The Pope, The Almighty, and Logic

[PhoneLobster]

Split off from the T-Rex thread - fbmf

Between this and all the revisionist history pope lovin' flooding my telly I think my brain may melt.

[Username17]

Yeah, when people go on about how John Paul was some sort of champion of freedom or something, I just have to shake my head. This is the guy who canonized Stepinac, the Butcher of Zagreb.

Here's Stepinac in his own words.

And here's Stepinac in other peoples' words.

For a little bit of historical background, when the Nazis took Yugoslavia, they divided off a puppet country called "Croatia", which was ruled as a Catholic dictatorship under a brutal tyrant named Pavelic, who was co-chosen by Pope Pius and Hitler. Stepinac was then cardinal of the Croatian Diocese and ordered and oversaw the systematic elimination of Eastern Orthodox Serbs, as well as Jews and Gypsies.

Why or how someone could be chosen to be a saint by any "peoples' pope" is beyond understanding. My only regret was that Pope John Paul didn't get to live an extra ten years as a vegetable with a feeding tube keeping his mindless body "alive".

The slaughter of Serbs began from the very first day of the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia (Gospic, Gudovan, Bosanska Krajina, etc.) and has continued relentlessly to this very day. The horror is not only in the killing. The killing includes everybody: old men, women and children. With accompanying barbarian torture. These innocent Serbs have been impaled, fire has been lit on their bare chest, they have been roasted alive, burned in their homes and churches while still living, covered with boiling water and then their skin peeled off and salt poured into their wounds, their eyes have been pulled out, their ears, noses and tongues cut off, the priests have had their beards and mustaches torn off from their skulls, their sex organs severed and put into their mouths, they have been tied to trucks and then dragged along the ground, nails have been pressed into their heads, their heads nailed to the floor, they have been thrown alive into wells and over cliffs, and grenades thrown after them, their heads smashed against wall, their backs broken against rocks and tree stumps, and many other horrible tortures were perpetrated, such as normal people can hardly imagine.

Whether you believe me or not, does not matter. The accused Archbishop of Zagreb knows not only how to suffer but also to die for his convictions.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

Personally when I think fondly of that loving old dead pope man I think of his heroic actions assisting blood thirsty south american dictators of military juntas to slaughter the poor and disenfranchised, and even the catholic priests who sided with them no less.

When they say "he was a good man" I think of his great humanitarian actions in assisting the spread and continuation of the world wide aids epedemic, especially in africa. Why the many millions of men women and children he killed with the "condoms are evil, don't prevent aids/actually cause it" business alone...

They say he was an international statesman and I think yes, he built a bridge between the fanatic lunatic right wing of the catholic church and the fanatic lunatic right wing of islam. And in loving togetherness they held back the cause of womens rights around the world, resulting in untold anguish, pain and even more death.

They say he left his mark on the catholic church and I say, damn yeah. He has set it firmly on the path to self immolation as it massively alienates its support base in the west and literally kills it in droves in the 3rd world.

Lets not even point out how he shifted the church from the era of Vatican 2 to the era of Opus Dei.

He WAS a fire breathing dinosaur. And now they want to make him a saint? A scaly fire breathing saint!?

[RandomCasualty]

1113065950[/unixtime]] the existence of an omnipotent being, which actually is logically impossible and can't exist in any possible world

Why is an omnipotent being logically impossible?

[Username17]

Assumption: omnipotent being has unlimited powers of creation and destruction.

Hypothetical proof:

Can an omnipotent being create a rock so big that it cannot destroy it?

Answer 1: Yes.
Since there is a possibility of a rock so big that it cannot destroy it, there is a limit to the powers of destruction possessed by the being.

Answer 2: No.
Since there is something that the being cannot create, there is a limit to the creative powers of the being.

Since the question leads to a contradiction with the hypothesized answer of yes or no, there must be a contradictory statement within the premises. And the premises were only "being has unlimited powers of creation and destruction" - so that by itself is an impossibility.

---

This doesn't preclude the possibility of something which is "very powerful", or even something which is "the most powerful" - which is entirely possible. The being which is the most powerful could have an amount of power that is literally unimaginable by you or I.

