God not real
Deists say that God exist.This is not true.It is imposible for a being to be all-powerful,all-knowing and to have free will at the same time.If a being is all knowing,it cannot have any free-will.That is because he will already know what he will do,so he wont be able to change that.And if he will change it,then he will already know that,so he can't have free will.
It is imposible to be all-powerful also.
Answer this question deists:Can God create a rock big enough so that not even he can carry?
No other deity is capable of doing all three, this does not make it impossible for one. If a being knows more than a human, it 'cannot' make choices with that knowledge? Can you instantaneously know more than any other human on Earth and all of a sudden have no choice(s) because of that action? that logic doesn't make sense, I won't say it 'fails' though. I'll call you 'god' out of respect, but not 'God' a cause/creator/source of any sort even though I don't oppose you're ability to be creative.
If you know that you will smile, you can change that, there is no 'wont'. If you frown, knowing you will smile instead, you still have will. I won't call it 'free', but a will nonetheless. God locking himself away [in 'Heaven'], and having poor communication with and through humanity ['prophets', 'holy' writings, never actually himself] doesn't make him/it with no 'free' will, no power, and no knowledge.
how does knowing what you're going to stop you're own will? that's crappy 'logic'. So because no species we've met or other human is 'all powerful', does not make God or whatever it is the same.
"Can God create a rock big enough so that not even he can carry?"
Can you make sure the next generation kills you 'mercifully'? same crap. Yes, he uses his will & power to make the rock heavy enough that even he can no longer carry it. So, he leaves it on the lower bits of 'reality' (humanity) to attempt doing what he 'cant'. So, lets say we assist with this damn rock and he's relieved.
No longer is any organic, or natural substance over powering too this God. In fact, he 'controls' andtakes blame for them 'if' he exists. I have the highest intolerance for a social system ruled by complete 'non-beleivers', but I don't think you're 'evil' or 'bad' for it.
Do you even know what deism is? By implying that deists believe in an all-powerful, all-knowing god, you obviously have no idea. I'm not a deist, but I will defend them when idiocy like this occurs. It seems as though, like so many atheists, you are locked into the theistic definition of "God" and insist on THIS definition because it is self-contradictory and easily defeated. The deist god concept is logically consistent, regardless of its veracity. Try harder next time.
"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings." - Albert Einstein
It's less about personal belief and more about secular society. I have no problem with anybody believing whatever they want to believe. You want to believe that a Jewish zombie on a stick is your savior? By all means, go for it. You want to believe that your prophet flew into outer space on pegasus? Be my guest. You want to believe that the universe was created five minutes ago by invisible, noncorporeal, inaudible leprechauns living in my colon with the cure for cancer written down on an invisible, noncorporeal, inaudible piece of paper in their invisible, noncorporeal, inaudible pockets? A little eccentric, but hey, whatever floats your fuzzy purple boat. Believe whatever you want, just KEEP IT THE HELL TO YOURSELF. Keep it out of my schools, out of my pocket, out of my government, off of my body, and out of my bedroom.
"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings." - Albert Einstein
DIdnt quite understood your last message.LOL
To putit simply, deists do not say god is anything other than the creator. No omniscience, no omnipotence, no omnipresence. As far as deists know, god could be dead. So your rock argument, while it works for a theistic god concept, fails when it goes against the deist concept.
"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings." - Albert Einstein
"Can God create a rock so heavy even It can't lift it?"
[Geek Mode Activated/]
Yes. Here's how:
God creates a rock that requires a strength score (STR) of "Infinate + 2" to lift.
God casts "Bull's Strength" (2nd level Wizard Spell) on self, giving Itself STR of Infinate + 4.
God then lifts the rock before the spells duration expires.
[/Geek Mode]
OK, seriously folks...
The definition of "God" is simply the First Cause of the universe. The characteristics that I think deists would generally agree on (if any agreement can be reached) is (1) conscious and (2) powerful enough to get the ball rolling.
Even the Christian god isn't omnipotent, at least not until the NT. During the OT, Yahweh is hardly omniscent in Genesis (he plays hide and seek with Adam and Eve and isn't aware at first what they had done at the behest of the serpant). He can't defeat a tribe of people with iron chariots in Judges. He's described in Deuteronomy as having the "strength of a wild ox". Oxen are strong but not omnipotent. It's not until the NT that he is said to be omnipotent. Most likely, this attribute was the result of escalation with other religions ("my god is stronger than your god").
I agree that an omnipotent, omniscent and omnibenevolent god is impossible.
