God and omnipotence (faith, God)

[Faint]

Originally Posted by The Truth

God with all his greatness couldn't?

I think you have a certain defenition of God that most of Christians don't agree with.

I can see that many people still have shortage in understaing what is God.

I think that your God in all his greatness still needs to kneel before the Roman god Terminus, god of boundaries. If your God did exist, he would be limited, and thus he would have boundaries. For one example, he cannot be me. I am a separate entity--therefore God has a boundary between him and me. In another example, your God cannot be all-powerful; if he gave us freewill, he cannot make us love him. That is our decision, and the fact that he cannot make us do something (without eliminating our freewill) is another limit to his "power".

[michel]

Originally Posted by Faint

I think that your God in all his greatness still needs to kneel before the Roman god Terminus, god of boundaries. If your God did exist, he would be limited, and thus he would have boundaries. For one example, he cannot be me. I am a separate entity--therefore God has a boundary between him and me. In another example, your God cannot be all-powerful; if he gave us freewill, he cannot make us love him. That is our decision, and the fact that he cannot make us do something (without eliminating our freewill) is another limit to his "power".

I don't see it as a limit to his power; I see it more as a case of him letting you out on a very long leash - to give you the choice to return to him, or not.

IMO God, by definition can have no humanly imaginable restriction on his power.

[lilithu]

Originally Posted by Merlin

is it important that we believe that he is omnipotent?

How many faiths believe that he is, or does he have limitations?

Define omnipotence.

Can God create an object that is so heavy that God cannot lift it?

Just kidding. I think the idea of God's omnipotence is not very helpful. As soon as you say that there is nothing that God can't do, it begs the question of why there is undeserved suffering in the world. Whay do bad things happen to good people? Basically, there are three beliefs that cannot go together:
1) God is all powerful
2) God is good (cares about humanity)
3) There is unnecessary suffering in the world.

Either God is all powerful and chooses to allow unnecessary suffering, in which case God is not good. Or God is good but cannot prevent all suffering, in which case God is not all powerful.

Some will "solve" this problem by rejecting belief number three, by saying that there is no such thing as undeserved suffering, that any time something bad happens to someone it's because (s)he deserve it, whether it's because of sin or karma. I absolutely reject that idea. No one is going to convince me that all the people who died in the World Trade center or all the people who died in the tsunami somehow deserved it.

Others will say that the suffering is "underserved" but still serves a purpose in that it teaches us something. In which case my question would be, well what does one learn by dying a horrible death? And why do some people have to learn that way and not others? Again, I find that explanation in adequate. For me, it is clear that unnecessary suffering exists.

So we go back to whether God is good or whether God is all powerful. And for that, it simply boils down to this for me: I can love a God that is good but not all powerful. I can do my part to help accomplish what needs to be done. What are we here for anyway, if God holds all the power? But I cannot love a God who is all powerful but not good. Even if He were threaten to toss me in hell for eternity, such power does not engender love in me. (And heck, if He cannot make me love Him, then He isn't all powerful anyway, is He?)

[Faint]

Originally Posted by michel

I don't see it as a limit to his power; I see it more as a case of him letting you out on a very long leash - to give you the choice to return to him, or not.

IMO God, by definition can have no humanly imaginable restriction on his power.

Ok, but do you think God can give you freewill to do and think whatever you want and at the same time make you want to return to him? This is impossible. The second someone/something is able to control a person's mind, that person no longer has freewill. How can they have freewill if their will is enthralled by another?

[lilithu]

Originally Posted by Faint

I think that your God in all his greatness still needs to kneel before the Roman god Terminus, god of boundaries. If your God did exist, he would be limited, and thus he would have boundaries. For one example, he cannot be me. I am a separate entity--therefore God has a boundary between him and me.

Actually, in my belief system (and those of most Eastern traditions) there is no boundary between you and God, or me and God. You and I are not separate entities. That is illusion.

Originally Posted by Faint

In another example, your God cannot be all-powerful; if he gave us freewill, he cannot make us love him. That is our decision, and the fact that he cannot make us do something (without eliminating our freewill) is another limit to his "power".

Yes!!

[Aqualung]

Originally Posted by michel

So, where, my friend, in the Bible, does it say that God was unable to create "already progressed" people ? - I would have thought, that as such an ardent Bible reader, you would have realized that he did created people who were already progressed - namely Adam and Eve; until that time when he 'demoted' them for being silly with apples and snakes........

they weren't progressed. They were forever in a state of unchange, knowing no good because they knew no evil, and having no joy because they knew no sorrow. Doesn't god know both joy and sorrow? Yet Adam and Eve didn't. They were not fully progressd.

Originally Posted by Faint

Who set God's rules? A higher God?

I don't know who set the rules. It wasn't a higher god per se, but those laws were already around well before God created the earth.

Originally Posted by The Truth

I think you have a certain defenition of God that most of Christians don't agree with.

Perhaps.

Originally Posted by lilithu

Aqualung's understanding of God may (or may not) be different from most Christians, but that doesn't mean she has a shortage in understanding God. That kind of comment has no place in debate.

Thank you.

[Faint]

Originally Posted by lilithu

Actually, in my belief system (and those of most Eastern traditions) there is no boundary between you and God, or me and God. You and I are not separate entities. That is illusion.

So your version of God is more like "the Force" in Star Wars, maybe part of all living things and all living things are part of it? We are all part of the same universe and we are the universe, etc. That's a whole different story, my argument was aimed at the general Western idea that God is his own being, and we are separate from him.

[lilithu]

Originally Posted by Faint

So your version of God is more like "the Force" in Star Wars, maybe part of all living things and all living things are part of it? We are all part of the same universe and we are the universe, etc. That's a whole different story, my argument was aimed at the general Western idea that God is his own being, and we are separate from him.

Understood. My version of God is more like ParamAtman or Brahman in Hinduism or anatman and interdependancy in Buddhism. It's like the Force but there's more to it than that. btw, "the Force" in Star Wars was modeled after the Tao in Taoism. The only real difference is that Taoism did not postulate any "midichlorians" to explain itself.