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Subject: 
Re: God and the Devil and forgiveness (was Re: POV-RAY orange color)
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.off-topic.debate
Date: 
Tue, 31 Aug 1999 11:54:07 GMT
Viewed: 
1227 times
  
In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal <johnneal@uswest.net> writes:

If God can do anything, can he create
something so complex that he can no longer understand it?  (It's extremely
easy, for example, for us humans to create things so complex that we can
no longer understand them.)

*This* is classic "circle logic" If God do anything, can God create a stone
he cannot lift?

Exactly: it's a proof by contradiction, proving that there's nothing that
can do anything.  I guess it challenges the definition of what "anything"
means.


If God can do anything, then can he make himself disappear from his own
plane of existence?  If he can, then can he also make himself come back
after he's gone?  If so, then can he make himself go away so strongly that
he cannot bring himself back no matter how hard he tries?

I submit that there are things that God cannot do.  Discuss.  :)

Pretty tough IMHO to start speculating about God.  It's like a 2
dimensional species living on a plane trying to comprehend a cube.  As the
cube passes through the plane (depending upon what angle, too), it creates
either a square, various sized rectangles, or various sized triangles.

Also various line segments, various non-regular pentagons, various non-
regular hexagons, and in two very special cases, a point, and a regular
hexagon!  :)


The species sees the cube as it passes through and think they understand
what they have just seen, using their best tools.  But their perception is
doomed from the start because they haven't the capability to see 3
dimensionally.  As are we trying to understand God.

OK.  But pure logic transcends dimensionalities.  Perhaps there are parts of
God which can be accurately modeled with logic.  Maybe we don't know which
parts, though.  But certainly, pure logic is either more perfect or equal
than perfect to God.  God cannot be more more perfect than pure logic.

--Todd



Message has 4 Replies:
  Re: God and the Devil and forgiveness (was Re: POV-RAY orange color)
 
(...) (I don't mean that as a troll. I'm just a hopeless-romantic mathgeek.) --Todd (25 years ago, 31-Aug-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
  Re: God and the Devil and forgiveness (was Re: POV-RAY orange color)
 
(...) The cube has a beginning and an end, doesn't it? The cube passing through the plane implies that, at some point, we witness every aspect of God. However, scripture indicates that very few people have even come close to this. It's probably more (...) (25 years ago, 31-Aug-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
  Complex number theory (Was: God and the Devil and forgiveness)
 
(...) I finally figured out what it was about this statement that bothered me! Math (a valid part of logic, arguably) has real difficulty resolving even low-order functions on 4-dimensional complex numbers (1). There are at least two main camps of (...) (25 years ago, 14-Sep-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
  Re: God and the Devil and forgiveness (was Re: POV-RAY orange color)
 
(...) Can god create a two-sided triangle? Arguing about definitionally impossible things is useless, IMHO. My take: Should an _omnipotent_ god (there is always the possibility of non-omnipotence, after all) exist, he would be able to make a stone (...) (25 years ago, 11-Nov-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: God and the Devil and forgiveness (was Re: POV-RAY orange color)
 
Todd Lehman wrote: <snip> (...) Dr. Moriarity. What a fascinating episode that was:-) And even better that they brought him back on another show! (...) *This* is classic "circle logic" If God do anything, can God create a stone he cannot lift? (...) (25 years ago, 31-Aug-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)

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