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Omnipotence
- Thread starter MAGMA17
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What is God? If we assume God means omnipotent, then the question bears no fruit at all for it is a paradox. Semantics is a tricky thing.
hugfortysix
Esteemed member
I think that the moment you bring omnipotence into the equation, you have taken a step towards anthropomorphising god . Which for me doesn't work.
I think the fact that there's a temporal aspect to "being" makes this question tricky. Setting lots and lots of considerations aside, "God" could feasibly withhold, abstain, or hinder their "omnipotence" while retaining the ability to "regain" it.
When we speak of omnipotence, there's a lot that that entails, including both having and not having it at the same time because the ultimate power can "allow" whatever for the most part.
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When we speak of omnipotence, there's a lot that that entails, including both having and not having it at the same time because the ultimate power can "allow" whatever for the most part.
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MAGMA17
Esteemed member
Can you say more about that? Are you saying that power is only a human invention?
Not exploiting a potential does not mean that it is not there, therefore in any case not making use of power does not mean that in that moment God enters a state of non-omnipotence.
Well, that's kind of my point. If it's really omnipotent, it could be both omnipotent and not if it so chooses at the same time by virtue of its omnipotence.
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Another way to share this is to say that an omnipotent being would have the power of contradiction for whatever it wanted, meaning that it wouldn't have to abide by the law of non-contradiction, which is what keeps coming up in the binary manner this is being looked at.
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hugfortysix
Esteemed member
I think that the idea of omnipotence is a human concept. How would you define omnipotence yourself? The God question is a real rabbit hole. I can understand why people have been arguing about it since time immemoriel.
fractals4life
Established member
This all smacks of the sort of paradoxes that maths has problems with when infinity enters the discussion. With a bit of Bertrand Russell and Kurt Godel thrown in.
I reckon maybe the concept of omnipotence originated with some high wallah in an early religion getting fed up with constant "but can he tell if I do X" questions and defaulting to "he can do and see *everything* , OK!" to stop the questions that were distracting from the work of brewing up a better sacrament from these newly discovered plants
Then it got popular because the faithful can then argue "well, *my* god can do *anything*" with the tribe next door.
The difficulty then lies in explaining why the omnipotent god who is benevolent to their faithful doesn't sort out all the earthly problems, and before you know it there's an entire new field, of Theology
I reckon maybe the concept of omnipotence originated with some high wallah in an early religion getting fed up with constant "but can he tell if I do X" questions and defaulting to "he can do and see *everything* , OK!" to stop the questions that were distracting from the work of brewing up a better sacrament from these newly discovered plants
Then it got popular because the faithful can then argue "well, *my* god can do *anything*" with the tribe next door.
The difficulty then lies in explaining why the omnipotent god who is benevolent to their faithful doesn't sort out all the earthly problems, and before you know it there's an entire new field, of Theology
Well here's a slippery slope. One could say that we only deal with human concepts. Even when I interact with a tree, something other organisms interact with, I'm interacting more with human concepts about the tree than the tree itself.
I feel that this is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It's akin when someone says "that's just abstract," as if that delimits some thing or idea, when all things considered, renders itself nonsense because language is an abstraction.
I don't think that it's bad to highlight the human component to the idea we're interacting with, and feel that some of the contention that has caused wars, hardship, generational trauma, etc. is a byproduct of people not being aware of their own limits of interpretation when met with contrary or contradictory information of equal veracity and validity.
Granted, you observation about how this had been argued for so long is akin to my slippery slope comment, and your comments reflect the slippery slope, so me mentioning it for my own point could feasibly be met with a "no duh."
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I feel like the earthly problems question is a mistaken question potentially.The difficulty then lies in explaining why the omnipotent god who is benevolent to their faithful doesn't sort out all the earthly problems, and before you know it there's an entire new field, of Theology
Even if something is omnipotent, it still has options. If it "gave" us a certain degree freewill, it would contradict itself by overriding it to undue our stupidity. A lot of earthly problems are a result of human choice. What if it doesn't want to contradict itself in that way?
