The Abstract God
The abstractions believed by sophisticated adults often include the omni words. That is, God is said to be omnipotent (all powerful), omniscient (all knowing), omnipresent (everywhere at once), and omnibenevolent (all good). He is also said to be the first cause of the universe, its unmoved mover and sustainer, and the source of human notions of good and evil. Overall, he is the unlimited Supreme Being.
But the problem with defining God in the abstract is that many of these abstractions make no sense, or are unknowable. Thus if God is the Supreme Being, he isn’t merely superior to us, he is totally superior: the best there is now, ever was, and ever will be. But how could anyone know that? A person would have to know everything that is now, ever was, and ever will be in order to be certain that nothing better could be found.
To the extent the abstractions might make some sense, they tend to contradict other abstractions that are also believed. Take the idea of God’s omniscience. It contradicts his omnipotence. This is because if God is all knowing he knows the future, absolutely. He knows everything that will happen. And this means that everything will happen as he knows it. Which means he can’t change anything. But if he can’t change anything, he isn’t all powerful. Yet if he can change the future, then he isn’t all knowing. Both can’t be true.
In the face of the abstract god of theologians, then, the best response is agnosticism, where one declares that one doesn’t know what people are talking about when they talk about God. Believers are making no sense and therefore there is nothing to say, pro or con. God is just an incoherent concept.
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Your argument is based on a flawed conception of omnipotence.
You say that God's omniscience, being all knowing, proves that God can't change things from how he knows them to be. Essentially, God can't change things to be difference from what they are. Now you say, "therefore God cannot be all powerful because in contradicts his omniscience."
So, your argument is essentially that God is a contradiction precisely because he cannot contradict himself. This argument is clearly logically flawed.
God's omnipotence means that he can do all things that are possible. That fact that he is all powerful means that there are things that he cannot do. God cannot be wrong. God cannot make himself cease to exist. Hence, God cannot contradict himself.
Your own argument is a contradiction, not God.
Mkovach is reaching for an old argument that one can find in Aquinas and elsewhere. As he states it, though, it has some amusing consequences. If something is omnipotent because it can do all things that are possible, I am omnipotent because I, too, can also do all things that are possible. The fact that I can't bench press 300 pounds doesn't disprove my omnipotence since that's clearly something I'm not able to do, i.e. it isn't possible. What is possible, I can readily do. Maybe I'm God.
By the way, why should anybody entertain for an instance the notion that there is anything omnipotent in the universe? Mkovach is assuming both that omnipotence is a meaningful attribute and that something possesses it. Unfortunately, omnipotence is just the answer to the absurd game of "let's now come up with the best thing that might be true about our tribal deity." I'm reminded of arguments I had with my friends in grammar school about whether the universal solvent was able to dissolve itself, etc.
One last note: mkovach writes "God cannot contradict himself." I, however, am able to contradict myself. Therefore I am greater than God because I have an ability he lacks.
Your argument is logically inconsistent and bordering on incoherent.
Benching 300 is NOT impossible. You just do not have the power to do it. There is a very clear and obvious difference.
You are able to say things that are contradictory, ergo you are greater than a being who cannot. That is similar to saying that because you will die you are greater than an immortal being.
God and human are so ontologically different that each would logically have attributes that the other does not by virtue of being opposite, i.e. immortal God and mortal man, omniscient God vs a man who can be ignorant.
The nature of your argument that you are superior by virtue of your ignorance is quite silly and potentially dangerous.
I'm not here to attack your beliefs, you have the freedom to believe whatever you like. I'm just clarifying incorrect arguments attacking mine and showing that belief in God is a rational belief and not logically inconsistent like some people try to say.
The point of previous post was not to present valid arguments. My sophistries are, obviously, designed to be absurd. Thing is, they aren't a great deal different than your arguments, which you claim to take seriously.
It's possible to make sense out of the notion of an omnipotent deity--Aquinas did so--but Aquinas could provide a philosophical context in which omnipotence made sense. Now there have to be very few folks left, including religious folks, who seriously accept the mix of Neoplatonic and Aristotelian ideas that gave traditional theological ideas their cogency. It's not that anybody is trying to diss the great theologians of the Middle Ages. I respect them very much myself and have spent many years admiring them, in part for their sheer technical virtuosity. It is quite impossible, at least for me, to credit their universe of discourse, however. The God game, at least the traditional version of the God game, is over. Which, naturally, doesn't mean that you can't make money selling it on television.
Absent an appropriate philosophical setting, omnipotence is an empty word. Or doesn't claiming that God and human are ontologically different commit you to having an ontology? What sort of being is a god? And if, in your utterly inadequate human ignorance, you can't tell me what you're talking about, why are you presuming to talk at all about something which, for all you know, is my uncle's pocket watch. (Don't tell me that it doesn't make sense that a pocket watch could save souls. Maybe that's just another one of those mysteries of the faith.)
It's not that I'm so enthusiastic about my own ontological status, by the way. Indeed, one of the many things I find absurd about Christianity (and Islam, for that matter) is the absurd credit they give to humanity, as if the maker of heaven and earth had any reason to become man--the Islamic version of this vanity is that Satan fell out of resentment for the grand destiny that Allah had apportioned to human beings. Well, long ago a man named Xenophanes remarked that if asses had gods, they'd have long ears...
Since there are an enormous number of God concepts floating around, one could hardly disprove them all. For that matter, some people define God as having a positive attitude towards lile. Can't disagree with that! However, If by God, you refer to a being greater than which one cannot conceive, I argue that such a being does not exist.
Nothing is ever as good as you think it will be. It follows that the being greater than which one cannot conceive cannot actually exist because it would therefore be less than another being that was like the first but non existent. Therefore there is no God.
1- This arguement tries to disprove God within the framework of the "omni" God. But it fails because it fails to adopt the utmost argument- that we are not all-understanding. Because of that our logic is inherently lesser, and can fail.
2- On the whole issue of God's omniscience disproving his omnipotence-This completely depends on which view of God you are talking about. Every person and religion define omniscience differently. And again, when you argue under this framework you have to acknowledge the paradigm that we can't understand everything.
I believe that god is all encompassing and all around you and is a tangent because I only have a deep feeling of it and I Know It's there. I do not preach. I do not feel obliged to force religion on others. I believe god has been dragged through the mud by government officials for war. God is God