contradiction of omnipotency

[Brien]

Is ominpotency an intrinsically contradictory term? I have heard people argue that it is by posing questions like "can god made a crossword puzzle so hard that he can't solve it." Then if you say god is not contradictory they will reply then is his limitations in crossword puzzle making or crossword puzzle solving? Can anyone come up with a good response for this question?

[samabudhi]

An Escher diagram. A classic Greek philosophical problem.
Yes, I think omnipotence is contradictory. We have never seen omnipotence anyway, so I don't know how people can claim it to exist.

[Brien]

Interesting. I was unaware the reasoning had greek roots. Was Escher a painter or is that a different Escher?

Nearly all monotheistic religions have claimed to witnessed omnipotence in some way. Believers put their faith in these claims, which to them are not arbitrary ideas. I believe, however, that things can be proven or disproven with reason. Has anyone heard of or can formulate a refutation to the statement that I posed earlier? It is something that I have tried to figure out for a very long time. If God is contradictory why should I believe in him?

[samabudhi]

Interesting. I was unaware the reasoning had greek roots. Was Escher a painter or is that a different Escher?

Pardon me. Those two sentences were completely unrelated.

Musing over the absolute and over contradictions...very Greek. When we think of things as being absolute, this is when we start to fall over ourselves.
Think of maths and the classic problem of dividing by zero. It is the only absolute value and gives us the most problems.

Nearly all monotheistic religions have claimed to witnessed omnipotence in some way.

This is because they feel if they haven't found something absolute, beyond question, then it can't be the ultimate, in most cases God. In Buddhism ultimate truth is relative. It is not absolute.

Has anyone heard of or can formulate a refutation to the statement that I posed earlier?

It has been done. Nagarjuna, an Indian Buddhist who lived about 200AD systematically presented a refutation of absolutism in his discussion of the Buddhist concept of 'emptiness', otherwise known as 'sunyata'. This is why Buddhism is essentially atheistic.

If God is contradictory why should I believe in him?

If God is not absolute, then are you? If you are not, then why should you believe in 'you' or anything else, and not in God? Everything is empty of inherent existence. Everything is contradictory to discriminating logic.

[I, Brian]

Originally Posted by Brien

If God is contradictory why should I believe in him?

If you fnid a particular perception of God seems contradictory, then it's worth considering other perceptions, or else developing their own.

All too often rationalism pits itself against Christianity - but somehow mistakes itself as pitting itself also against God. Christianity is simply one of a myriad of perceptions of the Divine. Just because one can be questioned need not mean others won't make more sense to different people.

As for the omnipotency issue - really, it's a strawmen, and an excellent example of the limitations of both language - and even logic. Ultimately, both rely on the subjective process and are therefore incapable of making objective statements. Or so I would suggest.

[Brien]

Originally Posted by I, Brian

Ultimately, both rely on the subjective process and are therefore incapable of making objective statements.

Brian and samabudhi, those last two posts really cleared some things up. Thanks.

I would agree that the example is generally absurd and it causes words to get lost in their meaning, especially when mixing science and religion. Science operates on the idea that in order for something to exist it must be part of something, namely the physical universe. Religion, on the other hand, believes that there is something beyond the physical universe (Note that ‘something,’ as used here, is a misnomer since it is nothing in the physical universe, there is no word for what it really is). The two views do not coincide.

But the objectivist will reply, "My existence is fact, god's is not. You cannot speak of something ouside of the universe because you have not proven such a thing exists."

However, I also have a hard time swallowing that there are no absolutes.

In the law of identity, Aristotle showed that everything must have an identity, the concept that refers to the aspects of something, or its particularities and specific characteristics. I have identity, that is specific characteristics, therefore I exist. That seems pretty absolute and makes perfect sense to me. Obviously I have no reason to doubt my own existence.