But that wasn't the claim. The claim was "unlimited power", and logically that's impossible. Logic itself is a limit.

-Username17

[Aycarus]

1113180485[/unixtime]]Assumption: omnipotent being has unlimited powers of creation and destruction.

Hypothetical proof:

Can an omnipotent being create a rock so big that it cannot destroy it?

I think the usual counter-argument for this type of proof is that yes, said being can create a rock so big that it cannot lift it (if you don't mind the change of question) but he may similarly increase his strength so that he later can lift it. This does not impose a limit on the extent of his power.

[User3]

There's also:

Yes, an omnipotent being can create a rock that it is unable to destroy, but by doing so it surrenders omnipotence. Since an omnipotent being has unlimited power, it should in fact even have the power to stop being omnipotent.



An even better logic problem is:

What happens when an irressistible force meets an unmoveable object?

[Username17]

Which actually doesn't solve it at all. In fact, there is no logical resolution. Just like there is also no logical fashion to reconcile the existence of omniscience with the existence of Free Will. That being the case, people who demand the existence of an omnipotent omniscient being who still invoke Free Will aren't necessarily wrong, just not logical.

There is no way for those things to exist in a logical framework. That means that for them to exist you have to refute the validity of things like the Disjunctive Syllogism. If you're willing to go that far, sure you can have the existence of God. But you sure as hell can't have a rational discussion, because you've already refused to sit down for any possible framework that such a discussion could have.

That's what pisses me off about Christians. Not that they believe in all those logical impossibilities, but that they insist on having conversations with other people about them as if those conversations had any meaning at all.

---

And by the way, the traditional argument to the "Can God create a rock so big that he cannot destroy it" is to say "God wouldn't do that" - which is likewise a total cop out.

With any paradox, there are three possible resolutions:

1> Refute at least one premise.
2> Refute the reasoning which draws the premise to the conclusion.
3> Accept the conclusion.

The extremely simple infinity paradoxes are in fact plent and more than plenty to logically deny the possibility of the existence of any being which is as far into crazy town as the fundamentalist yahoos would have us believe in. And since the premises are just their own premises, their only possible out is to refute the reasoning. But the reasoning is just the cold hard rules of logic, so these guys are left in the position of claiming in all sincerity that "the rules of logic do not apply" and simultaneously claiming that we have to take them at all seriously. It's funny except for the part where it's heart breaking.

Of course, that doesn't disprove the existence of a god, it just disproves the existence of their god. It is still entirely possible that a single massively powerful and cognizant entity created the entire universe and is omnipresent and judgemental in some nondescript fashion all the time. That's unlikely. It's possible. The massively powerful YHWH described in the Jewish Bible is unlikely. The omnipotent overlord of spacetime described by Jack Chick is impossible.

-Username17

[Essence]

Actually, the whole "heavy rock" question is avoided simply by affirming that God does, in fact, obey the laws of logic.

P1) God obeys the laws of logic.
P2) Omnipotence means God can accomplish any goal he sets for himself.

C1) God cannot set a goal for himself that breaks the laws of logic.

P3) The ability of an omnipotent being to create a rock too heavy for itself to lift goes against the definition of "omnipotent"
P4)Contradicting your own definition means that either your definition is incorrect, or you are breaking the laws of logic.
P5)God's definition as "omnipotent" is not incorrect

C3) God cannot set as a goal "Create a rock too heavy for myself to lift".


As soon as you agree that it's possible to have a logical discussion about God, you have implicitly agreed that God cannot create a rock too heavy for himself to lift.

[RandomCasualty]

I don't really find the rock argument very convincing. Omnipotence is about infinite possibilities, you therefore cannot be omnipotent and possess the ability to limit your possibilities. This is a feature of omnipotence. You have infinite power and therefore the only limitation is the ones you choose to put on yourself.

The rock you cannot lift is the rock you choose not to lift.

[Neeek]

1113188118[/unixtime]]I don't really find the rock argument very convincing. Omnipotence is about infinite possibilities, you therefore cannot be omnipotent and possess the ability to limit your possibilities. This is a feature of omnipotence. You have infinite power and therefore the only limitation is the ones you choose to put on yourself.

