The Answer is obviously No, but how can logic combat faith? How can an omniscient god find the omnipotence to change that which he already knows? Can God create a rock so heavy that even he cannot lift it? If he can, then the rock is now unliftable, limiting God's power. But if he cannot, then he is still not omnipotent. All knowing? where does free will come in? "Power corrupts; Absolute power corrupts absolutely; God is all-powerful? Draw your own conclusions."
Logically, pretty spot on to be honest. The obvious answer is, of course, no. If he knows all (which means he knows the future) he is powerless to change it. If he can change the future, then he didn't know about it fully.
Are you saying he can't be both because of paradoxes like the "can god make a stone he can't move" one? You can find a paradox and use it to defend an argument infinitely, but then the debate doesn't ever move on to more interesting issues. There are other arguments like "why does he let us suffer when he's benevolent and omnipotent" to address, which are more interesting. You can argue against the paradox by saying he created the Earth/Universe/whatever but isn't part of that system, so he's omniscient and omnipotent within it.
You can argue against the paradox by saying he created the Earth/Universe/whatever but isn't part of that system, so he's omniscient and omnipotent within it. Even if it is omniscient and omnipotent only within that system, that still leaves you with the problem it would be rendered powerless to change anything within that system. The two are logically incompatible.
Unfortunately your logic is flawed. Omnipotence does not grant the power to do anything logically impossible, like 'make a square circle', or 'bake a red decade'. Things like this are examples of meaningless statements. The statement 'God create a rock so heavy that God cannot lift it' is equally meaningless. Part of the definition of God, due to his omnipotence, is that there is no possible physical thing that he could not lift. If we take this as true, then by logical equivalence, part of the definition of every possible physical object is that it is liftable by God. Therefore, 'a rock so heavy that God cannot lift it' is like 'a square circle', it's just a meaningless, self-contradictory idea. P.S. I don't believe in God myself, this is just an argument about possibilities.
170 days ago | Tagged As: Yes.
Nope. They logically contradict one another. If god is all-knowing, or knows the future and the past (i.e. is has a "plan for everybody"), then if he cannot change the future or the past, as it is set. Thus he can't be omnipotent. If he does change the flow of history, then he didn't know the future or the past, meaning he was not omniscient. Furthermore, omnipotence even contradicts itself. Can god make a rock so heavy he can't lift it himself? This may sounds childish, but it holds a great truth.
380 days ago | Tagged As: No.
Omniscience is fundamentally incompatible with free will. Someone with true free will can exercise their judgement in making choices in their life. If God is truly omniscient, then he already knows the results of those choices before they are made. Logically, this implies that there was only one possible choice to begin with - the choice God knows about. All other choices were illusory because you were for-ordained to choose the option God knew you would choose. If he does NOT know and learns as you make those choices, then he is no longer omniscient. Omnipotence is inherently contradictory because it pits creative ability against performance. If you can create anything, then you can create a puzzle no one can solve, an unliftable object, an intangible force ... and yet having no limits to your performance, you can solve that puzzle, lift that object and perceive or sense that force. The two sides of omnipotence cancel each other out in a logical conundrum.
380 days ago | Tagged As: No.
I recently read a poem that I think sums up the paradox pretty well. Can ominscient God who, Knows the future find, The ominpotence to Change his future mind? Basically if God knows everything that is and will be, this includes how he/she will use his/her omnipotence in the future. However this means one of either two things; 1. God isn't omnipotent, because he/she doesnt have the power to change his/her mind about the future that he/she already knows, or 2. God isn't omniscient, because if he/she does change his/her mind about the future it means he/she didn't know everything that would happen in the future The obvious rebuttal to this paradox is that God does have the power to change his/her mind but has never execised it. However can a power that you can't use be classified as a power at all?
328 days ago | Tagged As: No.
This is just another example of the 'square circle' mistake. There is no reason why an omnipotent and omniscient God would need to change His/Her/It's mind, and nothing that could cause this to happen. It's not a paradox, just another "rock so heavy He can't lift it" verbal game.
95 days ago | Tagged As: Yes.
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able, and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able, nor willing? Then why call him God?" -Epicurus
95 days ago | Tagged As: No.
I say no with a caveat. You can not be both omniscient and omnipotent without being omnipresent. To know all and do all, you must be all. There we go with that Trinity thing again. How can you know all without being every where? In mathematical terms, a subset is always a part of the master set. Can God be all powerful and create an immovable object? The object would be immovable for all but He who created it. Is it truly immovable, yes to all who encounter it be He who created it. Being omnipresent would mean that the rock is apart of Him. As a man, you can build a house that you yourself can not move under your own power. If you employ other methods to assist, you can then move the house. All powerful, all knowing and all present means you have all the power needed to do anything, including exceeding limitations, imagination and boundaries.
