describes himself, as well as how reality and logic work. God makes the definitions, man interprets them.

When creating a logical construct, it does not as Kerostasis mentioned make God not all powerful, simply unable to fulfill a paradoxical logical construct. Such as make the apple on the table both exist and not exist, or creating the hotdog. God can not do something outside His character, so the simple answer is God wouldn't make a hotdog that big, because it would be outside His Character. Why would He make the hotdog, does God do things without purpose? Did God create a universe so big that even He couldn't see the end of it?

If you want to take a mathematical approach, God's power = infinity, God's stomach = infinity, which infinity is bigger? Which do you think is bigger? That is simply a logical construct not a test of omnipotence.


Switch: I can't find the first book on the list. I talked to a friend at the University near me and he couldn't find it on the library catalog. I will see if I can't locate at least one of the others you mentioned, but that one seemed like it might be the most useful. I found a book called "Evolution the extent of darwinism" or something close and am having that shipped, sounded like it could be useful, but I will read a few pages and let you know.

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Switch

Its a text book, so sometimes if school libraries have it, its not in general circulation. It prevents kids from taking the book out instead of buying it for a class.

Also, each prof choses the text they want to teach by, so maybe no one in your area chose that one. There are countless alternatives.

Looking back now, I misspelled Freeman as Freemon.

Heres the ISBN
13 digit ISBN: 9780131018594
10 digit ISBN: 0131018590

Evolutionary Analysis (3rd edition)

Authors: Scott Freeman, Jon C. Herron

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|TG|Switch

Better known as:
That noob who crashed the chopper.
That noob who ran over the mine.
That noob who TK'd me with a sniper rifle.
That noob who hit that APC at 300m with light AT! Our APC...

Axis of Eeevil

One consequence, I would hope, would be a PM from an admin to the person who said it.

If anyone dealt with another religion, or, say, homosexuality, in such an insensitive and disrespectful manner, I would hope that I would speak up and say "hey--cut it out!"

So: hey--cut it out! If you can't make a point without being intentionally insulting or mean-spirited, how about you wait until you calm down before you say it?

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TheSkudDestroyer

But then I would be getting warned equally for mocking Scientology.

(I'm just pointing this out.)

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|TG-6th|Skud
BMT Graduate - 320th Training Squadron, Flight 024 - MSgt Romero - "Kids no more!"
30 weeks Keesler AFB, 1W031 - Weather

Switch

I didn't find it offensive. That is the literal interpretation isn't it?

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|TG|Switch

Better known as:
That noob who crashed the chopper.
That noob who ran over the mine.
That noob who TK'd me with a sniper rifle.
That noob who hit that APC at 300m with light AT! Our APC...