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Old 11-13-2007, 04:45 AM
mickeyg13 mickeyg13 is offline
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Default Crazy Question about Omnipotence

For the sake of argument, suppose that there is a God that created the universe and that He is omnipotent (as many of His followers believe He is). Presumably then in creating the universe, He decided upon the various scientific laws that appear to govern physical interactions within the universe (picking all of the equations and setting values for all the constants, etc). Did He also write the rules of logic? That sounds like a crazy question, but please hear me out. If He did not write the rules of logic, then it seems He would be bound by them, making Him not omnipotent. It seems many would use such an argument to conclude that a truly omnipotent God must not exist.

Before you make that conclusion, I'm wondering about the alternative. If He really were truly omnipotent, it would seem that He would not be bound by any laws (unless He wanted to be), so as the "inventor" of logic, He would be free to break the rules at will. That would seem to have all sorts of crazy implications. For example, all those weird questions about immovable objects and four-sided triangles could actually be solved in the affirmative if this truly omnipotent God is allowed to rewrite logic as He sees fit. I think if nothing else it's something interesting to think about.

Please don't get the wrong idea about me by that post. I'm not someone that hates logic and is trying to throw it out the window or something. Logic happens to be important to me and my area of study. Frankly I'm not sure how even I feel about the scenario, but I feel like it deserves at least some thought. People see a logical contradiction in the notion of omnipotence, but maybe omnipotence can counteract that problem somehow.
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