The rock you cannot lift is the rock you choose not to lift.

Even if you argue that way, and you are currently having issues btw, the concepts of an "Omnipotent Being" and anything else having "Free Will" are inherently contradictory. Either the "Omnipotent Being" can control the other beings(and thus they do not have "Free Will") or the OB can't control them, meaning they have "Free Will" and the OB isn't omnipotent.

[Username17]

Essence, that was so full of holes that I don't even know where to start. There isn't even any sound reasoning to work from there. You just said that by attempting to have a rational argument we automatically had to ignore glaring inconsistencies in the arguments of others. If that's really what you're selling, I aint buying.

Of course, actual omnipotence isn't demanded or even useful to describe the deities in the holy texts of any religion I am aware of. But many religions demand that their god or goddess is omnipotent anyway, presumably to somehow one-up their opposition religions.

But by raising the bar from "most powerful" to "all powerful" they exitted the realm of possibility. They empowered their detractors from having to rely upon the Razor to state that their religion is very improbable to actually be able to discount any possibility of their religion being factual.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1113189514[/unixtime]]
Even if you argue that way, and you are currently having issues btw, the concepts of an "Omnipotent Being" and anything else having "Free Will" are inherently contradictory. Either the "Omnipotent Being" can control the other beings(and thus they do not have "Free Will") or the OB can't control them, meaning they have "Free Will" and the OB isn't omnipotent.

True, though I never argued that free will existed, merely that an omnipotent being could exist.

There's no proof that free will is anything but an illusion. An omnipotent being could create someone who thought they had free will.

Though, as an omnipotent being you could also concievably create free will if you wanted to, it's just that you could take it away anytime you wanted as well. Much in the same way that a human can build a robot that acts on its own until you turn it off. Basically you'd just be creating an autonomous being that can act and think without you doing anything.

Just because you have omnipotent power doesn't mean you have to be constantly using it. After you've got the basic laws of the universe down, you really can just sit back and watch.

About the only element that seems to take away free will would be the omnipotent being's ability to travel or see through time, effectively determining what actions people will take in the future. But that gets into arguments of whether a predetermined future and free will can exist at the same time.

[Username17]

If the omnipotent being is also omniscient, then you have no free will.

In the future you will perform some action. The omniscient being knows what that action is or there is something it does not know.

Upon knowing what you will do, it has the option of changing it because it is also omnipotent. If it couldn't change it, then there'd be something it couldn't do.

---

So there's no free will if such a being exists. Definitionally. Everything you will ever do is subject to rewrite, which means that the final choice over whether you will do something isn't yours, it's the oob's.

----

But regardless, the omnipotent being is already amply demonstrated to be not logically possible. Either it's bound by the laws of logic, in which case there are things it can't do, or it's not bound by the laws of logic, in which case it is not logically possible.

Within the boundaries of a logical discussion, a truly omnipotent being does not exist. Therefore, you may very well have free will. The lack of an omniscient, omnipotent meddler does not actually mandate Free Will, but simply allows it. It is entirely possible that your actions are determined by your stimuli like unto a bacteria.

Opinion is divided as to what is likely on that score, and honestly I don't have much o an opinion. Mostly because it doesn't really matter. Even if you had no Free Will, there's no reason to not act as if you did not have Free Will. There's really no act that not having Free Will would entail. And indeed, convincing others to act in the way you would have them do so is no less valuable if their subsequent actions are choices or responses.

So to recap:

Omnipotence is impossible.
Omnipotence plus Free Will is even more impossible.
The question of Free Will is essentially unanswerable and irrelevent.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1113231465[/unixtime]]
So there's no free will if such a being exists. Definitionally. Everything you will ever do is subject to rewrite, which means that the final choice over whether you will do something isn't yours, it's the oob's.

Not true. Free will isn't about infinite power, it's about the ability to make a decision. Just because your actions may be preventable or even reversible, doesn't make your free will any less. It's like saying I don't have free will because I'm unable to fly by force of thought alone. Since gravity in part controls my actions, then my actions aren't my own. And that just doesn't make sense from any perspective.