475 days ago | Tagged As: Consider This
God cannot be omniscient and omnipotent because there is no god.
380 days ago | Tagged As: No.
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It is possible to be 'all-knowing' and 'all-powerful' provided that what one means by these terms is that God knows all that can be known and God can do all that can be done. It is not possible for an entity to be all-powerful in the sense that the answer to every question of the form, "Can all-powerful entity do (such and such)?", is yes. It is easy to construct sentences in which saying yes leads to logical impossibilities. Since this stronger version of the notion 'all-powerful' can't exist then people should use the less strong version mentioned above. In the weaker versions of the meaning of these terms, God can be both omniscient and omnipotent.
Theoretically, a god who is omnipotent--can do anything--by definition can find out (or know) anything and so could be omniscient merely upon choice. So, yes, its possible.
I applaud you for posting, but i do not think you made your point well enough to combat my argument. A god cannot be all powerful and all knowing, because they inherently contradict each other. Nor can he be simply all powerful as stated in my previous argument. Nor all knowing with any ability to act. This is just more evidence to point out god is in our minds not reality, we created him not the other way around.
They do not inherently contradict each other.
One way this can be true is if God is outside of the universe. To help you think about it, pretend that the universe is a computer simulation and that God is the nerd who's programming the simulation and watching it run. It's not hard to imagine that she has built tools that allow her to pause, save, load, rewind and fast forward the simulation. As such, she can know anything she wants about the simulation at any given stage, and she can edit any aspect of that simulation as well. That places God outside of time (since time in that simulation is just one of many variables that can be arbitrarily tweaked), and makes her all-knowing and all-powerful, as far as that simulation is concerned, which happens to be all we know.
370 days ago | Tagged As: Consider This
Omnipotence does not grant the power to do anything logically impossible, like 'make a square circle', or 'bake a red decade'. Things like this are examples of meaningless statements. The statement 'God change his mind' is meant to be an example of something that, because of his omniscience, God cannot do, and this is meant to refute his omnipotence. However, logically speaking, the statement 'God change his mind' is as equally meaningless as the statement 'make a square circle'. Part of the definition of God, due to his omniscience, is that there is nothing that he does not know. Given this, if it is a possible item of knowledge, then God knows it. This, therefore, includes all possible counterfactuals (i.e. all 'if... then...' items of knowledge). Given this, God cannot learn anything 'new' because he already knows everything. Is this a problem for his omnipotence? No. God cannot make a perfect circle any more circle than it already is, that's simply a logical consequence the definition of a 'perfect circle'. Likewise, an omniscient God cannot learn anything new (make his knowledge more perfect), simply as a logical consequence the definition of omniscience (perfect knowledge). Given that, as argued before, omnipotence does not grant the power to do anything logically impossible (because these things are meaningless), not being able to learn anything new is no refutation of omnipotence of a God that is already omniscient. If God can't learn anything new, can he change his mind? 'Changing your mind' is a cognitive process involving the manipulation of items of knowledge resulting in a certain outcome. A process, by definition, is something which involves change over time. God's knowledge state cannot change over time because from the very moment it exists it is completely perfect. As argued before, the definition of omniscience entails the possession of every possible 'if...then...' item of knowledge, including the outcomes of all possible manipulations of all possible items of knowledge - instantly! Therefore, logically, the fact that God could not 'change' his mind is no more a refutation of God's omnipotence than the fact that he cannot learn anything new, any more than him not being able to make a square circle, or a perfect circle more circular.
170 days ago | Tagged As: Yes.
You're holding God to your own universal laws and limitations which are the only one's your mind can conceive. You don't know that God can't "bake a red, square, circle decade." You don't know that God's world doesn't allow for every possibility, you just know that your humanity doesn't. It's both gross and beautiful that your ego allows you to think that you are the most omniscient thing possible and that the possibilities you know or can know are THE possibilities. Meanwhile, you can't conceive that something can exist outside the realm of your own logic. Catch 22?
46 days ago | Tagged As: Yes.
Doesn't being "all knowing" make one "all powerful"?
Not necessarily, it depends on what you do with the knowledge. If you are lazy and do nothing with it... where is the power in that?
The power is in the possession. For the sake of argument let say God is real, and that you died and ascended to heaven to meet him, you can't tell me you wouldn't be completely intimidated just being in his presence? He wouldn't even have to do anything, he could just sit there and stare you into holy submission.
