Because I know the law of non-contradiction is true. — Bartricks

If the law of non-contradiction ceases to obtain in light of god's decision to simultaneously kill and not kill himself, how will you know?

Note, you are not answering any of my questions, yet I have the good grace to answer yours, even though yours are as rubbish as they are insincere.

Anyway, here's my answer - I may not know of it. If I did, however, it would most likely be either by a rational intuition to that effect, or perhaps I may come to believe that the law of non-contradiction no longer obtains in a manner that God approves of, and that too would then qualify as an item of knowledge.

Note, you are not answering any of my questions, yet I have the good grace to answer yours, even though yours are as rubbish as they are insincere. — Bartricks

What a benevolent human being you are.

Aside from the litany of verbal abuse you've wreaked on your forum neighbors.

What a nice bully you are.

I may not know of it. — Bartricks

So it might have happened long ago.

All done here.

Take care.

So it might have happened long ago. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Yes. It hasn't though. We're going around in circles and it is entirely your fault.

You sound preposterous to me — ZzzoneiroCosm

I can only hope you're eight years old. What have you done to your mind and to your character, my friend? — ZzzoneiroCosm

God is a person? A PhD in ludicrosity? — ZzzoneiroCosm

Answer the question or shut your mouth, doc — ZzzoneiroCosm

Total nonsense and more evidence that you have no philosophical credentials — ZzzoneiroCosm

Don't hand it out if you can't take it.

Note too that I have all along been arguing things, whereas all you've been doing is asking questions you don't care to understand the answer to.

God can do anything - that's what being omnipotent involves. And as God can do anything, he can kill himself. Even someone who thinks God is bound by the law of non-contradiction can agree to that. You have provided precisely no reason - no philosophical defence - of your scepticism about this. All you have done is express your view that I am a preposterous person because I am saying things you don't immediately understand and lack the humility to think that may reflect a failing in you and not your interlocutor.

Don't hand it out if you can't take it. — Bartricks

Your abuse doesn't bother me because I know your heart: you're a pompous, ignorant bully.

I abuse you because you're a bully. Good night.

I abuse you because you're a bully. — ZzzoneiroCosm

No, you started it with this:

You sound preposterous to me — ZzzoneiroCosm

Until that point I was simply arguing a point, albeit robustly. But those who are no good at philosophy are, in my experience, incapable of taking criticism of their views as anything other than personal attacks (and thus think it fine to make a personal attack in reply).

I love it when someone attacks my views and love it if the attack is a good one. Love it. You might want to try it some day. Attack the view, not the person.

— Bartricks

Sorry. Not interested. You're a bully and I'm only interested in abusing you.

I'm only interested in abusing you. — ZzzoneiroCosm

And you're bad at that too. Which is a shame - I like a good insult almost as much as I like a good criticism.

I never give up, so once more: suicide would only be ruled out for God if God exists of necessity. Yet if God exists of necessity, then he will lack an ability that even we seem to have, namely the ability to cease to exist. Manifestly someone who lacks an ability that the rest of us have cannot at the same time be omnipotent. Thus, God does not exist of necessity and thus God can commit suicide. And that's true regardless of whether God is constrained by the laws of logic or the author of them.

I like a good insult — Bartricks

That's evident.

Insults - it's true of any art - require - practice, practice, practice - and you are - pondscum narcissus - concertmaster.

Enjoy the darkness you have created.


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On a final, devilishly friendlier note: read more broadly and more skeptically. Your trust in yourself is misplaced.

Take care.

:up:

There appears to be a rather disturbing connexion between (omni)potence and logic in re (the law) of noncontradiction. If I'm correct, there was a time when constitutions contained a clause that stated that some individuals (monarchs and some others) are above the law which, to me, means such persons were capable of contradictions: it could be illegal to kill, but they could (with impunity).

So yeah, power does allow one to defy logic(al aws). God, being a king (of the kingdom of heaven), it is his prerogative to both obey AND disobey the laws of logic. In other words, reasoning with God is to ask for the impossible.

Throughout the history of philosophy, there has been two primary approaches to a more formal and technical understanding of (i.e. philosophical) omnipotence as depicted in theology.

These two approaches are the Thomistic approach & the Cartesian approach, respectively after Aquinas and Descartes.

• In the Thomistic approach, omnipotence is the ability to actualize any logical potential, or bring about any logical state of affairs. Impossibility & violating logic is not part of an omnipotent being's ability, because impossible potentials do not exist, and because (in Aquinas's theology), logic is of God's rational and orderly nature.
• Descartes thought otherwise. Thus, omnipotence, as conceptualized by Cartesians, is the ability to actualize any potential whatsoever with no qualification on being in accord with any system of logic. This means that unlike a Thomistic omnipotent, a Cartesian omnipotent can bring about square circles and so on.

Keep in mind that these interpretations are tools, and so it is not necessary that one interpretation is correct and the other isn't, rather, they're done such that philosophers can interact with this concept, and different religious faiths may see omnipotence in different ways. In other words, the "correct" interpretation is indexical to the theology at hand.

But regardless, there's another distinction that's important here, and it's whether there can be an omnipotent being such that its omnipotence is accidental to itself. In these cases, presumably, that being can survive removing its omnipotence, because its omnipotence is not an essential component of its identity.

However, in the cases of an essential omnipotent, to remove its omnipotence is to remove its essence and effectively kill itself. Notice that both the Thomistic & Cartesian interpretations of omnipotence (without God inserted) wouldn't confine this because no logical contradiction is explicitly evident. The issue is that Thomists argue that accidental omnipotence isn't a thing, and that omnipotence can only possibly be true of God, such that God is also necessary. This is because Thomists commit to a doctrine known as divine simplicity (DDS) that makes it so God is atomically simple and has no proper parts. What this entails is that all of God's attributes (omniscience, omnipotence, necessity, etc) are actually one attribute and it's simply our mind that fails to capture this unity when thinking about God.

So given DDS, there isn't such a thing as omniscient but not omnipotent, or omnipotent but not necessary. To say there's an omnipotent being is to also say there's an omniscient, necessary, etc being because all of these attributes in our language are different intensions that fixate the same extension. The interesting part about this is that since necessity is true of this being, then its non-existence would be a logical contradiction, so it can neither remove its omnipotence nor kill itself (a Thomist would say both of these are the same thing!)

However, while a Cartesian may admit of DDS, and may even come to agree with the Thomist that this self-destruction is actually a contradiction, a Cartesian would say an omnipotent can still bring it about because it is not bound by any laws of logic. The stark point of contention in the theology here is that a Cartesian may be inclined to see logic as something that might "rule over omnipotence," whereas Thomists understand logic itself as a result of the orderly & rational nature of that being which is omnipotent.

So ultimately, it depends on the type of omnipotence you're using. To a Thomist, no, but to a Cartesian, yes.

Hope this answers your question.

The problem with the idea of omnipotence is that there are many contradictory scenarios which must co-exist with each other, so that omnipotent being must have experienced everything including resurection after death. As everything is possible, there is no impossible so everything can be done, which means things can be undone.

You call other posters idiots but you've changed your own views from discussions here. You now say God can't both exist and not exist, contradicting previous idiotic statements by you in the past. Live and learn

I don't think I have ever called someone an idiot. I think God has the ability to exist and not exist. But he just exists.