Free will simply means your own mind can come to a decision, it doesn't say anything about whether you can actually implement that decision or not. You can be paralyzed from the neck down and still have free will, despite the fact that you really can't do much with it.

I think with free will you mean that omniscient being itself cannot have free will. If you have omniscience, you know what you're going to do in the future before you actually do it, therefore removing any ability to choose.

But regardless, the omnipotent being is already amply demonstrated to be not logically possible. Either it's bound by the laws of logic, in which case there are things it can't do, or it's not bound by the laws of logic, in which case it is not logically possible.

Sure it is. It's actually really easy to create a stone you can't lift. The omnipotent being just has to decide not to want to lift it. That's it. When you're omnipotent you can do whatever you want. If you decide you can't lift the stone, then you can't, simply because you don't.

The thing is that when you're omnipotent and thus have power over time, there is no such thing as possibility, there is only inevitability. Thus there is no rock you *could* lift. Either there's a rock you did lift or will lift, or a rock you didn't lift, and if you didn't lift it before and won't lift it in the future, then for all purposes you cannot lift it.

Remember that there is no such thing as probability for omnipotent beings. When you can see into the future and the past, something is solely possible if it did happen or will happen and impossible if it won't. Essentially anything you didn't do in the continuum of time is impossible, since it won't ever happen.

[Username17]

Free will simply means your own mind can come to a decision, it doesn't say anything about whether you can actually implement that decision or not.

...and the omniscient omnipotent being actually chooses ahead of time whether you will come to that decision or not. It must know what decision you will make, and then it must have the power to change that decision. So if you came to a decision of any sort, it was actually the oob making the decision that that's the decision you were supposed to make.

And so on and so on. Omniscient, omnipotent being exists, Free Will does not for any other creature. Period. It's like "elections" under Nazi Germany. Sure you could vote, but you only had one choice and the government colored it in anyway even if you didn't. Any "choice" which is preapproved by another power isn't a choice at all.

If you decide you can't lift the stone, then you can't, simply because you don't.

No. Can Not and Will Not are in fact different concepts entirely. That's one of the many reasons that we actually have separate modal verbs for the concepts of "can't", "won't", and "doesn't".

Making a rock you don't lift is not the same as making a rock you can't lift. Not everything expressed by a different verb is in fact a different concept, but in this case it most assuredly is.

---

Look, this concept is really simple:

1. You claim a being for which no limitation exists.
2. Therefore it is either limited by the rules of logic, or it is not.
2a. A being limited by logic is a being for whom some limitations exist, contradicting 1.
2b. A being which is not constrained by logic is also not meaningfully discussed in this or any other forum because it isn't logically possible.

Those are your only choices:

1. Omnipotent beings do not exist.
2. There is no point in discussing the omnipotent beings.

So either way, shut the hell up.

-Username17

[Lago_AM3P]

Free will simply means your own mind can come to a decision, it doesn't say anything about whether you can actually implement that decision or not. You can be paralyzed from the neck down and still have free will, despite the fact that you really can't do much with it.

That's a pretty weak interpretation of omniscience, as even the Christian God has exercised the option to completely rewrite people's opinions and thoughts (Pharoah and Saul) when it displeased him--to make them more or less evil, even.

Since an omnipotent/omniscient God instantly has access to all of your thoughts, opinions, and beliefs and can change them on a whim, you do not have free will. You can't. An example: a chess program that calculates moves for the player and then moves the piece automatically if the player doesn't veto the suggested move within 15 seconds does not have free will, even if the player never exercises the option.

Sure it is. It's actually really easy to create a stone you can't lift. The omnipotent being just has to decide not to want to lift it. That's it. When you're omnipotent you can do whatever you want. If you decide you can't lift the stone, then you can't, simply because you don't.

It's not whether he decides to lift the stone, it's whether he has the ability to.

If I decide not to use darkvision using only a pair of licorice whips as a tool, that doesn't invalid the question whether I can see in the dark (the answer: I can't). If God makes the Impossibly Big stone and then decides to walk away from it, that doesn't mean that the question whether he can lift it or not doesn't have an answer.

