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From: laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: moRE Omniscience and Freedom
Message-ID: <4442@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 10-Oct-84 23:08:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.4442
Posted: Wed Oct 10 23:08:13 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 10-Oct-84 23:08:13 EDT
References: <392@wucs.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 33

food for thought: (hi there iconoclast!)

one of the classic arguments against the existence of an ``onmipotent''
god has been ``can he create a rock which he cannot lift?''. The
classic answer of the people who believe in an ``omnipotent'' god is
that this is a mal-formed (or stupid) question. There is no such thing
as a ``rock which he cannot lift'' and so the whole question is void.

It occurs to me that ``omnipotent'' and ``omniscient'' and ``eternal''
and ``infinite'' (all these things which are ascribed to god) may
be literally incredible words -- words which in themselves can not
mean what they are supposed to mean because the concept itself is,
like ``a blue red'' or ``a round square'' wholly nonsense. 

(I know -- this is the is Heterological heterological argument.
Maybe I have been reading too much Kierkegaard...)


I cannot really think of Euclid's points. I cannot think of infinity.
I cannot think of omnipotence. All  I can do is to think of something
``more powerful than anything else I can think of'' which is pretty
awesomely powerful, but hardly omnipotent. If I think of soemthing
as *existing* (are we agreed that the omnipotent god exists, at
least for the purpose of the argument) then I am thinking of the very
limits which are placed upon a being by its existence. To be X one
can not be not-X at the same time. To say that ``god is outside
time'' may be to beg the entire question -- what is ``existence
outside of time'' anyway? Existence seems to be a very temporal
thing -- when I say ``I am'' it is understood that ``I am *now*'',
is it not?

Laura Creighton
utzoo!laura