Paradox

 

11/27/2023: I have been studying the Omnipotence paradox, and I came across online a column entitled, Problems with the Omnipotence paradox; it was asked 7 years, 6 months ago and was Modified 7 months ago; it has been viewed 8k times. I will quote from it where pertinent and comment on content. This source is interesting, not exhaustive or considered authoritative.

 

“From Wikipedia:

 

The omnipotence paradox is a family of semantic paradoxes that explores what is meant by ‘omnipotence.’ If an omnipotent being is able to perform any action, then it should be able to create a task that it is unable to perform. Hence, this being cannot perform all actions (i.e., it is not omnipotent), a logical contradiction.”

 

My response: Fate is all-powerful and all-powerless at the same time so Fate could draw a round square while following laws of logic and illogic, the laws of consistency and contradiction, what exists and can’t exist, and create and destroy with omnipotence and limited potency.

 

God the Father and God the Mother are near all-powerful and little all-powerless so refusing to or being unable to participate in contradictory acts that make De contradictory or nonexistent is consistent with God’s goodness, logic, truth-abiding and potency.

 

The above characterization of the omnipotence paradox, on the part of the author, seems well stated. If God could perform any action, then God should be able to create a task that De cannot perform. If God could perform such an action, De would not be omnipotent. If God could perform such an action, God would not be omnipotent. This is a logical contradiction, so either God is not all-powerful, or what is contradictory is absurd, false and does not exist, so God is absurd, false, and does not exist.

 

It is understandable that atheists, skeptics, and doubters would love to throw out this challenge to theists, but theists have some credible refutations. God is all-powerful and engaging in the creation of self-contradictory, self-destroying actions and illogical thinking are efforts that are or align with being powerless, senseless or even non-existent, and such efforts would not be about being powerful at all, so God would not engage in such efforts, be limited in power by such efforts, or associated with such self-destruction and foolishness.

 

Other refutations include God does not deny Deself, and God’s rational spirit or intelligence (Logos) was applied by God to the world to make matter and energy into cosmos and even living beings, so the laws that govern nature are an extension of God’s internal, self-governing rules of existence that are consistent, necessary, eternal and just, and this positive power is all-powerful but follows lines of existing, thinking and acting that conform to how De expects Deself and everyone else to exist and operate. Paradoxical and self-contradictory games are not about God or apply to God at all, even though the tricksters seek to trap God and fail.

 

God does not violate the laws of object. God’s logic occasionally may seem to contradict the rules of logic as humanly understood, but divine logic could be consistent, true, existent, and operational without humans understanding it, so if what God is doing occasionally seems contradictory or paradoxical in some cases, when it is not.

 

Theists might also exhort believers and skeptics alike that why God does what De does, and what it signifies is not comprehensible to us at this time—or perhaps ever—so we must accept that God is trustworthy and giving it to us straight, based on faith, not argument or evidence.

 

Wikipedia (W after this): “The paradox of the stone: Could an omnipotent being create a stone so heavy that even he could not lift it.

 

I posit that: ‘Creating a boulder that one can’t lift’ isn’t a logically inconsistent demand. Humans do it all the time (make stuff that they cannot lift). This argument actually shows how omnipotence is logically inconsistent.”

 

My response: The moderate in me would object that God could make a stone that God could not lift, and then, afterwards could lift it, as a dialetheistic reality (an occasional true contradiction, or as a miraculous, divine suspension of even God being limited by De’s own natural law for some noble but rare, exceptional reason. In the main God would not make a rock that De could not lift, and because De would not create it and then lift it, though De conceivably could, because this would tear the cosmos apart unnecessarily for the rules governing the cosmos cannot be flouted by God, or made exception of too often, or all cosmos will collapse and that is what God is working hard to avoid, and that is what the Devil wants to accelerate.

 

The Devil and his followers bait God with the Omnipotence Paradox to beguile doubting theists into accepting atheism, abandoning discredited God, or if God did create a stone that De could not lift and then lift it—not as a rare miracle, but as an angry overreaction to the Devil and skeptics goading De to do what De could but should not do, this overreaction by God-which would never occur—would grow hell or chaos on earth, and reduce heaven and cosmos on earth.

 

The Devil pushes chaos and destruction, and God advances cosmos and construction, so this whole self-contradictory verbal game about the rock is a game that God refuses to engage in because it is playing De’s enemy’s game. God’s creative power is all-powerful but that is the power of powerful building and Satan’s destructive power is all-powerless, a type of power that God opposes and fights but there is power there nonetheless unrelated to God.

 

So now I kick the whole game upstairs to Fate or the One where Fe is all-powerful and all-powerless at the same time and what that means and how it shakes out is beyond me to characterize it intelligibly with words.

 

W: “I used it in many forums but the general counter-arguments I get claim that this is not a logically consistent argument. The most clearly worded counter-argument I got is as follows:

 

If God is omnipotent, then there is no boulder that cannot be lifted by him. If God is omnipotent, he can create anything. You’re not disproving omnipotence, you’re disproving the possibility of such a boulder existing. Something that can both exist, and therefore be lifted by God by definition, and its un-liftability by God are in direct conflict with each other.”

 

My response: God can create anything, if in the rare dialetheistic or miracle categories, but, ordinarily God cannot create anything because De refuses to create anything that defies the laws of logic governing God’s Logos or rational energy that keeps the world ticking.

 

W: “Creating/Building  something that one can’t lift isn’t logically impossible. It becomes logically impossible only when considering God, doesn’t it?  . . . What is the conclusion one should draw from this argument—Omnipotence can’t exist . . . TL;DR.”

 

My response: God being Omnipotent and not being able to draw a round square are both true and both consistent, because God obeys the laws of logic, almost all the time.

 

Would it be God’s plan to be all-powerful and yet create a boulder that he could not lift. No, but he could and might on rare occasions to bring the universe back into harmony and balance. God’s unwillingness or inability to make such a rock is consistent with being the Author of the laws of logic (God’s omnipotency is instantiated as the divinely formulated  rational principle/Logos/or laws of logic at work, and contradictory logic or creations would be examples of the lack of potency or evil, malevolent destruction of cosmos, so that has nothing to do with God, and this posed paradox is a blasphemous semantical and rhetorical trap for God by God’s enemies that De will just ignore and sidestep as a non-issue requiring no divine response.

 

The stone paradox is that if God cannot make the stone too heavy for De to lift, he is not omnipotent, or if De creates it, then De cannot lift it, so De is still not omnipotent. The omnipotence paradox is not a way of proving De is not omnipotent, true, logical or existent as an eternally present, necessary Being. God is omnipotent but accepting an invitation to play contradictory and self-contradictory games is inconsistent with God’s omnipotent posture, so God will decline all such spurious challenges.