[RandomCasualty]

1113255735[/unixtime]]
...and the omniscient omnipotent being actually chooses ahead of time whether you will come to that decision or not. It must know what decision you will make, and then it must have the power to change that decision. So if you came to a decision of any sort, it was actually the oob making the decision that that's the decision you were supposed to make.

Well, it does know the descision, true. And it can change it if it wants, but that's not to say that you don't have free will. Look, just because I may know that somebody is about to walk through my front door and I can shoot him dead before he does so doesn't mean that the other guy doesn't have free will.

The whole "omnipotent being can take away free will at any time so I don't have it." argument is pure BS and totally illogical. While an omnipotent being can remove free will you needed to have free will in the first place for it to be able to remove it. Therefore humans can still have free will under an omnipotent being, if the omnipotent being allows it.

Making a rock you don't lift is not the same as making a rock you can't lift. Not everything expressed by a different verb is in fact a different concept, but in this case it most assuredly is.

Actually, in the case of an omnipotent being it is. "can't" and "don't" are the same for a being not constrained by time and with infinite power. When you can see all time periods, there is no suhc thing as what "might" or "could" happen. There is only stuff that will happen and stuff that won't happen. There is no chaos, no random chance. Everything has exactly a 100% probability or a 0% probability. Anything wtih a 100% probability is possible and anything with a 0% probability is impossible, that's pretty much strictly by definition of possible and impossible. And that's how omnipotent and omniscient stuff works. There is no grey area, not what could happen or what might happen. Everything is predetermined. Either something does happen or something doesn't happen. And that which doesn't happen can't happen, because there's a 0% probability of it happening at any given moment.

Remember that omnipotent beings effectively define the physical laws of the world. The concept of mass and lifting can be changed pretty much at their whim. An object which they cannot lift is the same as one they choose not to lift. Exactly the same, because omnipotent beings aren't bound by physical laws, they're just bound by their own choices.

The flaw with your argument is that you're trying to examine omnipotent beings on the same scale as a human. Omnipotent beings aren't human. They aren't even remotely close. Human concepts of what is impossible and possible actually change when you start addressing omnipotent beings. Human possibility is limited by physical laws. Omnipotent possibility is solely limited by the will of the omnipotent being.

[RandomCasualty]

1113255899[/unixtime]]
Since an omnipotent/omniscient God instantly has access to all of your thoughts, opinions, and beliefs and can change them on a whim, you do not have free will. You can't.

Why? Just because another creature can intervene and control your thoughts doesn't mean that you can't have free will. Sure, another human can knock you unconscious and into a coma, but that doesn't mean that you don't have free will solely because another being can take it away. Until free will is actually taken away, you have it.

All the omnipotent being has to do to allow free will is to not interfere with people's thoughts. Merely because it can intervene does not mean anything.

If I decide not to use darkvision using only a pair of licorice whips as a tool, that doesn't invalid the question whether I can see in the dark (the answer: I can't). If God makes the Impossibly Big stone and then decides to walk away from it, that doesn't mean that the question whether he can lift it or not doesn't have an answer.

For every possible action you need both: The will and the physical force.

For a human, generally the will element is considered to be ignored, because of free will. By possessing free will, we assume that we can do anything, so when considering what is possible, only the physical element is considered. For omnipotent beings, they already know how things turn out. In fact, they truly can't have free will because they are aware of the predetermined future and past. For them, will is entirely the questionable element, because physical force is essentially "free". Will however may or may not be present, and that determines whether an action is possible or impossible.

So for any action, will is either present or not present, and thus something is either possible or not possible. In other words, if the being doesn't want to lift the rock, then it cannot lift it. If it does wish to lift the rock then it can lift it. Creating a rock that it cannot lift is simply a matter of creating a rock that it doesnt' want to lift.

Because it itself doesn't have free will it cannot actively change its mind to lift the rock at any point. Thus making lifting the rock actually impossible, despite the presence of its physical power.

Its much like pointing out that a bulldozer without anyone to turn it on cannot actually move any dirt. It has the power for sure, but without a will to direct it, it won't actually do anything. Thus it's impossible for it to move earth given the situation.

