Paradox

 

I copied out 9 pages of entry from the Wikipedia entry on Omnipotence paradox, and this information was downloaded on 11/26/2023. I will take note on what interests me and comment on it.

 

Wikipedia (W after this): “The omnipotence paradox is a family of paradoxes that arise from some understandings of the term omnipotent. The paradox, arises, for example if one assumes that an omnipotent being has no limits and is capable of creating any outcome, even a logically contradictory one such as creating a square circle.”

 

My response: God is all-powerful or nearly all-powerful in growing the cosmos, operating the cosmos, and spreading love and goodness across the universe, but this in no way implies that God will create square circles, or advocate contradictory statements or conditions (There are exceptions that are real and wholesome but these dialetheisms are uncommon, if true, legitimate and to be taken seriously.), or promote evil. These negative introductions of spiritual evil, or chaotic, system-destroying elements are from Satan and his minions, so such detracting behaviors would not agree with God’s all-powerfulness, for these elements are about reducing, distorting and gutting God’s agency in the world. Those offering the omnipotence paradox could be intellectually curious, but some of these atheological foes of God are seeking to smear and trap God’s good name, by forcing God to adopt these negative elements, which do not belong to God, or the paradox does not apply to God.

 

The omnipotence paradox is not about God at all, but it reveals that it is about De’s enemies, their intentions, their motives, their natures.

 

These introduced negative elements of reality are introduced by the Dark Couple and are physical manifestations of the wicked, cruel power of powerlessness, the energy field coming from Satan and Lera, and it is their power center.

 

When the trickster posing the omnipotence paradox is associating these negative elements with God, it is obvious that these negative elements contradict all the God says, is and does, but they are not from God but from De’s enemies. These contradictions are no reflection on God’s goodness and nature, and they are rooted in powerlessness (using one’s energy to hurt the self and others) or hatred. Power and powerfulness, especially when we are referring to good deities, is the energy the use lovingly to bolster themselves and others.

 

W: “Atheological arguments based on the omnipotence paradox are sometimes described as evidence for countering theism. Other possible resolutions to the paradox hinge on the definition of omnipotence applied and the nature of God regarding this application and whether omnipotence is directed towards God Himself or outward toward his external surroundings.”

 

My response: Omnipotence or near-omnipotence apply to God and De’s external surrounding because De created the world, making something out of nothing (nothing existed prior to Creation), or chaotic energy and mass became--after the creation--something, ordered energy, mass and life.

 

W: “The omnipotence paradox has medieval origins, dating at least from the 10^th century, when Saadia Gaon responded to the question of whether God’s omnipotence extended to logical absurdities . . . a predecessor version of the paradox, asking whether it is possible for God to deny himself.”

 

My response: God has not much to do with logical absurdities or draping Deself in these negative elements, which would be denying Deself, which God will not do. God probably could do but will not, for assuming such attributes would be the opposite of being powerful and divinely good, and would in effect weaken God and De’s ministrations.

 

W: “ . . . A related issue is whether the concept of ‘logically possible’ is different for a world in which omnipotence exists than a world in which omnipotence exists.”

 

My response: God made the world, but the world likely existed before God as Fate or the One. The Dark Couple and the Evil Spirits have their home, hell, and portions of Creation where they rule supreme or near to it, so absurd atheologies might be logically possible or metaphysically possible in those realms where God does not live or does not rule, but this does not make God lack perfection or near perfection or omnipotency or near omnipotency. The family of omnipotence paradoxes are used by God’s skeptical, postmodernist enemies as rhetorical weapons to undermine God’s ominipotence. These critics may believe their rhetorical attacks or not (just an effective weapon against God to seed uncertainty in the minds of people and believers) but these paradoxes are not related to God, and tell us little about God’s nature, perfect and omnipotent.

 

W: “Types of omnipotence: Augustine of Hippo in his City of God writes ‘God is called omnipotent on account of His doing what he wills’ and thus proposes the definition that ‘Y is omnipotent’ means ‘If Y wishes to do X the Y can and does X’.”

 

My response: God is omnipotent on account of De doing what De wills, and if he wished to do X, he can and does X; I agree with this and this seems self-evident. Could there be a hint here that no one is able successfully or is powerful enough to black God’s willing something, for very long, or completely. That is how I read Augustine’s definition of divine omnipotency.

 

W: “The notion of omnipotence can also be applied to an entity in different ways. As essentially omnipotent being is an entity that can be omnipotent for a termporary period of time, and then becomes non-omnipotent. The omnipotence paradox can be applied to each type of being differently.”

