• Bartricks
    6k
    Pray explain his rejection of my view.
    Shall I do it for you?
    Here: "hoity toity, far be it for me to hoity toity, but McTaggart was surely toity, hoity, hoity, toity toity. The great Descartes no less, held such a view, but hoity toity even the great among us make mistakes, indeed the very greatest of mistakes, so hoity toity. Anyway, I will not consider further this view of omnipotence, for it is plainly false and disreputable and only the greatest minds - who are apt, of course, to make the greatest mistakes, for there is surely no greater hindrance to understanding than to be extremely good at it - will have any truck with it and toity hoity. So let us now move on, 'hoitum toitum' as it were, to other views, having so roundly rejected this one without ever being so vulgar as to explain why."
    Sound about right?
  • GraveItty
    311
    Yes, Jesus and I agree about omnipotence. Jesus said "with God, all things are possible". He did not say "God can do all that is possible". So yes, I am comparing myself to JesusBartricks

    No one can compare himself with Jesus. He is the divine spirit emaculately in-, re- , and concepted by the Lord Himself, praise His Name! JEHOVA! To compare yourself with Jesus is comparing yourself with God. Hence the difficulties you have with the free will of the Holy Gracious, praise His Name! JEHOVA! You are projecting human-like features of the Holy Heavenly Father, praise His name! JEHOVAH! May His eternal glory be with you or enter you soon! To pretend to know if God is free, even to ask it, is a shameless act of mindless identity projection! How can you know what the act of creation looked like? Projecting time or will on His Pristine Being, diminishes the Good Lord, praise His Name, JEHOVAH! to the secular follies your atheistic mind wanders with. The Lord, praise His Name JEHOVA! won't tolerate! Going on like this will make it impossible for you to turn your head away from Lucifer one day. Praise His Name! LUCIFER! The act of creation is unknown. The word of the Lord, praise His Name, JEHOVA! will be known to the secular naive mind, like yours, only through the Lord-given words received by Brother Mozes, praise His Name! MOZES! Mozes itch! What the fuck I'm doing!? Goddammit! Well, seriously, how can you know the act of creation is the same as a human act of creation. Creation! Praise Her Name! ELISABETTAMYLOVE! How can you know the will of the gods is free or not? It's nice discussing it, but you place the question in a physical domain, and as such you can just as well ask if our own will is free, or if we can truly create.Hai Capito?
  • Bartricks
    6k
    Erm, okay. But Jesus said that with God all things are possible. Not some things. All things. That's my view of omnipotence too. And Descartes'. And it is correct, for clearly a person who can do anything is more powerful than one who can only do a subset, yes?
  • GraveItty
    311


    If all things are possible, nothing is possible. Oops! turned the sea into wine. Oops! turned the bread into fire! Watch your mouth guys! Good old J. would have a hard time, as well as God!
  • Bartricks
    6k
    No, if all things are possible, then all things are possible. When you see 'push'do you reason 'push....therefore pull'? Yes. Yes you do. And that is why you are not allowed the metal cutlery. Plastic spoon only.
  • GraveItty
    311
    No, if all things are possible, then all things are possible. When you see 'push'do you reason 'push....therefore pull'? Yes. Yes you do. And that is why you are not allowed the metal cutlery. Plastic spoon only.Bartricks

    If allthings are possible, then try picking one of the infinite ways to choose lifting the proverbial stone. You won't succeed!
  • Bartricks
    6k
    All things are possible for God. There are lots of things I don't seem able to do. Therefore I appear not to be omnipotent, and thus appear not to be God.

    I may be, of course. Because I do think that it is possible for God to be ignorant of all manner of things, and that he will in fact be ignorant of the fact he is God, and may have made himself so by making himself ignorant of his ability to do anything. So I am not ruling out categorically that I am God. I don't think any of us can. But I don't appear to be omnipotent, and so I don't appear to be God.
  • GraveItty
    311


    Imagine you were able to lift the stone in infinite ways. Which one would you choose given the context?
  • GraveItty
    311


    Haha, at least you have a sense of humor. Well if that's how your mind works, by basing your choice on choosing a number, then I wish you the best luck! What if nr4 causes you to get smashed by the stone after you have lift it?
  • Banno
    25.3k
    "hoity toity, far be it for me to hoity toity, but McTaggart was surely toity, hoity, hoity, toity toity."Bartricks

    Not quite. Geach sets your view up as the first form of omnipotence, the ability to do absolutely everything. "As Descartes himself remarked, nothing is too absurd for some philosopher to have said it some time... Some naive Christians would explicitly assert the doctrine..."