It is amusing to me that the simple answer to this so easily evades all the 'thinkers' who want to weigh in and toss rocks. Perhaps those who wish to argue this should first remind themselves what the root word 'omni' means..... it means 'all', which in turn specifically does not rule out states of ignorance or refusal of choice or pretty much any other appearance of contradiction. If something/someone is omniscient and omnipotent, there are a number of things they may choose to do, among which is NOT TO CHOOSE. If something/someone is omniscient and omnipotent, there are a number of things they may be, among which is IGNORANT OF SOMETHING. Perhaps no one lied. Perhaps all choices and all paths and all outcomes exist in their own dimension and the only one you know about is the one you experience... and even then, you only know it in the moment OF the experience, after that, you BELIEVE/HAVE FAITH that you know it. Perhaps the difference between between omniscience and omnipotence and being human is simply ignorance and an inability to truly comprehend just what being omniscient and omnipotent really means.
All that text and i got nothing from it. Considering the FACT the humans created our languages, and we CREATED the words omniscient and omnipotent i do think we know what they mean. We created the gods then the words to describe them.
Just because you are part of the species that made a thing doesn't mean you know how to use it or understand it and its logical ramifications.... obviously. If omniscient then electing to be unknowing is possible. If omnipotent then electing to be without power is possible. Humans have called everything from weather to solar phenomenon evidence of 'gods', but that wasn't the question, was it? I suggest Aristotle for your reading list. Particularly to understand the nature of syllogism and how it applies here.
I dunno if you missed the point, Cienna, because you didn't address it. The nearest thing to an actual argument that you're put forward is: "If something/someone is omniscient and omnipotent, there are a number of things they may choose to do, among which is NOT TO CHOOSE." That doesn't apply to the contradiction we're talking about. The paradox is essentially that it is possible for a theoretical omnipotent God to make anything, but there are things he can't make because they contradict with his omnipotence: "a rock too heavy for God to lift" is an item God can't make, because a rock of that weight would mean he wasn't omnipotent. Both him being able to make it and him not being able to make it negate his omnipotence. Whether or not he chooses to make this improbable rock doesn't matter, it's a still paradox. Your attitude annoyed me, too. If you're going to use obnoxious rhetorical devices like starting all your sentences with 'perhaps' or 'if' and refer to Aristotle and sprinkle rhetorical questions about, can you also use proper grammar? "If omniscient then electing to be unknowing is possible" reads like it should have equals signs and variables and be a bit of code. It isn't clever. Your arguments wander in circles, your "that wasn't the question, was it?" applies to something that really wasn't the question and had no discernible POINT, so I'd like to know why you put it there. You may be proud of using knowing some philosophical terminology, but it's actually what you say and not how you say it that matters most.
The limitations of human understanding is not a valid rebuttal. The question of contradiction is based in our belief that the two aspects of omnipotence and omniscience cannot co-exist. It does not mean they cannot or do not, it simply means we have not yet observed a circumstance in which they do. There is a difference between certainty and the point of certainty. In the end, anything you think you know is taken on faith in the two being effectively the same. That doesn't mean they are, it just means you stopped looking. p.s.: If you wish to debate me, I suggest you leave ad hominem at the door. I will not respond further to any opposition that contains it beyond taking the opportunity to remove a point.
Paradoxical things are ones that are mutually exclusive, and you haven't made an argument that they are both possible but beyond our comprehension. Since no omnipotent or omniscient being is observable, we can't really talk about observing these traits co-existing in real life. It has to be hypothetical, so we have to engage with the ideas on a hypothetical level. I don't understand your second paragraph. What does your 'point of certainty' mean? Nothing can ever be beyond doubt? I don't know how that ties in with theology. And I like making ad hominem criticisms. I'm very sorry you don't appreciate my constructive criticism :<
Actually, I have made an argument that both are possible but beyond our comprehension. Your assertion that 'no omnipotent or omniscient being is observable' is unprovable and thus, invalid. You do not prove something by it's absence and you cannot prove a negative. That we cannot really talk about observing these traits does not mean they fail to exist. It simply means we have no experience of them. Don't you find it a bit arrogant to assume one leads to the other? If you do not know how 'nothing can be beyond doubt' ties in with theology, I suggest you're in the wrong debate. But it has given me a wonderful idea for one.... so thank you.
Your argument isn't beyond my comprehension: it's just not especially relevant to the debate. Arguing that "we can never prove they are mutually exclusive, so the debate is pointless" is facile and annoying and doesn't add anything to this debate. "Your assertion that 'no omnipotent or omniscient being is observable' is unprovable and thus, invalid. You do not prove something by it's absence and you cannot prove a negative." You miss the point completely.
How you categorize it does not at all change that it is otherwise unassailable.... which is the point. I missed nothing. The entire debate is facile and irreconcilable. THAT is the point. We may as well be Lilliputians.
If God was omnipotent and elected to without power entirely, or without any one certain power then God would no longer be omnipotent... Same argument for omniscient. Your point it moot.
324 days ago | Tagged As: No.
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