 

My response: Theologians and metaphysicians could make something of this. I would regard God omnipotency as an essential trait all the time, and that God would not have many or any accidental traits.  I maintain that God is omnipotent, but there are some evil, destructive or contradictory, meaningless things that De will not will to do; producing omnipotence paradoxes to make God look silly and limited, because God refuses to act in aforementioned ways, is a hostile ploy by the godless and unscrupulous to force God’s hand, something that God will never respond to by taking the bait. God will not act counter to De’s nature, because De loves Deself, and does not engage in self-abuse which is self-hatred—nor will God want to play these nasty word game being peddled for centuries by his vicious, lying foes.

 

God is all-powerful in the sense of power that is creative, loving and constructive, but there are some competing destructive powers (the powers of powerlessness and hatred utilized by evil spirits) that God will not ever or often wield. If that limit or self-limiting discipline that God stands by is considered evidence of his lack of omnipotency, his critics seem to be correct, but they are not: that unholy kind of power has force in the world, but it grows wickedness and hurt, and that lack for God is a power that De will not latch onto and wield. God is omnipotent regarding loving and creating, but the powers of powerlessness owned and administered by demonic forces does not make God be assessed as not all powerful due to De’s reluctance to enjoy using destructive hateful energy in the world.

 

It is so that in certain eras, or in certain geographical areas of the universe, that there are zones of supremacy administered from time to time by Evil Spirits. Can God be all-good and omnipotent, and yet there are domains of the universe at this time, where evil is ascendant? I think my cosmology of the coexistence of evil and omnipotent God  in one universe is a consistent description of reality. How it works and why it is set up that way is tough to answer but what is, is.

 

It may be that a working definition of God’s omnipotency is that De reigns and remains true to Deself and De’s people, all the while evil is allowed to exist and conquer large parts of the cosmos. Who knows what the truth about these ultimate issues are for sure, but Fate is the core to answering these dilemmas and understanding what Fate is about is way beyond my pay grade.

 

W: “In addition, some philosophers have considered the assumption that a being is either omnipotent or non-omnipotent to be a false dilemma, as it neglects the possibility of varying degrees of omnipotence. Some modern approaches to the problem have involved semantic debates over whether language—and therefore philosophy—can meaningfully address the concept of omnipotency itself.”

 

My response: This paragraph I like. God is all-powerful or extremely powerful, and my theology of moderation is suggesting that God is mostly powerful is likely true. I also maintain that the omnipotence paradox applies to God—at least in need to be addressed for clarification pursposes--whether De is all-powerful or nearly all-powerful. For example, God is all powerful and yet evil exists in the world, and God is not the author of it. And it seems likely that understanding what omnipotency means and how the omnipotence paradox works are both very tricky and daunting for humans to ponder.

 

W: “Proposed answers—Omnipotence does not mean breaking the laws of logic.

 

A common response from Christian philosophers, such as Norman Geisler or William Lane Craig, is that the paradox assumes the wrong definition of omnipotence. Omnipotence, they say, does not mean that God can do anything at all but, rather, he can do anything possible according to his nature. The distinction is important. He cannot, for instance, make 1 + 1= 3. Likewise, God cannot make a being greater than himself because he is, by definition, the greatest possible being. God is limited in his actions to his nature. The Bible, in passages such as Hebrews 6:18, says it is ‘impossible for God to lie.’

 

A good example of a modern defender of this line of reasoning is George Mavrodes. Essentially, Mavrodes argues that it is no limitation of a being’s omnipotence to say that it cannot make a round square. Such a ‘task’ is termed by him a ‘pseudo-task’ as it is self-contradictory and inherently nonsense. Harry Frankfurt—following from Descartes—has responded to this solution with a proposal of his own: that God can create a stone impossible to lift and also lift said stone:

 

‘For why should God not be able to perform the task in question? To be sure, it is a task—the task of lifting a stone that he cannot lift—whose description is self-contradictory. But if God is supposedly capable of performing one task whose description is self-contradictory—that of creating the problematic stone in the first place—why should He not be supposedly capable of performing another another—that of lifting the stone? After all, is there any greater trick in performing two logically impossible tasks that there is performing one?’”

 

My response: I agree with the Christian answers to the omnipotence paradox, and Mavrodes is correct that if God performed even one logically impossible task—which De cannot and will not due, or rarely—De might as well proceed forward.