    For many years I used to teach the philosophy of Descartes in a special course for undergraduates reading French; year by year, there were always two or three of them who embraced Descartes' defence of absolute omnipotence con amore and protested indignantly when I described the doctrine as incoherent. It would of course have been no good to say I was following Doctors of the Church in rejecting the doctrine; I did in the end find a way of producing silence, though not, I fear, conviction, and going on to other topics of discussion; I cited the passages of the Epistle to the Hebrews which say explicitly that God cannot swear by anything greater than himself (vi. 13) or break his word (vi. 18).

    So he suggests that it is contrary to the church fathers, and finds a quote form the bible that contradicts it, which of course is neither here nor there. But you go to the further step, it seems, in agreeing with Mavrodes, 'Well, you've stated a difficulty, but of course being omnipotent God can overcome that difficulty, though I don't see how.'

    victory by the Deplorable Word is a barren one; as barren as a victory by an incessant demand that your adversary should prove his premises or define his terms.

    My bolding, to emphasis the similarity to your posts.

    He goes on to discuss Descartes, who may have agreed with you, it seems.
    The nature of logical truth is a very difficult problem, which I cannot discuss here. The easy conventionalist line, that it is our arbitrary way of using words that makes logical truth, seems to me untenable, for reasons that Quine among others has clearly spelled out. If I could follow Quine further in regarding logical laws as natural laws of very great generality—revisable in principle, though most unlikely to be revised, in a major theoretical reconstruction—then perhaps after all some rehabilitation of Descartes on this topic might be possible. But in the end I have to say that as we cannot say how a non-logical world would look, we cannot say how a supra-logical God would act or how he could communicate anything to us by way of revelation. So I end as I began: a Christian need not and cannot believe in absolute omnipotence.

    My bolding, again.

    The point is a simple one. If god is indeed absolutely omnipotent in the sense you propose, then they cannot be subjected to logical analysis.

    And hence, your arguments are void.
  • EricH
    612
    God is ReasonBartricks

    It would be disingenuous of me not to state up front that I find your writings entertaining & bizarrely fascinating. It's not merely the things you say, but that you state them with such certainty and conviction. Perhaps I've overlooked it, but I am not seeing anything in your posts that indicates anything resembling humility or acknowledging the possibility that you are mistaken. If you have said such, I missed it and apologize for misrepresenting you.

    That out of the way, I understand your position that God is not bound by LNC - otherwise (s)he would not be all powerful.

    Would you clarify what you mean by "God is Reason"? Is "Reason" simply an alias for "God"? I.e., could we copy & paste the word "Reason" for the word "God" in your writings without any loss of meaning?

    If I'm following you, I don't believe this is the case.
  • Bartricks
    6k
    There's no criticism there! I read that section. What is the criticism? Note, it can't be that such a god could violate the laws of logic, for that's just to describe the God, not locate any problem in the notion.
    Jesus, Descartes and me: God can do absolutely anything
    Geach: well, as I said to the Bishop of Durham, who had expressed - or should I say, expressiumed - the same idea, but that I later discovered to be a walnut credenza and not the man of god at all, if a little bit of education is a dangerous thing, think what a lot of it can do! Now, it has to be admitted that those three gentlemen are geniums of the first order, but this does not mean that everything they say is true or even that more truth is to be found in them than in others. But it must be remarked that were God able to do absolutely anything - that is, absolutariumius thingius ad meritoriam expedentialium - then God would be able to do anything. The logical problems - problarium logicarius - that this creates are, needless to say, ones I cannot name or talk about. But I think we can now move on.

    Banno: boom! You just got owned, Barty!
  • Banno
    25.3k
    What is the criticism?Bartricks

    I'm not here to teach you how to read.

    Geach clearly provides grounds for rejecting your view, along with the other forms of omnipotence. I summarised it as follows:
    The point is a simple one. If god is indeed absolutely omnipotent in the sense you propose, then they cannot be subjected to logical analysis.Banno

    "...as barren as a victory by an incessant demand that your adversary should prove his premises or define his terms."
  • Bartricks
    6k
    Geach: that God can do absolutely anything - anythingius regorium fingertorium ad nautium - must be admitted to be incoherent - incoherentius noveltius rebarbitarium - for in that case God could take evening supper in an oxford college and a cambridge college at the same time, while puddinging in Durham. And this, as we know, is against the rules of all three.
  • Banno
    25.3k
    Again, I am not here to teach you how to read.