[Neeek]

1113260532[/unixtime]]

The whole "omnipotent being can take away free will at any time so I don't have it." argument is pure BS and totally illogical. While an omnipotent being can remove free will you needed to have free will in the first place for it to be able to remove it. Therefore humans can still have free will under an omnipotent being, if the omnipotent being allows it.

Um. No. See your position is simply fallacious. You are claiming that "Having free will" and "Some entity other than yourself controlling your mind if you aren't going to do what it wants" are not mutually exclusive. Which is insane. If something else is "allowing" you to have something, it's isn't yours. Therefore you cannot have free will at the whim of another being.

The flaw with your argument is that you're trying to examine omnipotent beings on the same scale as a human. Omnipotent beings aren't human. They aren't even remotely close. Human concepts of what is impossible and possible actually change when you start addressing omnipotent beings. Human possibility is limited by physical laws. Omnipotent possibility is solely limited by the will of the omnipotent being.

The flaw with *your* argument is you are not contraining omnipotent beings to the realm of the logically possible. As "things that aren't self-contradictory". An omnipotent being doesn't make a bit of sense. There is no scale for things that are logically impossible because they don't make any sort of sense.

[RandomCasualty]

1113262180[/unixtime]]

Um. No. See your position is simply fallacious. You are claiming that "Having free will" and "Some entity other than yourself controlling your mind if you aren't going to do what it wants" are not mutually exclusive. Which is insane. If something else is "allowing" you to have something, it's isn't yours. Therefore you cannot have free will at the whim of another being.

The government "allows" you to have freedom. It could lock you up at any time. Does this mean you don't truly have freedom?

When you were a baby, your parents "allowed" you to eat baby food. They could starve you out at any time. Does this mean you starved to death?

You're only alive because somebody somewhere allowed you to live. You could have been killed lots of times before today. Does that mean you don't possess life?

The flaw with *your* argument is you are not contraining omnipotent beings to the realm of the logically possible. As "things that aren't self-contradictory". An omnipotent being doesn't make a bit of sense. There is no scale for things that are logically impossible because they don't make any sort of sense.

But they're not logically impossible. They do however require a redefinition of a few terms. Namely, for omnipotent beings, the ability to do something is solely determined by will, not by any true physical limitations.

[Lago_AM3P]

Why? Just because another creature can intervene and control your thoughts doesn't mean that you can't have free will. Sure, another human can knock you unconscious and into a coma, but that doesn't mean that you don't have free will solely because another being can take it away. Until free will is actually taken away, you have it.

A human being cannot exercise the degree of control over a person's thoughts and actions to the point an omnipotent god can. An oobg can do it at any point it pleases him, otherwise he's not an oobg. See below.

All the omnipotent being has to do to allow free will is to not interfere with people's thoughts. Merely because it can intervene does not mean anything.

There is no such thing as not making a decision.

If you have perfect knowledge of everything and perfect ability to affect the outcome, then not doing anything is actually making a decision. It's a decision to... do nothing.

Since an omnipotent God is... omnipotent, he can decide in increments smaller to the to the googleplex^-1 second whether, how long, and to the degree he can influence my will. Not to making me into the next Adolph Hitler is a decision that he constantly makes.

Note that at no point is an omniscient god allowed to have a decision he's not in direct control of--either because he doesn't have the power (defeating the omnipotence) or it doesn't cross his mind (which is impossible with omniscience).

So for any action, will is either present or not present, and thus something is either possible or not possible. In other words, if the being doesn't want to lift the rock, then it cannot lift it. If it does wish to lift the rock then it can lift it. Creating a rock that it cannot lift is simply a matter of creating a rock that it doesnt' want to lift.

Okay, a shrimpy scientist who can only lift 80 pounds goes to his invention machine and churns out a slab of metal that weighs 2000 pounds. If he decides to never lift the stone, does that mean that there is no definite conclusion to whether he CAN lift it or not?

Seriously, the rock/lift argument is set in a way so that God automatically loses. God can lift an X amount of weight where X can be any amount. But the point of this exercise is to ask whether he can lift a rock of X + N, with N being the amount of weight that the rock exceeds his lifting capacity.

