Omnipotence argument, what do you think?
-The potential for the emergence of any possible essence is beginningless.
-If the potential for the emergence of any possible essence is beginningless, then God can bring into existence any possible essence.
Therefore, God can bring into existence any possible essence.
Premise 1: The potential for the emergence of any possible essence is beginningless.
The potential for the existence of possible essences is either emergent or beginningless.
If emergent, then possible essences did not accept existence before the emergence of this potential. Entailing that possible essences were not possible essences before the emergence of this potential[1]. This is a violation of identity, and so is impossible.
Thus, the potential for the existence of any possible essences is beginningless.
Premise 2: If the potential for the emergence of any possible essence is beginningless, then God can bring into existence any possible essence.
If the potential for the existence of any possible essence is beginningless, then there must exist at least one beginningless being who is able to bring this possible essence into existence.
This is because of it being impossible for a possible essence to accept existence, without there already existing a being with the ability to actualize this potential[2]. So since the potential is beginningless, then the being with the ability to actualize this potential must also be beginningless.
And given that God is the only beginningless being[3], then God is that being who is able to bring into existence any possible essence.
Therefore, God can bring into existence any possible essence.
Thus, God can bring into existence any possible essence. And since the ability to bring into existence any possible essence is what we mean when we say “omnipotence”, God is necessarily omnipotent[4].
[1] Since possible essences accept existence by virtue of what they are. So if the potential for their existence were emergent, then they were not possible essences before the emergence of this potential. More on the transformation of realities here.
[2] For if there was no being with the ability to bring a possible essence into existence, then that possible essence would not accept existence. This is because a specification cannot emerge into existence without a specifier.
[3] Since God is the only necessary being, and all non-necessary existents are emergent. More on this here.
[4] This same argument is proof that God’s Will pertains to all possible essences as well. Meaning: He is able to will existence for any possible essence.
This is because God’s ability to bring something into existence, is proof that He can will for it to exist. So given that He can bring any possible essence into existence, then He can will for any possible essence to exist.
Comments (54)
With all the serious problems in the world, why did you choose this topic? Why spend your time on such a useless abstraction?
And colourless green ideas sleep furiously.
If emergent, then possible essences did not accept existence before the emergence of this potential. Entailing that possible essences were not possible essences before the emergence of this potential[1]. This is a violation of identity, and so is impossible.
Is it a bad justification? If so can you tell me why?
What?
Are you familiar with contingency and emergence VS Necessity?
To put it simple: What I argue here is, either the potentiality of any probable essence (I.E possibility of a flying cow to exist logically (not empirically)) to be actualized (to get created in a universe) existed beginning-less as a concept or it existed and is true (not only discovered by us) at some point only (Emergent).
To say that the potentiality of any probable essence (I.E a flying cow is possible to exist) is emergent this means that before this particular point in time of emergence the Flying cow was rationally impossible to exist because it lacks potentiality to exist, (Like a 2D squared circle) something that is rationally impossible), and after this particular point of emergence the flying cow is rationally possible to exist. (I am talking only about rational possibilities not nomological possibilities (being empirically found)). And this potentiality emergence is absurd, because being rationally possible to exist is a property of identity and no transformation of reality/identity can ever occur; meaning that it's either a 2 dimensional square circle is logically rationale or it's not, we cannot say that after day X it became logically rational, but before that it was irrational, or that the existence of an apple pie after day Y is irrational. This is violating the law of identity saying that y=y but starting from day X y=/=y if for example y is a 2D squared circle that by virtue has a logical irrational existence.
So by showing that the potentiality of any probable essence to actualize as a concept is absurd to be emergent (have a beginning at only some point), then it must be (by law of bi-valence) beginning-less, so it was, is and will always be rationally illogical for a squared rectangle in 2D to exist.
(1) So this is the explanation of "The potential for the emergence of any possible essence is beginning-less".
(2) And Possible existence is one which doesn't hold a logical contradictions in its intrinsic essence (A 2 dimensional square circle, or one which doesn't hold extrinsic logical contradictions (2 guys sitting alone in the same chair in the same time).
(3) If the potential for the emergence of any possible essence is beginningless, then there must be at-least one actualizer that can bring into existence any possible essence.
