this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2024
118 points (87.8% liked)
Asklemmy
43851 readers
1693 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy π
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It's not a paradox, the words are just incoherent. It's like asking whether God can taste the color blue. The answer isn't yes/no, there is no answer.
edit: a word
An all powerful god couldn't taste the color blue? First, synesthesia exists. Second, the judeo/christain god "smells prayers."
Also, god died.... in the Bible. Anyway w/e. You don't strike me as someone I want to interact with.
The specific example doesn't matter much. Google "category error" or read the comment below where I explain the response in more detail.
It's not like I'm trolling. This stuff is philosophy of religion 101. But, you are, of course, always free to ignore information that contradicts your world view.
This stuff is not philosophy of religion 101, though it might be one seminary professor's lesson notes in systematic theology for christianity. Specific religions will typically have mental gymnastics or say things like, "It's just too complicated to understand with our limited capacity as mortals."
Given a being exists outside of this reality, the laws of this reality do not apply to it. And given a being created this reality, that being can do whatever it wants, regardless of this reality and it's laws. So the paradox still stands.
When we assume a contradiction is true (e.g., God is immutable and God is not immutable: P ^ -P), then we can derive any proposition and it's negation from that contradiction.
If God can make a contradiction true, then every other proposition whatsoever can be proven true and false at the same time. We can infer the following: 1) All questions about God are useless because God is now beyond reason/logic and 2) Reason itself would lose all applicability as logic, necessity, mathematics, etc. can no longer be taken for granted. These seem like untenable consequences. We have, however, an alternate conception of God's omnipotence that doesn't force us to abandon reason/logic.
So, what you're saying is, if it doesn't fit our logic, we have to make up a logic so it fits our logic?
There are different logics that account for temporality, modality (e.g., necessity), degrees of true, etc. But I doubt there's any logic we could construct that can account for the inconceivable and the impossible being possible. Human reason throws up its hands and sits in the corner.
So, we're back to a paradox.
Thanks.
And... blocked.
If God exists, and God is a non material, intangible being, then God exists outside of the material world. Objects bound to the material universe are born and in turn die, they have a lifespan. If God does not exist within the material universe, then God was never born, therefore God cannot die. God, if they exist, world have no material or tangible properties that can degrade. Also, if God exists outside of the material universe, then God is not bound to the constant of change, and would then be an immutable, un-movable, fixed object, and since death is dependent on mutability, then God could not change their state of existence, as they would be immutable.
I agree with the classical interpretation of an infinitely perfect immaterial God outside of time. But the way out of the paradox is to scrutinize the question itself.
To illustrate the point, take three paradoxical questions: 1) Can God kill himself?, 2) Can God create a stone that he can't lift?, 3) Can God create a square circle?
#3 Is obviously a meaningless question. The words individually have meaning, but the "square circle" refers to an impossible object whose properties are self-contradictory. Because we interpret God's power as the ability to do all logically possible things, the inability to create this self-contradictory object is not a limit on his power.
#2 Seems better on the surface because we can posit increasingly larger stones. But the contradiction here is between the object and the nature of God. Once we accept an infinitely perfect God, there can, by definition, be nothing greater than it. If there was a stone that God couldn't lift, this would contradict the fact of God's existence. Therefore, as we are under the assumption that God exists, the object itself must be impossible.
#1 Is another form of the omnipotence paradox in #2. Can God do something that contradicts his own properties? This would make God immutable/eternal and yet not immutable/eternal. But an infinitely perfect God is, by definition, immutable/eternal! So any action that would contradict himself is a contradiction in terms and thereby logically impossible. Just like in the case of #3, the answer to the question isn't "no". Rather, the question itself is nonsensical.
Idk why people were down voting you I enjoyed your posts
For #1 "Can God kill Himself.?"This presumes God is a physical and material being. If God is a non material being, not consisting of matter, then God was never born, as no material substance was brought into being, therefore God cannot die. So the answer would be no, because God was never born.
For #2 "Can God create a stone he cannot lift?" No. If God is a non material being, that creates the potential for material objects, then God would presumably create the potential of the material stone, and then the potential for a material being, that God could then animate through consciousness. God would then be both a non material being, and a material being in which he animates, that has the potential to lift the stone. Now if you belive that every material object has consciousness, then God would be the being lifting the stone, and the stone itself, so in essence God would be lifting Himself.
For #3 "Can God create a square circle?" Yes. God is a non material being that creates the potential for material objects, form and shape. The measurement of these shapes are arbitrary, measured by material beings, of form and shape. The circle and the square are the same object, a shape, only differentiated by a distribution of points, where one object can configure itself to be the same shape as the other object, by redistributing each objects respective points. So can God create the potential of a shape that can reconfigure itself into another shape, Yes.
Think of it like this, say you have a group of nanobots that are positioned in such a way that they form a shape that we label a circle. Then those nanobots reposition themselves into a shape, that we label as a square. Now did those nanobots create 2 different shapes, or a single shape that reconfigures itself? If it's just a shape that reconfigured itself, then the shape is neither a square nor a circle, it's just simply a shape, that is arbitrarily measured, whose measurement does not change the fact that what is being measured is still just a shape.
I'm afraid I don't see why being non-physical entails being eternal. For example, couldn't God create an angel and then destroy it later? If angels are non-physical beings that can be created and destroyed, then immateriality doesn't entail eternality. Moreover, you're right that God cannot die, but it doesn't follow that the answer to question #1 is "no". If there was something that God couldn't do, then God wouldn't be omnipotent. So the question asks can God commit a logically contradictory action.
I think our starting assumptions are somewhat far apart.
Creation and destruction are bound to the material world. If God created an angel, what matter, aside from God, would be created? If no matter is created then there is no matter to destroy. If God creates an angel from what material would God create it from? God is non material. The angel would just be an expression of God, just as a wave of the sea is just an expression of the entire sea itself, the wave is the sea, and an expression of the sea. The angel would also be just an expression of God. God would not create nor destroy anything, God would just be reconfiguring itself.
God is capable of being omnipotent and commit a logically contradictory action. If God is a perfect being, and thus can only create perfect things, and then God decided to create an imperfect object, then that object would be perfectly imperfect, like the beings that are asking the logically contradictory question: Can God kill Himself? Circular logic is in itself, complete.
It's only nonsensical if you have the additional assumption that God cannot do things that are logically impossible. Granted, if they can, that kind of throws all logical explorations of this sort out the window.
Agreed. And if God can do things outside of logic/reason, then we can't understand him. Then the answer to the paradox would be: it is both impossible and possible. Which doesn't make sense, but now we're supposing God doesn't follow the law of non-contradiction.
You're right it's not a paradox but rather it is a statement that is self-contradictory or logically untenable, though based on a valid deduction from acceptable premises.