But even so I still hold the argument that this law of identity is a physical law that can only be applied to something in the physical universe, despite the fact that I have no proof something outside of the physical universe exists. My main problem is that I am teetering between objectivism and theism and their really is no middle ground.

But another contradiction of omipotence would be that if their is a being with so much power, how come so little evidence of him exists?

[SchiZo]

Originally Posted by Brien

Is ominpotency an intrinsically contradictory term? I have heard people argue that it is by posing questions like "can god made a crossword puzzle so hard that he can't solve it." Then if you say god is not contradictory they will reply then is his limitations in crossword puzzle making or crossword puzzle solving? Can anyone come up with a good response for this question?

I have heard many such questions before. For example, if God can do anything, can He create a 4-sided triangle? the answer to this is "yes", but first you must define the image in your mind that will satisfy your criteria. lol

in reality, these kind of questions are illogical. our current human 3 dimensional existence has been defined by Him, so naturally it is very possible for Him to redefine anything He so pleases.

these questions arise and cause us difficulty in grasping them because we ask from the perspective of a confined reality. we then go on to apply our standards in our current reality, and mix them with the Greater Reality. we must keep the two realities seperate from each other.

[I, Brian]

Originally Posted by Brien

But the objectivist will reply, "My existence is fact, god's is not. You cannot speak of something ouside of the universe because you have not proven such a thing exists."

The Higgs Boson has still not been detected - it exists in theory only - yet it is the absolute cornerstone of all particle physics. Without it, our understanding of particle physics falls apart.

Point being, just because something cannot be proven to exist - ie, cannot be quantified - does not therefore mean that it cannot exist, nor have an important role to play in the wider universe.

As for anybody claiming that there existence is fact - Descartes made the most fundamental rebuke against that: "Cogito ergo sum" (I think therefore I am). Which is essentially a profound statement on the nature of the subjective experience - the objectivist may claim that they exist, but I have only their word for that.

[lunamoth]

I'm not sure if my simple musings about the omnipotence of God belong here but I didn't see any other threads on the topic.

I think that in addition to the inadequacy of language, the "problem" of God's omnipotence is solved by the "answer" of His omniscience. This doesn't get at the problem of God solving his own unsolvable puzzles I don't think, but helps me with the issues of free will and evil.

God put the world into motion with a Word that is beyond all eloquence and He knew exactly how it would all turn out. All prayers ever whispered, past, present, future, were answered at the moment of creation. All thoughts words and deeds ever to be spoken were known at that moment. Every blade of grass to grow, every volcano to erupt, every insect to crawl, was known. The end was known.

Knowing how it will all turn out is different than interferring with supernatural powers to shape our lives. Knowing which prayers would be said, which acts would be done, which sacrifices would be made: all asked, answered and accounted for at that moment of creation. Amazingly, all predetermined by a set of natural laws that some believe will turn out to be just one natural law. Our free will is an illusion to the same extent that divine intervention is an illusion. They are like two sides of one coin. Nevertheless, each day we make a million decisions small and large and we don't know ahead of time how it will all turn out.

Thinking about time and the afterlife is an interesting meditation. In Christianity I often get the mental picture of waiting somewhere, should I die early, for the rest of my friends and family to die and be with me. But this is a silly way to think of it. Beyond the thought that heaven is some kind of physical place, the idea of waiting would not make sense in an existence outside of time. The only metaphor that seems helpful to me is that of merging with an ocean, like a drop that has disconnected and then reconnected with the main body. All who ever were, or ever will be, are "already" in the ocean. And from my limited reading in religious theories this would make sense of the disconnect we feel and all the myths about The Fall and our alienation from our true Self, which seems to have nothing to do with our ego self. Why were we created? So God could know and experience love. That is the reason for our being. We get disconnected from the Ocean into a material realm of time-space for the "experiment" of God experiencing Himself.