Because if they are by definition possible, then they MUST have an actualizer that is able and holds this potential to actualize them. Or else they are not possible because they lack actualization (which is a contradiction given that they ARE rationally possible to be actualized).
Therefore: All the potentiality of possible existence MUST need a beginning-less cause to be able to actualize them.
Fantastic! All these fancy symbols, this must mean that your subject is of the highest value? I mean, you wouldn't go through all this trouble if it wasn't of the utmost importance. Do tell, what would a man lose if this argument never existed? Is there any price to be paid for ignoring a conversation on the power's of Zeus?
I don't know man, I am just inspecting valid arguments for God.. I mean no harm nor force my beliefs on others..
Is it possible that this entails a waste of your intellectual energy and power? Are there more important issues you could be applying your mind to?
God can not be omnipotence, because apparently he cant create another powerful being as himself, or even more powerful. If "God" Was truly omnipotence, he would understand our pain and suffering, and would fix the world, cure poverty, suffer, and every problem in this world, not in afterlife! Perhaps he cant do it in this life, because he isn't omnipotent. Honestly i think God doesn't even know that Africa exists.
God seems to be less omnipotent than human being, or even rock, i mean rock has least one feature "existing", but if we investigate "God" we find literally nothing, no features or even existence. What seems like really primitive "Being" if you can even call "God" as being.
-Never forget how "God" himself kinda failed creating perfect "human being", and created sin baits, what ended up baiting Adam and Eve into sinning, and then poisoned whole humankind with original sin, that every human being suffers from. Honestly i cant call that Good, or omnipotent being, because there are obvious errors.
Every being has it limits.
Serious problems you raise here for anyone who claims to be taking the idea of God serious.
A fair point tim wood. I'm just trying to lend a positive voice to this thread. Whether we have decided our own beliefs on God is irrelevant. We should welcome people who take the time to post on something they've thought about and are generally passionate about.
When I was young, I was once a passionate believer in God, and philosophy about God was my beginning into exploring God beyond the matter of faith. It is the people who engaged me on these grounds and treated me respectfully which is why I evolved in my viewpoints on God and faith, and lit my passion for philosophy I still enjoy to this day.
Feel free to engage the OP's point, I am putting no skin in this game at this point. =)
I have delivered here no insults. This is your emotional response and characterization of the situation. Philosophy is not a feel good game, thought is brutal, it walks against the silk of delusion, it is often sand paper to the heart. There is no more relevant question than the question of thought's relevance. How much time should one give to a discussion on the attributes of Allah? Pick any God you want, at some point you will and must affirm my position. So far from giving the original poster an insult I did him a favor by asking the right questions!
Quoting JerseyFlight
A ridiculous excuse to try to justify your desire to be mean to people. You can be intelligent, thoughtful, and respectful of others. You don't care about changing his mind. You're spitting words for the fullfillment of your ego. People who actually wish to change others minds understand that you must talk with people, not at people.
You did not talk with the man. You talked at the man, while completing disregarding his OP. You fool no one with this excuse. And if you've fooled yourself? Then you are far less intelligent then you believe yourself to be.
Life is too short, one cannot go down the rabbit hole with every sophist, one can try to rationally thump them or to make a public spectacle, but it is foolish to indiscriminately spend one's life refuting every child of religion. It is a dilemma that one must solve. Who is one speaking to? It's strange that you attribute a moral fault to me when I did not attack this man in any personal way, I simply attacked the premises that lied behind his position. You might try thinking about the questions I asked him and see where they lead you.
Possible essence is possible state of existence, possible things maybe yeah..
You're presupposing a god. You have to demonstrate that a god exists before anything. You set up a circular argument, because you start and end with god, so it holds no weight.
Sure. It's just that your argument is a bit hard to follow. Could it be parsed in the language of possible worlds? That seems to me to be a neat way to sort out the grammatical issues at hand.
Quoting Mutakalem
Possible essence...
So an essence is a property had in any possible world - or if you prefer, in any possible world in which the thing exists.
