So yeah, you read correctly. Let's dissect and analyze the omnipotence contradiction argument. For people not familiar with this contradiction, it asserts the following:
1. God is omnipotent; therefore, he can do anything.
2. God can create a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it.
3. If so, then his power is limited, because he cannot do something.
4. If not, then that is also a limitation of power and something he cannot do.
This argument is an argument that tries to force a person into a position where he must, in order to answer the question, limit the powers of God and thus, admitting that God is not omnipotent. The main emphasis on the contradiction is number 2. This is asking us to weigh God's omnipotent ability to create rocks to his omnipotent ability to lift rocks. However, God is omnipotent, thus he can lift any rock that is created. It does not matter what weight it is, God can lift it. Hence, no rock too heavy for God to lift can exist, therefore such an existence of a rock is an impossibility.
Well this is an objection of God's omnipotence because he cannot create this special rock. He cannot create logical impossibilities therefore he is not omnipotent. In other words, number 4 - God is not omnipotent because he cannot create a rock so heavy that he cannot lift - thus, something he cannot do - which means God is not omnipotent.
Therefore, the following argument is developed:
1. If God is omnipotent, he can create a rock so heavy he cannot lift
2. God cannot create this rock
3. God is not omnipotent
After hitting the books a bit, this argument model is called a modus tollens or the following:
p -> q
~q
------
~p
This is a pretty sound argument, doesn't it. Feels like we're being trapped in a corner. Well, let's focus on the arguments more specifically, as we have been. Let's look at this critically and think about it. Since we stated above that no such object can exist, I agree with number 2.
1. God is omnipotent
2. He can create and do anything
3. A rock* is a thing
4. Hence, God can create a rock
*The rock is the reference to our argument - the rock God created that is so heavy that He cannot lift it.
A theist believes God is the creator and ruler of the universe will agree with the first point, therefore the problem must begin with 2. Is omnipotence defined as being able to do anything and everything? Technically no, it doesn't. A theist says:
5. God is maximally powerful.
Don't confuse yourself. We situate God as the person with the maximum power and can do anything that can be done. Can God create the rock then?
6. God can create the rock.
7. God can create a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it.
This is a direct oxymoron. This rock cannot exist as we cannot fathom it existing. By definition the rock cannot exist. If this cannot exist, then it cannot be brought into existence and cannot be created. Therefore number 7 is a fallacy and it's a contradiction and saying:
8. God can create that which cannot be created.
Hence, 4 and 1 are not solid arguments and 3 is wrong, because this rock is not a thing at all because it's not logically "existable." Theism isn't looking too good right now.
Returning to argument 5, if God is maximally powerful, then he can create stars, planets, animals etc... This means that God can do anything that can be done and he can create things that do not now exist. As long as their existence does not trigger a contradiction.
What if there was a God that could create the illogical absurdities and have the powers of the maximally powerful being? Therefore, wouldn't he be stronger because he can do the same thing and more? But this is supporting argument 7, and we know that argument 7 is just not solid enough to base a premise on because oxymorons cannot be created.
9. If a being can't create which cannot exist then he is limited.
But this statement has holes in it. It's not asserting anything different, it doesn't assert anything new. It's also not saying anything about the very nature of God himself. If the argument cannot assert to the nature of God, then the very nature of the contradiction becomes an absurdity. Therefore, God cannot be faulted for not creating something that cannot exist because that which cannot exist cannot be created. In conclusion, God does not lack the ability to create that which cannot exist, because there is no such ability.
Theists claim, hence:
10. God is a maximally powerful being.
11. That which cannot exist cannot be created.
No contradiction exists now. The omnipotence of God has not been demonstrated to be false. The idea of omnipotence has been determined as a logical absurdity. In other words, refer to number 11.
:)
Owned motherfuckers, owned.
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2 comments:
If one maintains the ‘initial’ position that the necessary conception of omnipotence includes the 'power' to compromise both itself and all other identity, and if one concludes from this position that omnipotence is incoherent and thus impossible, then one implicitly is asserting that one's own ‘initial’ position is incoherent.
------Given the complexity of the Cosmos, and of the contingent observer, it is axiomatic that the obverse of the law of identity includes a complex reverse: a thing not only is only what it is, it also is not all those things which it is not. But, given the possible combinations of knowledge and ignorance regarding a given topic, any number of various conflations of the two sides of this axiom is possible regarding that topic.
...Further, given the extent of ignorance possible regarding a topic, the extent of this conflation can be so deep that a person may have a virtually unlimited body of 'logic' upon which to seem to confirm the sense that a favored position is sound. Moreover, given the demands and rewards of the practical epistemological algorithms in which we continually are engaged, much of the a priori knowledge on which such algorithms are based is obscured: they do their job so well and so automatically that we seem rarely to need expend effort to maintain them.
------But, as Abraham Lincoln said, if you want to test a person’s character, you can’t do so simply by making him suffer, but by giving him power. Logic is a power to know or prove things; but, what a person is in the habit of most valuing informs all his logic.
------Moe, the dumbest of Robin Hood’s Merry Stooges, was out on a boat in the middle of the ocean, getting in his daily target practice. But, he, oblivious to his having just nocked two arrows simultaneously to his bow, pulled back the string and released it. One arrow flew straight to its mark in the Bull’s Eye; The other arrow went off into the ocean. Whereupon he, looking shocked, forthwith shouted back over his shoulder to Robin Hood, Aye! Robin! Look! The target hath split in two, such that half hath gone into the ocean!
-------Robin Hood, looking up from his morning’s copy of The Nottingham Post, shouted forward in reply, Goode shooting, Sir Moe! That’s quite the powerful bow you have there! And, I see that the half-arrow which hath gone into the ocean hath hit the Bull’s Eye of the much vaster target!
So, the epistemological ‘boundaries’ are those ‘things’ ‘against’ which we achieve naïve simple concepts, such as divine omnipotence and omniscience, velocity, acceleration, and metaphor.
...But, epistemological ‘boundaries’ are not anything in themselves. Consider, for example, the empty concept of ‘existence’. This concept is one of many ‘boundaries’ to knowledge, and for good reason: it is a concept which is in view of ontology. In short, epistemology is a function of, or rooted in, ontology. In fact, in order for the empty concept of ‘existence’ to exist in any sense, not only must some thing exist, also there must be something which exists of itself. This thing which exists of itself is the ontological necessity (ON for short), the irreducible root thing. This implies that, contrary to the worship of the infinite algorithm of epistemic discovery by limited cognizing agents, the empty concept of ‘existence’ is not a thing in which the ON is rooted, but the other way. For, if this ‘existence’ is accorded ontological primacy over the ON, that is, is accorded the meta-logical status to the ON, then we have set a meaninglessly digressive precedent: this ‘existence’ can as well have its own comparable meta-‘existence’, and that meta-‘existence’ can have its own meta-meta-‘existence’, etc..
------Curiously, it is by epistemological ‘boundaries’ that divine omnipotence is ‘intuited’ as paradoxical: these ‘boundaries’ are reconceived, by an often subliminal psychologically adversarial stance, as ontologically adverse to the naive conceptual primacy of the ON.
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