If God can't create a rock of lifting capacity X + N, with N being a positive, non-zero number, he does not have omnipotence. This is not a hard task. Homer Simpson can create objects that fit this criteria.

You're only alive because somebody somewhere allowed you to live. You could have been killed lots of times before today. Does that mean you don't possess life?

Free Will, due to its nature, is a continuous state that you're in. If a vampire crushes your will and owns your mind, then you have free will. You can subdivide this further into the smallest effects on chaos theory, until you get to the point where even when O'Brien has you chained to the rat chair you can claim you have free will.

Except that an omnipotent God does not have this stupid restraint on free will. He has the power to control your life to an extent that you can't even imagine.





In fact, there's an even easier way to think about it. Taking Away Your Free Will is a power that God undoubtably has (as he's exercised it) and he can exercise it at any point under any condition. You don't have it, since he can take it away whenever.

[RandomCasualty]

1113264743[/unixtime]]
Note that at no point is an omniscient god allowed to have a decision he's not in direct control of--either because he doesn't have the power (defeating the omnipotence) or it doesn't cross his mind (which is impossible with omniscience).

Yes, and no. While it's possible for an omnipotent being to control everything, it is not necessarily true that he always overrides free will. The ability to control something does not take something away until it is actually taken away. The guy pointing a gun to your head may have the ability to kill you at any time, but until he pulls the trigger, you are very much alive, despite possibly being powerless to determine your own fate.

Whether he is omnipotent or not actually doesn't make a heck of a lot of difference. In any case you either have a property(life, free will, whatever) until that property is taken away from you. Since there's nothing stating that omnipotent beings must take away free will, then free will can still exist alongside them.

Being omnipotent doesn't mean you must control everything at all times. Just because a human can easily crush an anthill at any time doesn't mean that he will. He may simply leave the ants to their own fate.

Okay, a shrimpy scientist who can only lift 80 pounds goes to his invention machine and churns out a slab of metal that weighs 2000 pounds. If he decides to never lift the stone, does that mean that there is no definite conclusion to whether he CAN lift it or not?

The concept of possibility being limited by what you do is a concept that is solely relating to beings capable of seeing the future and the past. Human possibility is based on probabilities. And often the biggest limitation is physical power, not will. For an omnipotent being, physical power is no limitation. The only question is will he do something.

Essentially creating a rock you cannot lift amounts to more of a mental suggestion. He doesn't want to lift the rock so he doesnt' do it. Therefore he cannot do it, because the desire to do so never forms. It's like putting a suggestion spell on yourself that prevents you from lifting that one rock, only it doesn't actually have to be a spell it can simply be a mental decision.

All omnipotent being capabilities are inherently psychological, because they have no physical limitations at all.

Seriously, the rock/lift argument is set in a way so that God automatically loses. God can lift an X amount of weight where X can be any amount. But the point of this exercise is to ask whether he can lift a rock of X + N, with N being the amount of weight that the rock exceeds his lifting capacity.

No, see that's the thing. God doesn't lift weight. He wants something to lift up, so it does. Omnipotent beings don't use numbers or physical laws. They create them. All physical laws are essentially ways that nonomnipotent things interact. Omnipotent beings simply interact on a level of thought. God wants something to happen, so it happens. There is no force exerted, no scientific effect, not unless they intended there to be. Moving an object from A to B doesn't have to be by pushing it. It can simply pop out of existence one place and appear another.

Omnipotent beings aren't confined by physics. They create shit out of thin air, make energy, do whatever they want.

You have to think of it like you're playing Doom or any other computer game. Nonomnipotent people actually play the game. Omnipotent beings modify the source code. While your character migth be able to ram into an object to move it by applying some kind of game force, the programmer can simply move an object by directly altering its X, Y and Z coordinate. That's what an omnipotent being does, only it's a heck of a lot faster, and doesn't have bugs to remove.

Except that an omnipotent God does not have this stupid restraint on free will. He has the power to control your life to an extent that you can't even imagine.