    If god is indeed absolutely omnipotent in the sense you propose, then they cannot be subjected to logical analysis.

    Perhaps that god is not subject to analysis should be something you celebrate, as yet another example of divine omnipotence.
  • Gregory
    4.7k
    Jesus, Descartes and me: God can do absolutely anythingBartricks

    The Bible speaks of truth and Jesus says he is truth. The Bible says God can never fail or tell a lie. So why do you quote the Jesus to support your position?
  • Bartricks
    6k
    Geach: master Dummo is surely correct and has expressoriumed my point to, I may say, a pointus perfectum pointlessium. As the Greeks might say, he is a man - a hummus - of the utmost tediousos emptous nonsomous. For of course, what one is able to break, one has brook. And what has been brook, cannot be brack. That is why I cannot use this glass or that one or that one to drink my sherry from, for as I can break them, then they must, ad fallatium grotesquium, already be broken, and so I must drink from the bottle instead.
  • Bartricks
    6k
    Because he said with God all things are possible. Not that I consider that evidence.i'm just noting that jesus agrees with me. First some, that may count for something. Jeseums, I think they are called.
  • Gregory
    4.7k
    Because he said with God all things are possible.Bartricks

    All theists say that
  • Banno
    25.3k
    ↪Banno Geach: master Dummo is surely correct and has expressoriumed my point to, I may say, a pointus perfectum pointlessium. As the Greeks might say, he is a man - a hummus - of the utmost tediousos emptous nonsomous. For of course, what one is able to break, one has brook. And what has been brook, cannot be brack. That is why I cannot use this glass or that one or that one to drink my sherry from, for as I can break them, then they must, ad fallatium grotesquium, already be broken, and so I must drink from the bottle instead.Bartricks

    You Ok there?
  • Bartricks
    6k
    Clearly they do not. They should.
  • Gregory
    4.7k


    Why are you putting your words in the mouths of Descartes and Jesus though?
  • Bartricks
    6k
    Well, it is possible I am ok and thus i am. And possible also that i am not, and thus i am not. I am, thus ok and not ok.

    That's your view, yes? If x is possible, it is actual

    Generates an actual contradiction. Your view. Not mine. Yours. You ok?
  • Bartricks
    6k
    I am not, just noting that they are on my side.
  • Gregory
    4.7k
    I am not, just noting that they are on my side.Bartricks

    They aren't. I don't interpret them to mean God can commit suicide at least.
  • Banno
    25.3k
    Why are you putting your words in the mouths of Descartes and Jesus though?Gregory

    :rofl: Indeed. You are in the presence of God.

    I suspect that solipsism is the only conclusion to the conundrum Bart has created. He may eventually realise that he alone exists, and we are but gadflies he himself has sent to prompt this realisation.
  • Bartricks
    6k
    Not my problem you don't understand them.

    Jesus: with God all things are possible

    Gregory: he can't commit suicide though

    Jesus: yes he can. What did I just say??

    Gregory: I think you'll find you said he couldn't.

    Jesus: are you having a bloody laugh, mate? Sweet me, you are a few marbles short. Me!
  • Gregory
    4.7k


    False. Jesus did not say God can change.

    Also: "But if the mere fact that I can produce from my thought the idea of something entails that everything which I clearly and distinctly perceive to belong to that thing really does belong to it, is not this a possible basis for another argument to prove the existence of God? Certainly, the idea of God, or a supremely perfect being, is one that I find within me just as surely as the idea of any shape or number. And my understanding that it belongs to his nature that he always exists is no less clear and distinct than is the case when I prove of any shape or number that some property belongs to its nature" Descartes
  • Bartricks
    6k
    Gregory: God can't change
    Jesus:with God all things are possible. Are you dumb mate?
    Gregory: he can't change
    Jesus: I'll take that as a yes. Me almighty! I can turn water into wine, but I can't fix stupid.

    Descartes: it seems, by the light of reason, that God always exists.

    Gregory: so he can't commit suicide?

    Descartes: for sure he can commit suicide. What you mean? He do anything. He God!

    Gregory: you said he always exists. So he can't commit suicide.

    Descartes: Always does not mean can't. He can commit suicide, this is okay with you, yes? He has not, he will not - umi sure of it like I sure of own mind. You are, how we say, like a ripe brie; very thick and smell as dead rat. I insult you good, no? You think, therefore you confused. Because you no good at thinking. Ha.
bold
italic
underline
strike
code
quote
ulist
image
url
mention
reveal
youtube
tweet
Add a Comment

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.