And from that , I can't see what a possible essence might be. It can't be a property that belongs to something in only some possible worlds, because then it would not be an essence. But if it is a property that belongs to something in every possible world in which it exists, then a possible essence is just an essence.
Beginingless...
There's an ambiguity here, too. Some say the universe had no beginning, and hence we might call it begininless. On the other hand, there are things for which, at least arguably, having a beginning makes no sense - triangles, numbers, and so on - that is, there are things to which the notion of beginning does not seem to apply.
In which sense is "the potential for emergence" beginingless - is it eternal, or not the sort of thing that has a beginning?
And so on.
1) I mean by possible essence is that anything that can rationally exist (Its possibility in existing in any possible world doesn't make any logical contradictions).
2) Beginning-less means that the fact that it's a possible rational idea that a flying cow could exist in a possible world remains true atemporally as it remains true temporally (no matter time or space, like 1+1=2 is a necessary fact).
I think making God omnipotent, makes God responsible for the "evil" in the world.
I think the "problem of evil" is a major cause of disbelief or rejection of that conception of God.
I prefer conceptions of the divine which involve persuasion or "lure" but not force or coercion.
God is not omnipotent, in the Bible, in the Koran or in other major religious scripture.
God as omnipotent and omniscient creates unsolvable logical problems for also conceiving of God as loving and relatable (personal). Personally I think God is creative and not too concerned with petty moralism.
I really think what's evil was defined evil by the ex-nhilo creating God, you cannot use what he created to define it as wrong or right, he's God, he makes whatever he wants in his creation. If he demands something it's his fully right for him to do so, he created every thing.
So I can rape babies as long as they’re mine?
I suppose one could say that the concepts presented in your argument is another version of the infamous Ontological argument(s). The funny thing is (another irony), most atheists try to rely on a priori logico-deductive reasoning to justify their belief in no-God, which is the same type of logic used for your argument. :snicker:
(So if they give you any grief, just ask them what kind of logic they use... .)
Hey dingbat. Encourage more supernatural abstractors like Mutakalem will you, so we can have more important threads like this. Know your enemy friend, and don't encourage their stupidity or propaganda. I blame you for the existence of this thread. You are responsible. And what exactly are you responsible for, authoritarian, fascist nonsense like this:
Quoting Mutakalem
:angry:
[b]"Mutakalem, I appreciate your attempt to tackle the issue of God and omnipotence."
"Mutakalem, I appreciate your attempt to tackle the issue of God and omnipotence."
"Mutakalem, I appreciate your attempt to tackle the issue of God and omnipotence."[/b] Philosophim
If I was a moderator I would lock you in an eternal thread with this fella. Don't encourage the fairy worshipers or else you have to entertain them.
Blame yourself for relying on deductive reasoning for your belief in no God. :chin:
Yep. Nothing new under the sun there!!
Unfortunately yet another angry atheist on the warpath... . I still can't figure out why they're so angry about no-God ... LOL
Yo dude, have you thought about an anger management course? Or maybe it's that whole New Jersey Guido thing relative to your ego that philosophim talked about...
Indeed. I am upset when people attempt to indoctrinate my species with error and lies. You come at me with authoritarian assertions regarding your tyrannical God. You want to pass off fairly-tale nonsense for intelligence and wisdom. You try to uphold an archaic tradition that is responsible for some of the worst acts ever committed against humans, I do indeed have a righteous anger. I am not your friend, just like you and your kind are not the friend of my species. You are not liberators but oppressors. Your power has been curbed, that is all, the same tyranny exists, but it has been restricted and put in check by secularism. You can claim no virtue here, the virtue belongs to Humanism.
Well that archaic tradition is the same tradition that you seem to use, in this case: deductive logic.
Furthermore, just because you had some bad experiences that you can't resolve don't project your anger onto other people.
Excuse me, did you just try to claim that your Jesus Cult is responsible for deductive logic??????????
No, I'm claiming that you use deduction for your belief in no God.
What's that, you said there is no evidence for your idea of God? I didn't quite catch that deductive part.
You attacked deductive reasoning from the OP, yet it appears to be the same reasoning you use for your belief in no God.
