Omnipotence paradox

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This thread is straying from the original topic. Please don’t hijack threads, people. If you wish to discuss side issues, start new threads. If not, I’ll have to close this thread. Thank you all.
 
Omnipotence as a concept of power isn’t logical. Omnipotence though isn’t possesed by God at all especially as a human concept. God is power and the power that is God is omnipotent. Omnipotence as grasped by reason is merely a composite of perfections of the divine power we define as ‘all’ power and falls infinitely short of the absolute simplicity of God. So omnipotence can not exist outside of who is omnipotence and can only be defined by who is omnipotence. Omnipotence cannot define God but can only be what it is as divine power. It is ungraspable because it’s absolute simplicity doesn’t submit to complex observation.

A paradox is a composite and omnipotence is absolutely simple therefore there is no omnipotence paradox.
 
JimG said:
God can’t make a square triangle, a spherical cube, or a rock too massive for an omnipotent being to lift. All these things are contraditions in terms. Contradictions are non-entities. They are nothing. And nothing IS impossible to God.

Neither could He decide, by an act of the divine will, not to exist, for existence is His essence.
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Though I am sure it is not beyond the wit of the Almighty to make an imaginary rock. That is to say, a rock whose mass is the square root of a negative number.
 
JFonseka said:
God can DO ALL THINGS, there just is a difference as to whether he wills it or not, he cannot sin because whatever he does isn’t considered a sin. It’s a sin if we murder someone, however if he murders someone, it isn’t the same thing, he does it for a righteous reason yada yada.
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Omnipotence is about power. There is no need of power to sin. Therefore, it is not contrary to the omnipotence of God for him not to sin.
 
Malcolm_McLean said:
Though I am sure it is not beyond the wit of the Almighty to make an imaginary rock. That is to say, a rock whose mass is the square root of a negative number.
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I think I agree. Since imaginary numbers “work” mathematically, it’s quite possible they can describe something real in the universe.
 
I guess that the “omnipotence paradox” seems not very well defined.

For example, about the problem: “Can an omnipotent being create a stone so heavy that it cannot lift it?”

God is Omnipotent, Almighty. Maybe writing All-Mighty should be easier to explain: He is All, He is the source of everything and the Power, Energy that allows the existence of everything.

It is not so hard to say that everything in the material world is someway energy: Einstein himself stated the relation E=mc2, and no scientist could deny it yet. So, if everything is somehow energy, and all energy comes from God, what can mean a stone so heavy? It just means an very high amount of energy in equilibrium as matter. As God is infinite in His power and matter always is bounded (at least energy limited, considering quantum physics assumptions), the question does not make sense: the nature of God is necessarily unlimited, and the nature of the stone, that is matter, needs to be limited. The stone, by definition, cannot have more energy than God.

Other point is the reality of “lift”: it is probable that the question needs to have two stones, because if someone wants to lift something from somewhere, it is necessary that this “somewhere” exists. And if one of the stones is possible to be lifted, anyone can change the referential frame to say that, relative to the smaller one, the bigger stone was lifted. So, God needs to do two stones, and it is also necessary that he can’t lift both of them. However, as we are thinking about a stone, that is a material thing, it is necessary that God become bounded by a material body in all His power. There are some problems:
  1. bounding God completely is contradictory (infinite is, by definition, unlimited).
  2. Let’s ignore (1): If He is bounded with all His power, the stone cannot exist, because the stone needs God’s power to exist.
  3. So, let’s ignore (1) and (2) and consider that God decided to bounded Himself, and also decided to allow the existence of the 2 stones. So, we have infinite power bounded by 3 material bodies, where one of them is God and the other 2 belongs to and depends on God. Someone can know how to distinguish the own existence of the stones, that depends on God, from God power? After all, all power, energy, existence, etc come from God. I think that there are enough contradiction in the supposed paradox.
Probably, who proposed the paradox also would like to watch God trying to lift that so heavy stone. There is a problem here: such a amount of energy (infinite) bounded by a body should:
  1. irradiate energy enough to destruct everything else, or
  2. attract everything inside Himself, once infinite concentrated energy should cause infinite gravitational force - considering that Physics Laws, allowed by God, still remain in the “Stone-so-Heavy” setup…
I expect you can have some fun reading these lines…

Peace.
 
lrh said:
I guess that the “omnipotence paradox” seems not very well defined.

For example, about the problem: “Can an omnipotent being create a stone so heavy that it cannot lift it?”

God is Omnipotent, Almighty. Maybe writing All-Mighty should be easier to explain: He is All, He is the source of everything and the Power, Energy that allows the existence of everything.

It is not so hard to say that everything in the material world is someway energy: Einstein himself stated the relation E=mc2, and no scientist could deny it yet. So, if everything is somehow energy, and all energy comes from God, what can mean a stone so heavy? It just means an very high amount of energy in equilibrium as matter. As God is infinite in His power and matter always is bounded (at least energy limited, considering quantum physics assumptions), the question does not make sense: the nature of God is necessarily unlimited, and the nature of the stone, that is matter, needs to be limited. The stone, by definition, cannot have more energy than God.

Other point is the reality of “lift”: it is probable that the question needs to have two stones, because if someone wants to lift something from somewhere, it is necessary that this “somewhere” exists. And if one of the stones is possible to be lifted, anyone can change the referential frame to say that, relative to the smaller one, the bigger stone was lifted. So, God needs to do two stones, and it is also necessary that he can’t lift both of them. However, as we are thinking about a stone, that is a material thing, it is necessary that God become bounded by a material body in all His power. There are some problems:
  1. bounding God completely is contradictory (infinite is, by definition, unlimited).
  2. Let’s ignore (1): If He is bounded with all His power, the stone cannot exist, because the stone needs God’s power to exist.
  3. So, let’s ignore (1) and (2) and consider that God decided to bounded Himself, and also decided to allow the existence of the 2 stones. So, we have infinite power bounded by 3 material bodies, where one of them is God and the other 2 belongs to and depends on God. Someone can know how to distinguish the own existence of the stones, that depends on God, from God power? After all, all power, energy, existence, etc come from God. I think that there are enough contradiction in the supposed paradox.
Probably, who proposed the paradox also would like to watch God trying to lift that so heavy stone. There is a problem here: such a amount of energy (infinite) bounded by a body should:
  1. irradiate energy enough to destruct everything else, or
  2. attract everything inside Himself, once infinite concentrated energy should cause infinite gravitational force - considering that Physics Laws, allowed by God, still remain in the “Stone-so-Heavy” setup…
I expect you can have some fun reading these lines…

Peace.
Click to expand...
:eek: reason CAN grasp omnipotence! 👍
 
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