At 1:49 PM, Giordano Sagredo said…
The post said:
You think questions like, "Can God create a rock so big that He cannot lift it?" and, "Can God will Himself out of existence?" are perfect examples of how to disprove God's omnipotence and ultimately how to disprove God. When someone proves to you the false logic behind the questions (i.e. pitting God's omnipotence against itself), you desperately try to defend the questions, but then give up and go to a different Christian site to ask them.
Saying it is 'false logic' to pit omnipotence against itself does nothing to dispel the logical problems. Why is this false logic? What definition of omnipotence is being used from which it follows that the logic of the question is wrong?
This person is angrily dismissing a beautiful question, one a child can ask and understand, about an omnipotent being. The question leads to a host of interesting philosophical issues about the meaning of 'all powerful'. Could God not make the law of noncontradiction false? Could God make immoral things moral? What are the limits of God's power? They clearly exist, and hence the logical conclusion seems to be that God is not omnipotent. There are moral and logical constraints on God's powers.
Giordano:
As I indicated, the "fundy atheist" list is full of misfires, but I'm not sure this is one. There is nothing wrong with the question, surely, but I think what Holding is parodying here is the use of the argument to refute the concept of omnipotence. It looks like a slam dunk against theism at first, but most philosophers, including atheists, do not regard it as a serious objection. It's kind of like going on talkorigins and arguing that evolution can't be true because it conflicts with the second law of thermodynamics.
The problem is that this paradox has a standard solution in the philosophical literature. It involves defining omnipotence as not involving contradictions. God has, according to the standard definition, the power to do everything that constitutes a coherent possibility. It does not imply that every statement of the form "God can X" is true. So we can say that God cannot bring it about that Floyd the barber shaves everyone who does not shave himself in Mayberry, because this is logically impossible. A stone that an omnipotent being can't lift is not a possible object, and therefore the statement "God cannot make a stone he can't lift" and "God is omnipotent" are perfectly compatible, once you understand the standard definition of omnipotence.
The chapter on Omnipotence in C. S. Lewis's The Problem of Pain is helpful in this regard. See also this from the Stanford Encyclopeda of Philosophy:
5 comments:
[T]he statement "God cannot make a stone he can't lift" and "God is omnipotent" are perfectly compatible, once you understand the standard definition of omnipotence.
Basically you have agreed with my general conclusion that God is constrainted by logic. Fine. I never said or implied that the guestion shows there is no god.
If you want to say God is constrained by logic but he is still omnipotent, because "by definition" omnipotence means able to do what is logically possible, I don't really care (though to whom does it mean this, the man on the street or the theistic philosopher trying to save his butt?). The general point stands. There are things that God cannot do, and this is interesting.
Also, God is not only constrained by logic, but morality.
At any rate, I found that post an anti-intellectual discussion stopper: he will go to the Ninth Circle in the inferno.
Once again, Holding was parodying people who say that there can't be a God because there is no acceptable answer to the question "Could God make a stone he can't lift." It's a puerile ploy, a quick and easy proof of atheism that doesn't work, and that's what the issue is here.
My point in linking to the list was not to endorse his claims, and in particular I'd want to deny in the strongest possible terms that all atheists display the intellectual vice of fundamentalism. My point was that the intellectual vice of fundamentalism is something that can be possessed with regard to matters other than the Bible, and that atheists as well as Christians can react like fundamentalists. Of course theists can see the logs in the eyes of atheists more easily than they can see specks the size of logs in their own eyes, and of course the reverse is true.
As for omnipotence, this understanding of omnipotence is standard in the literature, and was hardly developed by some theistic philosopher at Notre Dame or Oxford trying to save his butt. In fact the entire literature of theistic responses to the problem of evil presupposes this understanding of omnipotence. It is sometimes challenged, but it is standard in the literature, much as the anti-Creationist response that the Second Law of Thermodynamics applies to closed systems, not to open ones, is standard in the literature on evolution.
I wouldn't call a refutation based on these arguments "peurile". They would indeed refute the existence of a God whose powers were unconstrained by logic. I find this interesting, while Victor dismisses it as if there is nothing of interest philosophically in the paradox. By 'interesting' I don't mean to imply that it is an active concern of professional philosophers of religion. I guess it is pretty subjective, so no matter how scornfully you say that it isn't interesting, I will disagree.