Your answer was basicaly something like this:God can create something infinite heavy,but he will lift it because he is infinite powerful.
From you answer,I understand that god is not all-powerful
And here is why:the question was if god can create something big enough,that he wont lift.You said that he can lift anything he creates.This means that he can't create something so big that he cannot lift.
So he is not all-powerful.
Regenesis, your argument here seems faulty. You seem to be setting up sort of a straw-man, since the very question itself implies that there must be a limit on either the deity's creative ability or strength. Instead of asking if a deity can make something so big that he doesn't have the strength to move it, a more fair approach would be to ask if there's a size limit on what the deity can create and/or a weight limit on what the deity can move.
To me, a more perplexing question would be this: Can a deity make something of infinite size and still move it? The line of reasoning I'm looking at is this: Something that is of infinite size uses up all space, and therefore cannot be moved because there is no more space left for it to be moved to. Thus, no limitation is insinuated on the deity's creative ability and strength, but it demonstrates that there are still logical limitations.
Your reformed question is tricky then mine.And it also proves that god has a limit.
Correct me if i'm wrong,but I think that my question would have also lead to that conclusion.That is because one could have realized that something infinite might be to heavy for God because of logical limitations.But U are right when you say that it was a long shot to say this from my question,then from your.
Regenesis, you can't take a joke even when it's clearly marked as such?
As I said, God clearly isn't omnipotent.
You completely missunderstood me.Again
Perhaps it's the language barrier. I'm sorry I don't speak Rumanian beyond a few words I've picked up. Perhaps you could rephrase?
So, instead of pointing out the obvious for john.
Could you perhaps assist him in understanding?
You have to remember the bible is not from God himself, so even the writer's are misinterpreting their recordings of events. The Genesis account, has led me to conclude that the serpent and 'God' were in a stage of growing separation but still had a some what mutual relationship (before the whole cursing of course!) and thus being no longer united puts limitations on both individuals attributes (no longer walking, and no longer 'all knowing'). It's a defect, from a 'creator' that didn't really plan ahead.
A common counter-argument in dealing witht he iron chariots absurdity: [Judges 2:1-3] They needed fiaht in God and not in themselves (?). 'God' didn't force them to conquer the iron chariots, at the same time hey had to keep the Promised Land. 'God' chose not to clear the land of it's previous inhabitants because of Judah's people being disobediant/sinful/law-breaking. They could have conquered the country but only breifly and could not maintain control of the cities (no sign of God, invading chariots and people attempting to defendthe land). Personally, I'd have to say the Yahweh cult was failing in adapting, so the iron chariots were both revered technology and had a brutal effect to be remembered in the re-taking of the lands.
Ox were also held symbolically in Egypt (correct me if I'm wrong), and other nearbye centres of animal appreciation. I think they were boasting out of some stupidity in claiming He's having the strength of a wild ox. In this very context, I would question why Joshua would never be Israel because man was supposed to be set above all other animals (right?). So, 'God' is conclusively weak when it comes too physical incarnations.
They made it a doctrine, a teaching, that alone is possible. When you throw a faceless deity with traits that few or none other has, it's not really 'impossible' we just haven't met him/it yet and it's unlikely the bastard will come back and solve all the problems humanity has brought on itself (by worshiping a single cause, thats not a solution. It's like taking a crap and calling it 'smart').
I'm a Christian but that argument against god is laughable.
"If a being is all knowing,it cannot have any free-will.'
Depends on what your definition of all-knowng is. I believe it means that god knows all possible outcomes.
Read on molinism.
"Can God create a rock big enough so that not even he can carry?"
Do you know what the laws of logic are? There is a law called the one of non-contradiction. An object that posseses contradictry properties cannot exist.Thus the rock you ask god to create cannot exist.
And yes god is bound by the laws of logic (because they reflect his nature.)
Now for Johnlarmstrong
"During the OT, Yahweh is hardly omniscent in Genesis (he plays hide and
seek with Adam and Eve and isn't aware at first what they had done at
the behest of the serpant)."
Guess John never heard of a rhethorical question.
"He can't defeat a tribe of people with iron chariots in Judges. "
Well I guess god can't decide to let his chosen people lose a battle sometime.
"He's described in Deuteronomy as having the "strength of a wild ox""
I guess John never heard of something in the english language called a simile. For his info, similes are not to be taken literally.