 

W: “If a being is accidentally omnipotent, it can resolve the paradox by creating a stone it cannot lift, thereby becoming non-omnipotent. Unlike essentially omnipotent entities, it is possible for an accidentally omnipotent being to be non-omnipotent. This raises the question, however, of whether  the being was ever truly omnipotent, or just capable of great power. On the other hand, the ability to voluntarily give up great power is often thought of as central to the notion of the Christian Incarnation.”

 

My response: Accidental omnipotency solves the paradox but it seems to assert that God never was or never was permanently omnipotent, and that I cannot accept. This idea of accidental omnipotency seems more applicable to the lesser good deities, or to angels, the Good Spirits.

 

W: “If a being is essentially omnipotent, then it can also resolve the paradox. The omnipotent being is essentially omnipotent and therefore it is impossible for it to be non-omnipotent. Further the omnipotent being can do what it is logically impossible—just like the accidentally omnipotent—and have no limitations except for the inability to become omnipotent. The omnipotent being cannot create a stone it cannot lift.”

 

My response: This paragraph is important. This paragraph offers to resolve the paradox by asserting omnipotent God cannot become omnipotent so De cannot do a logically impossible task that makes De non-omnipotent, namely making a stone that God cannot lift.

 

The thinker here seems to separate out two categories of logically impossible tasks, those that God can do which are in accordance with God’s remaining true to God’s nature, De’s omnipotency, and the prohibited logically impossible task, those that render God non-omnipotent.

 

I would identify with the logically impossible tasks that God could undertake—that do not conflict with the maintenance by God of God’s essential omnipoetncy—as dialetheistic, moderate acts, logically impossible, as those few true contradictions that God can undertake, but are also logically and ontologically consistent with God’s omnipotent nature. This might occur, for example, when God works a miracle that flouts normally operating natural law.

 

W: “The omnipotent being cannot create such a stone because its power is equal to itself—thus removing the omnipotence, for than can be only one omnipotent being, but it nevertheless retains its omnipotence. The solution works even with definition 2—as long as we also know the being is essentially omnipotent rather than accidentally so. However, it is possible for non-omnipotent beings to compromise their own powers, which presents the paradox that non-omnipotent beings  can do something (to themselves) which an essentially omnipotent being cannot do (to itself). This was essentially the position that Augustine of Hippo took in his The City of God::

 

‘For He is called omnipotent on account of His doing what He wills, not on account of His suffering what he wills not, for if that should befall Him, He would by no means be omnipotent. Wherefore, He cannot do some things for the very reason that He is omnipotent.’

 

Thus Augustine argued that God cannot do anything or create any situation that would, in effect, make God not God.

 

My response: I like Augustine.

 

W: “God and logic:

 

Although the most common translation of the noun ‘Logos’ is ‘Word’ other translations have been used. Gordon Clark (1902-1985), A Calvinist theologian and expert on pre-Socratic philosophy, famously translated Logos as ‘Logic’: ‘In the beginning was the Logic, and the Logic, was with God and the Logic was God.’ He meant to imply by this translation that the laws of logic were derived from God and formed part of Creation, and were therefore not a secular principle imposed on the Christian world view.

 

God obeys the laws of logic because God is eternally logical in the same way that God does not perform evil actions because God is eternally good. So, God, by nature logical and unable to violate the laws of logic, cannot make a boulder so heavy he cannot lift it because that would violate the law of non contradiction by creating an immovable object and an unstoppable force.”

 

My response: If God is Logic or Word or Logos, God made and abides by the laws of logic—most of the time I assert as a metaphysical moderate—then De cannot create an omnipotence paradox that violates the law of noncontradiction. Once in a while, God can logically and materially do a task that violates the law of noncontradiction, while remaining consistent overall and omnipotent over all.

 

 

 

 

W: “This raises the question, similar to the Euthyphro Dilemma, of where this law of logic, which God is bound to obey, comes from. According to these theologians (Norman Geisler and William Lane Craig), this law is not a law above God that he assents to, but, rather, logic is an eternal part of God’s nature, like his omniscience and omnibenevolence.”

 

 W: “Paradox is meaningless: the question is sophistry . . .”

 

My response: Epistemological pessimists and those that use fallacious arguments to deceive theists might come up with a line of reasoning that gets to convoluted, that the whole debated seems muddled—perhaps purposely made that way—and without importance, and these criticisms are not far off the mark.

 

Do we even have the concepts, semantics, real-world referents, and language to conduct the debate about the ultimate puzzles like the omnipotence paradox? I think we do but there is room for doubt too. Such puzzles are worth delving into, but, we also know enough to believe and know that God is just, true and loving, and, is either all-powerful or extremely powerful, while generally living by the laws of nature and logic written the God in De’s Logos’ creator phase.