this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2024
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Asklemmy
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An all powerful god couldn't taste the color blue? First, synesthesia exists. Second, the judeo/christain god "smells prayers."
Also, god died.... in the Bible. Anyway w/e. You don't strike me as someone I want to interact with.
The specific example doesn't matter much. Google "category error" or read the comment below where I explain the response in more detail.
It's not like I'm trolling. This stuff is philosophy of religion 101. But, you are, of course, always free to ignore information that contradicts your world view.
I'll bite. How are the words incoherent? I assume you mean the question is not well-formulated or otherwise unanswerable?
Yes, that's correct. The words individually have meaning, but when you string them together like this they don't pose a valid question. It's like asking "where can I find the cube that doesn't have a shape?" There are logical contradictions inherent in the question itself, and so it only appears to make sense.
If you scroll down a bit in the thread, you'll see me expand on this point. (These are not my thoughts by the way. Smarter people thought about this stuff centuries ago.)
edit: I see you've already read my longer comment.
This stuff is not philosophy of religion 101, though it might be one seminary professor's lesson notes in systematic theology for christianity. Specific religions will typically have mental gymnastics or say things like, "It's just too complicated to understand with our limited capacity as mortals."
Given a being exists outside of this reality, the laws of this reality do not apply to it. And given a being created this reality, that being can do whatever it wants, regardless of this reality and it's laws. So the paradox still stands.
When we assume a contradiction is true (e.g., God is immutable and God is not immutable: P ^ -P), then we can derive any proposition and it's negation from that contradiction.
If God can make a contradiction true, then every other proposition whatsoever can be proven true and false at the same time. We can infer the following: 1) All questions about God are useless because God is now beyond reason/logic and 2) Reason itself would lose all applicability as logic, necessity, mathematics, etc. can no longer be taken for granted. These seem like untenable consequences. We have, however, an alternate conception of God's omnipotence that doesn't force us to abandon reason/logic.
So, what you're saying is, if it doesn't fit our logic, we have to make up a logic so it fits our logic?
There are different logics that account for temporality, modality (e.g., necessity), degrees of true, etc. But I doubt there's any logic we could construct that can account for the inconceivable and the impossible being possible. Human reason throws up its hands and sits in the corner.
So, we're back to a paradox.
Thanks.
And... blocked.