"When a bunch of screwballs think I'm a screwball, I must be doing something right"-John Armstrong upon receiving his screwball award
Existence: What the meaning of the word "is" is
By Gerald Schroeder
There are any number of unanswerable, uncomfortable questions a person can ask, but the first one, the question from which all other questions are descended, is "Why is there an 'is'?" Why is there existence in the first place? In our fascination with life's origin and evolution, we bypass this most fundamental of conundrums. Does the very fact of existence in itself provide proof that some metaphysical non-thing. perhaps even the Godly, some undefined whatever-it-is, produced the physical by transcending it?
If we consider the finite aspects of the world we see around us, the limited nature of the time, space and matter from which we are constructed, the answer is certainly yes. Some non-thing, above or outside of the physical, must have preceded our universe or has our universe imbedded in it.
But what is the material world, that which frames the puzzle of our existence? Why even bother with the existence of empty space, or even time? The basic enigma is not whether we evolved from apes or not, but why is there "being" in the first place? The very existence of existence is mind boggling. Yet we are so much a part of existence that we take it for granted—it's a "given," to use a scientific term. But step back from the subjectivity and think about it. What caused the Big Bang? What caused existence? What is existence?
In his introduction to The Guide For The Perplexed, Moses Maimonides, the great 12th-century Jewish philosopher and codifier, laid the basis for probing these questions:
"We must form a conception of the existence of the Creator according to our capacities; that is, we must have a knowledge of metaphysics (the science of God), which can only be acquired after the study of physics; for the science of physics is closely connected with metaphysics and must even precede it in the course of studies. Therefore, the Almighty commenced the Bible with the description of the creation, that is, with physical science."
One might conceive of a science without religion, but it is an oxymoron to conceive of religion without science. Revelation and nature are the two aspects of one creation. Yet in Maimonides' time, the idea that science might have something to add to our understanding of spirituality was so anathema to the religious establishments that his book was burned by Jews and Christians alike.
Some 250 years ago, a great Jewish saint and mystic, the Gaon of Vilna, taught that when the light of Torah came into the world it split into two parts. Only one part was revealed directly, the prophetic experience The other part was hidden in the wisdoms of nature and the time will come, he said, when those hidden wisdoms will be discovered. revealing aspects of the Torah never before understood. That time has come. The hidden wisdoms of nature and science are being discovered. At the turn of the century, a physics professor would have lost tenure on the spot if caught teaching the concept that matter in all its forms of solids, liquids and gases was actually condensed energy. What hokum it would have seemed! Then came Einstein, relativity and E = mc^2, the theory that matter, m. intrinsically represents a specific amount of energy, E. And the type of matter was immaterial. As bizarre as it seems, a gram of rose petals and a gram of uranium contain identical amounts of energy. The constant in the equation, c^2 is the speed of light squared or multiplied by itself. It is a massive value, telling us that even a tiny amount of matter contains a huge quantity of latent energy. Having personally witnessed the detonation of six nuclear weapons. I suggest that we pray for peace. The fractions of a gram of matter converted into energy during those tests turned the mountain on which I stood into a quivering Jello-like substance.
In 1923, almost a decade after Einstein published his general relativity theory (no longer a theory, of course: now it is a law), the French physicist Louis de Broglie introduced an idea that was even more bizarre in its assertions than Einstein's claim that matter really was a form of energy.
De Broglie claimed that all matter has related to it a wave length and a frequency of that wave, a certain number of wave cycles per second. Not only had humanity learned that matter was not matter, we now had to believe that everything is a wave. Everything—you and I included. Seventy years of experiments have sustained both Einstein's and de Broglie's preposterous, counterintuitive claims.
The floor upon which you stand and the bedrock that supports a skyscraper are 99.999% empty space. What we perceive as solid matter is actually de Broglie's waves separated by open space, made impermeable by invisible, immaterial fields of force that somehow pervade the space. The world simply is not as it seems. A superficial reading of nature finds differentiation and disparate entities — stars and stones and bottled water and even life and death. Reading that same nature at a deeper level reveals that it's all a manifestation of a single underlying unity. I'm on our balcony. The afternoonJerusalem
It took humanity millennia before an Einstein discovered that, as bizarre as it may seem, matter is actually condensed energy. It may take a while longer for us to discover that there is some non-thing even more fundamental than energy that forms the basis of energy. In the words of John Archibald Wheeler, the renowned former president of the American Physical Society, recipient of the Einstein Award andPrinceton professor of physics, underlying all existence is an idea, the "bit" of information that gives rise to the "it" of matter.
The substructure of all existence, we suddenly realize, is totally ethereal, an idea, wisdom. Or in Hebrew emet — an all encompassing reality. Emet is the ultimate building block from which all we see and feel is constructed. Just as the secondary substructure of all matter is something as ethereal as energy, as per Einstein's fantastic insight, so, the primary substructure of energy is still more elusive. Existence is the expression of an idea, an eternal consciousness made tangible. We are the idea of God.
