Spiritual/Political/Philosophical Blog on the Nature of Truth and Falsehood and Heaven
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| Sunny Days in Heaven Spiritual/Political/Philosophical Blog on the Nature of Truth and Falsehood and Heaven |
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Thursday, June 13, 2002 What God cannot do Steven den Beste at USS Clueless posits various aspects of set theory that I had no desire to engage other than his conclusions. One conclusion he makes is that the statement - "this statement is false" also turns out to not be a manifestation of imprecise language. A rigorous mathematical representation of that sentence turned out to be the foundation for Gödel's work, the basis for his famous Incompleteness Theorem. That, too, is a real paradox. "This statement is false" is not a species of imprecise language but is simply meaningless language no matter how you slice it. It is in reference to nothing. It is not imprecise, it is senseless. It does not constitute an actual statement. "This statement" is not a statement by any real definition. I might as well say "blue is green." That makes as much sense as the above. If den Beste wanted to prove that there are things which God cannot do, why doesn't he just say so and prove it. It's very simple to prove. The statement or notion, though, that the old nonsense question - "If God is omnipotent, can he create a rock even he can't lift?" is meaningful is sad, for it's of pure illogic and senselessness, too. Apples and oranges, for one. God is not material so how could anything he create be other than himself? Clearly, matter and spirit cannot be distinct or similar in the way the question demands - thus it is absurd on those terms and definitions alone. Also, the idea that there are things which God cannot do, has nothing to do with omnipotence. One aspect of God logically determined is that God is essentially changeless - eternal, absolute, unchanging. Thus, he cannot change his mind. That's something God cannot do. He cannot say "I love you" and later repent or alter his condition. Same with free will. His respect for free will (essentially that which is of himself, his own being) is such that he cannot alter ours, for that would be to alter his own and to change his mind. For God, though, to change his mind would be to change his being - another thing God cannot do. So, yes, there are metaphorical rocks which God can't lift. The real paradox which Steven can't seem to wrestle honestly with is his absurd atheism which depends on contradictions in terms, illogic, emotional resistance, and despair. He refuses to wonder how you can get something (a universe, life, being, intelligence) from nothing. Furthermore David Heddle at He Lives explains den Beste's error much more simply than I did. He writes: "To ask the question “Can God create a stone that he cannot lift?” is to ask whether God can violate the Law of Contradiction. He cannot. One can safely say, without being sacrilegious, that this is a limitation on God. Not even God can be both A and not A at the same time and in the same relationship. It is a question of logic, not of set theory." posted by Mark Butterworth | 4:22 AM | |
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