There are, however, some things that God cannot do. God can’t do anything that would deny His own character. This is why Theists describe God’s omnipotence as God’s ability to do “all His holy will.”
A modified version of Euthyphros dilemma says, "Is what is morally good commanded by God because it is morally good, or is it morally good because it is commanded by God?" As Christians we would answer neither. The moral, objective “good” is grounded in God’s nature. The perfect good is God. To move in the opposite direction is to sin, moving from the perfect "good" to “evil”. God is perfectly holy. Therefore God can’t sin. God is self evident. Therefore God can’t deny Himself. God is necessarily existent. Therefore God can’t cease to be God. God can’t act in ways that are inconsistent with His attributes.
Because God is truth, God can’t lie (Titus 1:2 – literally “the unlying God”). He can’t deceive or tempt. “Ha!” says the atheist, “I can lie; therefore I can do something that God can’t.” It becomes how you frame the question. Lying is a moral failure. So can we fail? Yes, but God is incapable of failing morally. Lying then is not an accomplishment.
Other groundings in God’s nature include logic and reason. God can’t be illogical or unreasonable. The atheist asks, “Can God make a rock so big that He can’t lift it?” This is just silly. You are trying to pit the power of God against... the power of God. This is like asking, “Who would win in an arm wrestling contest between God and Himself?” The atheist asks, “Why can’t God make a square circle?” The answer is because it is nonsense. It is like a married bachelor. It is logically incoherent.
The atheist says,
“…if this being (God) is all knowing and all powerful then it can a) see all of time, and b) do anything it wants to do. However, if it can see all of time then it can see what it will do next, which means that it is not all powerful. If it is all powerful then it can change its mind which means that it's not all knowing. As it is very easy to show, with basic logic, that a being that is simultaneously all powerful AND all knowing is an impossibility, it can be equally easily deduced that god cannot be perfect.”
This is similar to Richard Dawkins argument in "The God Delusion" that it is logically impossible for God to be both all knowing and all powerful. First let me deal with the aspect of time. It would seem that if God is the creator of time, then He is not subject to time. Although God interacts with those that are “in time” He is outside of time because He is eternal. To say that God’s next move is set and He is powerless to do anything about it assumes that God is suddenly subject to the restraints of time that He created.
The next problem is that Dawkins and other atheists who believe this to be a powerful argument for God’s non-perfection and therefore non-existence have an incorrect, and in all honesty, a pretty juvenile view of omnipotence. Now to be fair, this is often propagated by Christians who haven’t looked very deeply at this issue. The Sunday school view of God’s power is often “God can do anything He wants” without any qualifications. A better definition might be that
God is capable of doing anything that power is capable of doing. God is not limited by any lack of power to do anything that power might accomplish. - Greg Koukl
The other problem is that the atheist believes that the ability to “change your mind” is a positive ability. Again it is how the question is framed. Perfection is not a limitation. In the previous example about lying, the ability to sin is presented as a positive. Just the opposite is true. Once more, the atheist wants to present perfection as a negative; a limitation and then accuse God of not being perfect. God is omniscient. He has perfect knowledge. Here the atheist uses the ability to change one’s mind as a benefit when in fact it is the consequence of imperfect knowledge.
So the atheists’ logical process goes something like this.
You say God is perfect, right? Ok then, can God be imperfect? No? Then God isn’t perfect.
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11 comments:
Omniscience on its own falls. Consider the statement "According to 'god-knowledge,' this is not a true statement." Your god cannot correctly identify that as true, false, or meaningless. But perhaps you only mean that he is "practically omniscient." That is, you mean than he knows all things that might be of practical value to us. But, even then, it is still a limitation -- just one that has no meaning to us.
"Here the atheist uses the ability to change one’s mind as a benefit when in fact it is the consequence of imperfect knowledge."
Ack, this is beautifully said.
There is a tiny piece of rock on the the other side of the Universe.
Does God know about it? Is it of practical value to us?
As Richard Dawkins has said, just because you can form a question in the form of a sentence does not mean that it deserves to be answered. (Google his position on the Question Why. He explains it better)
"God can’t lie"
Maybe not, but he's not above making other people lie for him....
1 Kings 22:23 Yahweh has put a lying spirit into the mouth of all these your prophets
Ezekiel 14:9 And if the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the LORD have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand upon him, and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel.
2 Thess. 2:11 For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie...
That one line 'I the LORD have deceived that prophet' is pretty damning, your god almost seems proud of his lies. By your own definition your god is guilty of a moral failure.
Your other argument seems to state that your god, knowing all of time simultaneously doesn't then ever have to change his mind. Setting aside the multiple occasions in the Bible where he DOES change his mind, if god knows all that will ever happen, then he knows what I will do tomorrow, which means that I don't have the ability to do something different. In fact, your god knows from the beginning of time whether I'll be 'saved' or not, which in my opinion, removes any free will I might have.
If you're right, and your god always knew how things would work out, why did it grieve him to see the pre-flood world acting sinfully? After all, you claim that he knew it would happen (which does beg the question, if god knew that his creation would be flawed before he made it, why didn't he fix all the problems before hand?). It's odd the way that your supposedly timeless deity seems constrained by the relentless marching of time from the past into the future. In fact if he ISN'T then a lot of his actions make no sense whatsoever, and seem incredibly cruel just for the sake of inflicting pain.
Finally -
"A better definition might be that God is capable of doing anything that power is capable of doing"
...immediately you're diminishing the power of your deity, subtly moving the goalposts and claiming that 'all powerful' doesn't actually mean ALL powerful. Why should your all powerful being be limited in any way at all? It's telling that you're having to invent limitations to get around the logical impossibility of his existence.
Still, at least your post, Tim, hasn't resorted to the name calling that Al has employed!
I replied to this, but it seems to have vanished :(
So, is no-one going to comment on the fact that God not only can lie, but does? And then boasts about it?
You've already said it as well as I could.
Thanks Pvblivs.
Was wondering why the apologists hadn't said anything, but then I remembered that a common tactic with theists is to simply ignore the difficult stuff.
{sits there shaking head in disbelief believing what was just read was done with a straight face}
Ah, there you are Trent, care to explain why god lies so much in the Bible?
You obviously haven't read my previous post about taking Jim's advice.
I'm sorry, that last one was just such a whopper I slipped a bit.
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