If we can discover that idea, we will have ascertained not only the basis for the unity that underlies all existence, but most important, the source of that unity. "We will have encountered the soul of God.
The Strong Atheists arguments are for me a distraction. They are bound in their brains by theistic paradigms of thought. They seem unable to grasp the idea that Deists don't believe in God for anything other than reasons related to observation of natural laws and that the Deist{well, many, Theistic-Deists will disagree, but Agno-Deists and Atheistic/Anti-theistic-Deists will agree} does'nt claim to know anything other than believing the theory{or probability of}a First Cause intelligence of some sorts. The Deists God{and lets make a distinction here; though some theistic-deists feel worshipful towards this thing, Agno/atheistic Deists at most will venerate it for it's art like art fans do unknown artists for their art, if even that far, many simply don't feel anything about god}- which often is not a beeing or force or object of worship, emotional apathy about it{intellectual curiosity about it} is UNDEFINED. It is simply "postulated" as a valid theory to answer certain unknowns{or to be a working hypothesis that may change or be discarded later; this is not "god of the gaps" because it's not about "gaps", it's about origins of all, the first cause}- to account for the apparent fine tuning, for certain natural alws, for why there are a limited set of natural laws as opposed to complete and utter chaos on every level.
The Rational Deist is unconcerned with these silly questions made to challenge theists. Because these questions to not apply to the Deist proposition. Obviously, the treadtional theistic 'omni" idea is absurd. The First cause Creator/emanator(god) could be two or 3 of the alledged omnis, but logically nit all of them. Which is it and which is it not? Who the heck knows. And frankly...who the heck cares. Can it make a rock so heavu it can't lift it itself, this does not apply to deism, because unlike the theist, the deist does not claim to know anything about this prime mover. Ask these questions of a Deist and the logical answer is- "how the hell should I know". These problems do not negate the rationality of belief in the deus, because the arguments for the basic deistic theory merely has to do with accounting for the natural laws of the universe by postulating some kind of intelligence, some kind of creative first cause; unknown, undefined, IRRELEVENT to anything but the realm of philosophy; but not contrary to rational argument or mountains of evidence.
I encourage STRONG Atheists to realize these things and not apply the same way of thinking about deism as they do theism. The two are different, the two cannot compare. Well...they DO if and only if a Theistic-Deist{de-facto theist} is beeing challenged on their position; the de-facto Atheist/de-facto Agnostic forms of Deism is merely "leaning" towards the theory that natural laws imply a natural law maker, a intelligent in some sense{to try and define what "intelligent" means here would be an exersise in futitlity, there are many kinds of many levels of intelligence in the natural universe} first cause. That's it.
That this Creator cannot be all the omnis at once, does not negate the plausability of it's existing.
In Reason:
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On the contrary I believe you can be all knowing and have free will.
Scenario:
You know Hitler will kill 5 million Jews and by letting him
A. Live 5 million Jews will be killed
B. Die, many people will be saved
You can use your free will to choose between options A and B. You can also know which option you will choose without having to change it.
Because you are all knowing you will never change your mind thus making the things you do pre determined, but everything that is pre determined by you is due to your will.
As for the rock question:
This is a question of ability isn't it? Where the rock represents the amount of ability the being has.
Wherein the beings ability is Infinite
Therefore:
If the beings ability is infinite, can it create a seperate power greater than itself?
If not, can the beings power be considered infinite?
Well no, by definition there is no such thing as anything greater than infinity. Therefore to suggest that it can create a power greater than itself is fallacious.
If it cannot create a power greater than itself, can its power still be considered infinite?
basically that begs the question. Because by definition there is NOTHING greter than infinity.
Let me put it this way...
You have a yellow omnipotent being named John
Everyone say hi to John
Everyone: Hi John!!!!
John is infinte
What you want john to do is make something greater than he is... You want John +1
The thing is John IS ALREADY John +1 because John is infinite so to add +1 to infinity doesn't change John at all... That makes John happy
So when it comes down to it:
they are all equal... but at the same time... not
(Therefore the answer to your question is yes AND no)
But you know what John CAN do?
John can do this...
and John says "I want to make a rock"
So then John goes I will minues myself to make zero then get John +1 and take +1 away from John +1 to make one...and still I'll be the same person so...
So now... the ZERO is 1!!!! *GASP*
But wait...doesnt that mean that John lost his power? NO!
But...
and that makes him happy
THE END