True, he can take away free will. Just like a guy who puts you in a coma theoretically takes away your free will, God can lobotimize you to the point you have no will. But so what? Until he actually does it, you can still have free will. Just beacuse he has that power does not mean he's going to use it.

In fact, there's an even easier way to think about it. Taking Away Your Free Will is a power that God undoubtably has (as he's exercised it) and he can exercise it at any point under any condition. You don't have it, since he can take it away whenever.

So apparently since your parents could have killed you at any time when you were a baby, you're not alive then.

What you're saying is "Because being A can remove property P from being B at its whim, Property P cannot be possessed by being B."

The problem is that your basic premise actually includes the fact that B already has property P from the start, since it needs the property first to be able to lose it. So basically you've already lost the argument from the beginning wtih that premise, since for God to be able to take away free Will, free will must have existed from the beginning.

The very argument itself is self-contradictory and illogical.

[PhoneLobster]

The typical omnipotent god tends to get a big raft of other insane junk tacked on, heres some of the more prominent stuff...

1) Omniscient - he knows everything even stuff thats going to happen.

2) Omnipotent - he can do everything, even stuff he knew WASN'T going to happen, or that directly contradicts the potency of other stuff he does.

3) Omnipresent - so he isn't going to be missing much, not that his being omniscient and omnipotent doesn't cover this area already the writers of holy script just couldn't resist another omni, and another potential source of impossibility.

4) All Perfect - As if being all knowing didn't screw up his ability to choose and thus actual in any way shape or form be potent, let alone omnipotent, now he gets stuck with this bastard? Yes thats right now EVERY decision he makes (if he can even make them) is automatically the best possible one. So now he DEFINITELY doesn't get to revise history.

5) All Loving- So you thought omniscient and all perfect was enough to render him hog tied? Think again now he also has a motivation behind his perfect indellible pre ordained choices. The poor bastards never going to wiggle out of ANYTHING to enable him to prove that omnipotence thing.

6) Has hardon for free will - He just loooves the stuff. Probably because by this point he hasn't got any himself. Not that there really is any free will since by omniscient powers he forsaw that he would make the perfect loving choice to grant it, forsaw that its every outcome would inevitably be the most perfect and loving (and unchangable) possible outcome. In essence his choice to create it was the only choice ever made in that regard, not that it was a choice since he already knew he was going to make it.

7) Absolutely not evil - NOTHING that he does is ever evil bad or icky. Ever. It always turns out good. But amazingly sweet orphan anny dieing in agony beneath the wheels of a bus is not just good "in the long run" or in "unforseeable" ways like converting the neo nazis on board to fundamentalist evangelicals it is in fact the best possible outcome of an all powerful all loving GOOD being and thus is ALSO good for anny, not just good but the very very very best possible good imaginable by a boundless imagination in every single way, even the bit where she twitches shattered and smeared across the highway before losing consciousness and has a neo nazi bus driver throw up on her.

8) All forgiving - no bloody wonder its all his own damn fault anyway.

9) Feels the need for the existence of eternal torment - So he loves and forgives everyone, has created the most perfect (and only) possible outcome of all past and future universes, and is basically personally responsible for every aspect of everything that ever happens (all of which is as good and loving as it can be), but he still sends people to hell for all eternity? What the heck?

And then there's the vengefulness, the repeated smotings, trials and tribulations (what the heck is he testing? he knows the outcome), the stuff which just plain makes not sense all (well, the rest of the stuff that makes no sense at all)...

[Username17]

RC, if you put a dirty fork on the kitchen table, and then I come in and see a dirty fork on the table, can I not remove that dirty fork and put it in the dishwasher?

Who has the final say, the reporter or the editor?

---

Ultimately, when I decide to make an omelette, there is only one decision being made. Who is making that decision?

If there's an oob around, it sure as hell isn't me. The oob arbitrarily decides to allow me to decide to make an omelette. Or it arbitrarily decides to change my decision from not making an omelette into making an omelette. Either way, the final say is the oob. And therefore, that's the being which is making the decision.

And this goes for all decisions. Whether I'm making an omelette or taking a breath, the oob makes the choice as to what my ultimate decision is. And therefore the being making any of those choices isn't me.

End of discussion.

-Username17