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fractals4life
Established member
Well what if it does, just because it can? ... who are we to guess the motivations of gods, or try to make religion logically consistent?
All good fun
Here's a clever and talented fellow's take on some of this: ( Frank Zappa's Dumb All Over )
Kinda what I've been pointing towards throughout the thread. And I agree it is fun.
As Wittengstein would say "whatever we can't speak of we must pass over in silence."
Though I think dialogue is fun and an act of development.
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hugfortysix
Esteemed member
oh yeah, i knew that i was sitting astride a very greasy pole as soon as i started commenting on a thread which described god. And yes it is true that we can only deal with human concepts. Maybe the only time that we don't deal in human concepts is when wer'e in extreme psychedelic states. leading to some folk talking about the "godhead".
My minute idea of what god may be transcends power. What is power? Do you and i have the same idea as to what power is? I see the word power as more of a humanly conceptual word than say...the word dog, for instance. I think that the moment that people started saying that god was all powerful was when the rot set in as far as spirituality/religion goes.
I will say that i am probably being unnecessarily pedantic about bringing up the notion of god and power and therefore derailing a perfectly good thought experiment from OP. Not only that, but i am sounding like some kind of evangelist trying to tell people what god is or isn't. You guys do you with your gods and i'll do mine and we'll all live happily ever after (as long as we don't get struck down or burned at the stake for being heretics).
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Indeed, in an infinite period of time, an omnipotent being would logically spend smaller, but still infinite, periods of time where they simply can't be bothered. [Apologies for the nested infinities.]
MAGMA17
Esteemed member
You won with that
It’s a linguistic problem in the end. As a reply to everyone: I didn’t want to really investigate the nature of God (also because I am an agnostic) but I just wanted to have some philosophical fun.
For me it’s just: making effective your will without any limits.
In this case it’s about omniscience but I understand what you mean.I reckon maybe the concept of omnipotence originated with some high wallah in an early religion getting fed up with constant "but can he tell if I do X" questions and defaulting to "he can do and see *everything* , OK!" to stop the questions that were distracting from the work of brewing up a better sacrament from these newly discovered plants
Surely there were these competitions between gods in the past. The interesting thing is that before there was discussion about their power, putting them in competition (as between the Romans and Greeks), while now the existence of the God of another culture is directly denied. Monotheism has really taken over the unconscious.
In addition to what Voidmatrix already said about that, with which I agree, we also have to say that the fact that these are problems is only your/our opinion. It’s our perspective.
You don’t sound like that to me
I think your argument is also a good thought experiment, since we must reflect on what power really means.Personally, the only characteristic that I need to being able to indicate what God is for me is being the creator. I don’t think that the creator needs to know everything or that it needs to control anything at all (or judge its creation).
That's a really thought-provoking question! If God has the possibility of no longer being God, it suggests there are limits to God's power, which would mean God is not omnipotent. On the other hand, if God cannot cease to be God, that too implies a limitation, as God cannot do something, in this case, stop being God. Either way, it seems to challenge the idea of omnipotence.
MAGMA17
Esteemed member
Yes. That's exactly the logical premise that formed the question/thought
I've always considered GOD outside of our 'universe' and any possibility of no longer being God could be a reality in our universe since he is 'outside'. To have a start God would exist outside of space and time to form this universe. Like before 'the beginning'. This could all embody 'simulation universe and many other theories' while remaining true.
God is be beyond logic and understanding in which omnipotent would be best way for use to understand I think.
The other idea like imposing limitations of cannot cease to be God would start to go into quantum theory and he would be all at once but again I think the term omnipotent is best way to describe something undescribable.
God is be beyond logic and understanding in which omnipotent would be best way for use to understand I think.
The other idea like imposing limitations of cannot cease to be God would start to go into quantum theory and he would be all at once but again I think the term omnipotent is best way to describe something undescribable.
Sounds like Olorun in Yoruba cosmology.
There's also a part in interpreteting Maimonedes interpretations of the Bible, particularly, Ezekiel and the Chariot, one could feasible see God both riding (being outside and directing) the Universe, and being in it at the same time.
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