Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!laura 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