The professionals think it shows that there are things that God can't do, but that doesn't mean God isn't omnipotent. I quite believe the linguistic analyzers are happy with this. However, be sure that they are not actually analyzing ordinary language, but coming up with a prescriptive analysis that mangles ordinary usage, but solves certain logical puzzles that come up when you really want omnipotence to have a nonempty extension. In fact, that describes much of the project of analytic philosophy in the last century.
At any rate, I understand your point and don't want to epicyle through semantic quibbles. I also understand you don't agree with the original post, and hell it was just a joke.
The sting on either side of the debate on this particular topic rests in the phrase "constrained by". The impression given, is that God is _forced_ to do or not to do something, which in turn implies that we aren't yet talking about the final Independent Fact of reality (thus not really talking about God, big 'G'. {g})
This is why some (anti/alt-theistic) advocates stress this (apparent) constraint; and why in turn, on the other side, some theistic advocates stress just as strenuously that logic is only a 'human' invention or activity, which God transcends. (Which in turn they use as justification for escaping logical dilemmas arising from mistakes in their theologies--or, even worse, for defending positions by means of explicitly recognized fallacies, such as circular argumentation.)
I think it's a category error, though. Whatever the IF is, and whatever properties it has, it isn't _constrained by_ logic. By logic we discover what the properties _are_.
If we discover that what we call the law of noncontradiction must hold true, for instance, we are discovering a characteristic of the IF in its own foundational exisence (though the characteristic thus discovered might be put another or even a better way). The IF does x, not not-x: for _us_ to claim otherwise would be simply to commit an accident of grammar, which stricter analysis would show claims nothing.
And God, to put it mildly, _isn't_ constrained by accidents of grammar. {s}
The same will be true regarding the IF's relation to what we call morality, whatever that relation (or relations) happen to be. When _I_ say God is good, I have an extremely specific idea of what I am talking about, in relation to God's own self-existent reality; including what the implications of that reality would be if other propositions of God could be true instead.
Consequently, I have a very clear idea of what I mean, when I deny that God is _constrained by_ the good; if I affirmed it instead, I would be proposing a significantly different kind of God (one, as it happens, I wouldn't otherwise conclude to affirm the existence of).
God neither follows the good (as something overarching Himself, i.e. as the real IF), nor transcends morality (perhaps declaring it by divine fiat).
God _is_ (in predicate) _good_.
And any philosopher with any metaphysical training whatever (or else at least some knowledge of the history of such claims) ought to know that this is explictly, even exclusively, a _Christian_ proposition: God _is_, in His own self-existence, an active interpersonal relationship of particular characteristics.
If that claim happens to be false, then neither _is_ God 'good'. If, alternately, we propose or otherwise arrive at some doctrine about God which would entail God intentionally breaching (in some final absolute way) interpersonal relationships, instead of acting toward fostering, repairing and/or reinforcing them; then we are denying that God _is_ (in His own self-existence) _good_, and so we are implicitly proposing either that the Persons of God aren't real persons, or else that the substance of the Persons is divided.
(What I find amazing is that by and large Christian philosophers have tended to completely ignore this, settling instead for defending one or another horn of the Euthyphro Dilemma. From long experience, I tend to suspect mere defense of ideology is the culprit there...)
Jason
I think a general agreement in all of this is the fact that God's omnipotence is undeniable and at the same time the moral laws that we ascribe his omnipotency are in the real sense of the word, "His moral laws". There is danger of confining His actions to our “puny” understanding of morality.
God’s constraint is not to be viewed as a limitation of His Powers. Instead, it is a perfect indicator of his Holiness. He will act around his domain of Holiness. In other words, no sign of impurity can touch his core essence. As far as this is concerned, then He does not have limited control. On the contrary, He acts on his goodness. The same apparently cannot be said of the Devil whose powers are limited in every sense by God. I would safely say that God can over ride the Devil. Demons have been known to obey the voice of God and do what they are ordered of e.g. Jesus healing possessed People. Such examples should serve as clear indicators of God’s infinite power.
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