So what I surmise from all this, at this moment in my existence anyway, is that evil, like free will, is both practically real and ultimately an illusion. God is not evil, but we pass through evil and suffering in our disconnect from God. The goal of all major religions, it seems to me, is to detach from our ego selves: to die from self. To regain and experience a bit of our nature with God/The Ground of Being. Ego self is attached to the world and this life, the definition of disconnect from God/Ground of Being, and so is the source of suffering. Being Awakened, living in Christ, detachment from the material world are all ideal states that represent our reconnection with Him and each other.

Apologies! Mods feel free to move to a more appropriate thread.

[I, Brian]

Seems appropriate to me.

[Mus Zibii]

Wow, I think lunamoth just found enlightenment. LOL Appropriate, indeed. That one's going into my files, for some time in the future when I can claim I said it.

[Abogado del Diablo]

Well said lunamoth.

A similar idea is expressed in one of my favorite passages from CG Jung. From "A Psychological Approach to the Trinity"


"The world of the Father typifies an age which is characterized by a pristine oneness with the whole of Nature, no matter whether this oneness be beautiful or ugly or awe-inspiring. But once the question is asked: 'Whence comes the evil, why is the world so bad and imperfect, why are there diseases and other horrors, why must man suffer?' - then reflection has already begun to judge the Father by his manifest works, and straighway one is conscious of a doubt, this is itself the symtpom of a split in the original unity. One comes to the conclusion that creation is imperfect - nay more, that the Creator has not done his job properly, that the goodness and almightiness of the Father cannot be the sole principle of the cosmos. Hence the One has to be supplemented by the Other, with the result that the world of the Father is fundamentally altered and is superseded by the world of the Son."


In the Garden, the schism created by the false dualism between "good" and "evil" (it's eating from the "tree of knowledge of good and evil" in the language of the myth) breaks up the Oneness. Good/evil is turned by Adam/Eve on itself in the form of shame. The ego cannot tolerate shame and guilt and the next step in the story of the "fall" is blame (see Gen. chs 2&3). And that blame is next necessarily directed at the garden for housing evil. It is no longer the garden of paradise but a garden of broken dreams that the ego charges itself with fixing. Thus, you see all the great false schisms played out in the wake of "good/evil" - God/Human, Human/Nature, Man/Woman, Me/Other, Soul/Body, Being/Non-Being, etc. In this schism is suffering. The way "back" to the Garden is to eat from the tree of life. Reject the false identites created by good/evil and know God rather than "believe."

All paths lead inwards.

[lunamoth]

! Enlightenment is one of the last things I'm sure anyone would ever accuse me of! But thank you for letting me know you enjoyed it. I'm also enjoying everyone else's replies.

In spite of all that, on my deathbed I will still look forward to seeing Jesus and my loved ones again in heaven.

[lunamoth]

Originally Posted by Abogado del Diablo

Reject the false identites created by good/evil and know God rather than "believe."

Well said.

[Marsh]

I'm going to toss this out there. It's something that came into my mind as I was reading the writings of Simone Weil, who was a French writer in the WWII era. Instead of asking the question "Could God create a puzzle that even he couldn't solve?" she would ask "Would God create a puzzle that even he couldn't solve?" She says that it is a human trait to use power to the fullest; that if it is in our power to do something, we will do it. However, she believes that God does not use his power to the full extent of its potential.

Let me use this analogy: I'm building a camp fire in the middle of the forest, and I've got a large pile of brush and wood to work with. It is completely in my power to throw all of it on the fire at once, which would cause a huge blaze. Let's even say that I've never seen a large fire before, and so from the outside it might seem only natural that I would want to throw all of my brush on the fire, just to see what happens. But I don't. Why? Because I'm not stupid; I know that there is a good chance that I'll set the whole forest on fire if I do it, so in the end it isn't something worthwhile.

I believe that God is indeed capable of doing all things. However, I think that it is in his nature not to do certain things. For example, it is in his power to send an angel right now into my room to give me a wedgie. Fortunately enough for me, that's not the kind of guy he is.