If I have a lack of belief in God it will be based most of all on a lack of evidence in relation to the projection of the idea. You have already said that Jesus is God. This makes you part of the Jesus cult. I asked you how you knew this and you gave vague answers to avoid shouldering your burden of proof. It's a mighty claim to say that you know Jesus is God. Explain it to the court or leave the room.
But you're using deductive logic to determine your 'lack of evidence' belief system. And if I'm correct, you are no better or worse than the theist.
So you just seem to be projecting anger from some unresolved psychological deficiency. (I'm afraid I'm not the only one who sees it.)
Yep correct
I am indeed, but we already knew that from the beginning. It's always been the reason for your evasion.
Not following that. I thought I already answered your question, no?
This is properly known as gaslighting, it's a technique of manipulation that is employed by abusers. And since you're a zealot of the Jesus cult this doesn't surprise me one bit. An analogy to it would be if someone defected from North Korea and had a legitimate and justified anger against the oppression of the regime. People like you come along and claim that this anger is actually a "psychological deficiency." This is quite a serious manifestation of malevolence on your part, but it is no surprise because your psychological need to protect your delusion is even greater. There is no level to which the Christian will not stoop, from burning people at the stake to torturing heretics. This is your history and you are true to it.
Gosh please don't take this the wrong way but it sounds like you're talking about yourself. No matter, let's go ahead and put your money where your mouth is and parse the following a priori statements:
1. God is time dependent and timeless. True or false or something else?
2. Jesus had a consciousness that in itself transcends logic. True false or something else?
Since you seem to be hell-bent on embracing a priori reasoning, tell us what's wrong with those statements or judgements.
This depends on what you mean by God? It also depends on how you go about trying to deduce him.
Suppose you want to claim that something had to cause the big bang. Fine and well, I shall let you have it. Now tell me what you know about this cause? Do you know that it was Jesus? Do you know that it is still in existence? Do you know that it was only one agent that caused such vast complexity? I mean, that would completely contradict what we know about complex structures created by agency.
Listen, abuser, progeny of those who burned women as witches, I will not play your games. Prove your case or leave the court with your sophistry.
Unfortunately, I'm still not following your logic .
First you evaded the questions with questions so that tells us something right there.
Second it sounds like you're more of an agnostic than an atheist because if I'm reading between the tea leaves...you don't seem to even know what logic you based your Atheism on... . In other words, what level of understanding do you base your believe in no-God?
So right now, this is actually worse than I thought because it sounds like you are some sort of an in- the-closet agnostic.
No. You asked loaded questions: that tells us everything.
"A loaded question or complex question is a question that contains a controversial assumption. Such questions may be used as a rhetorical tool: the question attempts to limit direct replies to be those that serve the questioner's agenda."
Such as, 'God is time dependent and timeless, true or false or something else?' Here the loaded term is the term "God."
Gotcha indeed you're on a fishing expedition!
LOL
What's that, you said there is no evidence for your idea of God? Of course silly.
I'm not sure your fellow atheist's would approve of your behavior :chin:
Depends on your definition of omnipotence or whether you happen to think that any and all definitions of omnipotence require the possibility of performing actions which are not allowable among classical forms of logic or lead to paradoxical actions. Many theists and theistic philosophers i'm willing to assume don't all just assume that such a being must be able to perform contradictory actions as they probably define omnipotence in a rather different but precise manner to avoid these paradoxical situations.
Quoting batsushi7
True, because omnipotence is a concept of being intuitively all powerful or the most powerful. A god can be omnipotent however.
Quoting batsushi7
This rests on the fact that you assume that god even abides by or holds any morality at all let alone any moral duties or positions that humans likewise would hold. This is the problem of evil which ONLY applies in situations when god is considered to be capable of preventing evil and also possessing a sense of moral convictions or by nature omni-benevolence that is similar to human moral qualms such that it creates an apparent contradiction. There is evil in the world and god is capable as well as willing to rid the world of such sorrows but he does not, why?
Quoting Mutakalem
Those are conceptual possibilities not what is actual and what is metaphysically possible. These are concepts from the actual world that you have decided to abstract from and find consistent with classical logic but whether these conceptually possible worlds can actually come about is something not exactly clear. Is it possible for any other conceptually possible world to come about other than ours?