A Problem with God

[Robbo]

i believe i have a good paradox to share
a Cretan states he and his people are liars, so if all Cretans are liars, and the Cretan told us so, then it cannot be true, but if it is not true that Cretans are liars, then the statement stands, but then it is true that all Cretans are liars, so it must be a lie... and so on Or...If the Cretan is indeed a liar like he is claiming, despite him being a liar, then not all Cretans are liars, simply the Cretan is indeed a liar but not ALL Cretans are liars.

....er....read back a few posts and you'll see I have already covered this .... d'oh !

 

[TEKLOFTY]

Tek, the great thing about God is, we are not in any position to define him regardless of denomination ...... it's not within our power to define him.

Followers of organised religion do not define their God, hence why I refer to them.

 

[Robbo]

Followers of organised religion do not define their God, hence why I refer to them.

Sorry mate, you lost me there; right at the beginning, middle and end of what you wrote.

 

[TEKLOFTY]

Sorry mate, you lost me there; right at the beginning, middle and end of what you wrote.

The religion in the first place 'defines' what exact attributes said God has, the people following the religion simply believe it. In actuality, the doctrine of the religion itself never claims to 'define' God's attributes but rather gets to know them through some religious experience or whatever; it isn't about having a 'right' to define what God can/can't do, it's about knowing he can because you have faith in him. To say you simply don't know is fair enough, what I'm saying is that other religions are a little more specific.

 

[Buddha 3]

Very true, good point young man, which of course tells me you truly do understand the problem .....Hmmmm, I'm not so sure I like the fact your IQ might be near mine ... I'll have to ban you

In fact no, it wouldn't have happened. Remember an omnipotent god would be able to undo time itself. No just rewind. Undo. Meaning it never happened in the first place.

You guys are going at this way too much like a human... There is no paradox, it's dead easy if you are a god. Well, at least if you have the powers we seem to think gods have these days.

 

[Robbo]

The religion in the first place 'defines' what exact attributes said God has, the people following the religion simply believe it. In actuality, the doctrine of the religion itself never claims to 'define' God's attributes but rather gets to know them through some religious experience or whatever; it isn't about having a 'right' to define what God can/can't do, it's about knowing he can because you have faith in him. To say you simply don't know is fair enough, what I'm saying is that other religions are a little more specific.

OK, if we are discussing problems of a philosophical nature in this thread, then we really need to be getting away from notions of subjectivity and moving towards the objective world, or at least trying to.
You seem to be getting bogged down in explaining what religions do and don't do whenever they go about defining their particular god.

This is all well and good but it's going somewhat off track.
I am merely stating, people, religions, doctrines, however you wish to tag differing points of view, cannot define god in an absolute sense.

Of course they can attempt to, and all of them do attempt to do just that but it's an impossible task because it is beyond all of them ..... we as humans cannot define god in an absolute sense, all we can do is attribute what we think are his qualities and powers and that then becomes a working doctrine.

It does not define god at all, there is only one thing that can define god and that is .....yeah, you guessed it ....

This is not about whether we have the right to define him or not, it's about not having the ability to ....

 

[pestilence]

And your all assuming Time flows in a straight line.....

 

[Robbo]

I got this funny feeling a guy called Pestilence is gonna post something in this thread.....hmmm.....let's wait and see....

 

[TEKLOFTY]

OK, if we are discussing problems of a philosophical nature in this thread, then we really need to be getting away from notions of subjectivity and moving towards the objective world, or at least trying to.
You seem to be getting bogged down in explaining what religions do and don't do whenever they go about defining their particular god.

This is all well and good but it's going somewhat off track.
I am merely stating, people, religions, doctrines, however you wish to tag differing points of view, cannot define god in an absolute sense.

Of course they can attempt to, and all of them do attempt to do just that but it's an impossible task because it is beyond all of them ..... we as humans cannot define god in an absolute sense, all we can do is attribute what we think are his qualities and powers and that then becomes a working doctrine.

It does not define god at all, there is only one thing that can define god and that is .....yeah, you guessed it ....

This is not about whether we have the right to define him or not, it's about not having the ability to ....

To be honest my original point was that if you are Christian then your God by definition (according to the religious doctrine you follow) is omnipotent; and for the record, no religion in the world claims to 'define' their deity as something or the other, they simply 'know'.

 

[Bedlam]

The whole paradox with God and the Soham girls is exactly the same issue mentioned in all the paradoxes and is fundamentally broken the second you consider Buddhas's point.

So, look at the simple paradox of me going back in time and killing my Grandad. We instantly cause the issue we are looking at with God and Omnipotence but within a framed reference that we (The human race) can understand. As Robbo pointed out (ditto Buddha) Omnipotence is our interpretation for a power without limit. Well, we can have no real conception of that.

Ok, so quick thought experiment. God created the universe. He was there on day one and God is there at the end. So for God, time has already occured (and don't forget, time is a human concept, rooted firmly in concepts that we understand). There is no past, present or future. Time has completely existed and his omnipotence means that there is no assumption.....ever. So, if this is the case, does God exist within time or without? If he exists within time, then he is constrained by his own paradox (He created time/the universe etc but is part of that very fabric, so how could he create?) If he is without time, then the paradox does not exist because all points within time have will already occured (I think thats a new tense "past,present, future participle"). So, he is omnipotent as all events are within his domain to do with as he see fits......no time framing reference required.

So, we view the events in our past, in our timeline. That means for us, there is a paradox, we remember those events, so if we change them, then we fall into the paradox. But God can't, because, if he is truly omnipotent and therefore existing outside of time itself, he created time. We just cannot think "outside the box" enough to envisage that in terms we can understand.

"God does not play dice with the universe" sort of sums it up. I am not saying this is the definitive answer but adds something to the debate.