
Originally Posted by
lancerawks
i think the problem is that the english language just wasnt made to talk about phylosiphy
Not so. The problem is that you are not clearly defining what 'omnipotent' means.
Specifically, if the meaning of 'omnipotent' includes 'the ability to do anything', then that definition includes the creation of logically non-nonsensical situations, such as the existence of square circles, invisible pink unicorns and honest politicians (ok, I just threw that last one in for fun).
Rationally you cannot have a square circle (without employing irrelevant syntactic trickery of the sort that would declare a toroid with a square cross section a 'square circle') because squareness and circleness are necessarily mutually exclusive.
You might declare that the God you believe in can create situations in which such logical impossibilities are in fact possible, and you would absolutely be within the realm of real religion to do so, but you also exit the realm where rational discussion can be held.
If in the idea of 'omnipotent' you include a constraint thusly: 'able to do anything that is not a logical impossibility', you exclude such nonsense as square circles but apparently leave open questions like 'can God create a bowl of Jello so big that even He cannot eat it all?' After all, there is nothing inherently illogical about a universe-sized bowl of Jello, is there?
Beyond the flip answer that 'there is always room for Jello', you still find that such a question is excluded by your constraint on what is possible for an omnipotent being. The mere existence of a quantity of Jello in excess of what God Himself could consume constitutes an illogical situation, by virtue of God's omnipotence and this definition of omnipotence, no such quantity can exist. This is not a limit on the power of God, but on the meaning of omnipotence.
In a larger context, the idea that any statement about the universe at large can be show to be true exclusively through logical means is absurdly foolhardy. To do so implies that the one doing the reasoning has absolutely excluded the possibility of there being information that would invalidate any of the foundations of his reasoning. This is clearly not the case now, and is likely to always remain so.
Further, proof in God's existence would eliminate much of the need for faith which is itself considered by many to be a defining characteristic of many religions. Why this is so can be left open to debate, but it is very clear that religion most certainly does not suffer from the general inability of rational discourse to pin down the nature or even reality of God. Quite the opposite in fact, it celebrates the fact and uses it to great effect.
My personal opinion on the matter is that anyone who claims the positive belief that gods do not or can not exist is making a worse mistake than those who claim faith that God does exist.
Worse in what way? The faithful do not generally employ the artifice of reason or knowledge to found their claim. They know and generally acknowledge that proof is unavailable (it would not be faith if there was proof). An atheist making a positive claim that gods can be shown not to exist generally does not claim faith as the reason. He applies all manner of rational and logical argument, and then, in complete denial of the limitations of those tools, makes a leap of faith to an absolute claim of knowledge.
In truth no one who understands the philosophy of science would claim that gods are absolutely not possible. They may present a very solid case with multiple lines of reasoning showing that evidence for the existence of gods is insufficient to justify rational belief, but this can in no way be construed, within the bounds of scientific principles of knowledge, as actual factual knowledge that gods cannot exist.
No scientific reasoning can ever reach that level of absolute certainty because it is explicit within the philosophy of science that there exist facts we do not yet know that may effect what we think we know now. Until such time as we can show that we know without flaw absolutely every bit of information in existence, we cannot claim that gods do not exist.
Thus, to claim under the authority of science that gods do not exist is to, in fact, simply expose one's own ignorance of what science can and cannot do.
Congratulations if you made it this far and actually read all of that with a critical and open mind. Please graduate to talk.origins.
Grippy has approximately 30,000 hours of Delphi coding experience. srsly.