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Religious Views of God and Omnipotence
- Thread starter Barton
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leibowde84
Veteran Member
Great thread. I often ask myself, if God is all-powerful, yet he gives us free-will, does he know what our future "free" choices will be? In other words, does he know the future? If so, are we really "free"? And, if not, God is limited, and, thus, not all-powerful.
idea
Question Everything
29 Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be.
30 All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence.
31 Behold, here is the agency (free will) of man. link
I believe God is cleaning up a mess He did not create.... That He knows everything, but did not cause everything. There is a huge difference between knowing and causing.
I also believe that there are some rules that even God is bound by...
25 What, do ye suppose that mercy can rob justice? I say unto you, Nay; not one whit. If so, God would cease to be God. link
The Euthyphro dilemma - link -
"Is what is morally good commanded by God because it is morally good, or is it morally good because it is commanded by God?"
I go with option "a", that good and evil exist with or without God.
Define "all powerful"... Can God make a rock soooo big that even He can't move it? does all-powerful include the illogical? does impossible exist? If there are logical contradictions involved (like can God force everyone to be loving? but then love cannot be forced etc.) I don't think that falls in the realm of "all-powerful"... I think omnipotent only applies to the realm of what is logically possible.
30 All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence.
31 Behold, here is the agency (free will) of man. link
I believe God is cleaning up a mess He did not create.... That He knows everything, but did not cause everything. There is a huge difference between knowing and causing.
I also believe that there are some rules that even God is bound by...
25 What, do ye suppose that mercy can rob justice? I say unto you, Nay; not one whit. If so, God would cease to be God. link
The Euthyphro dilemma - link -
"Is what is morally good commanded by God because it is morally good, or is it morally good because it is commanded by God?"
I go with option "a", that good and evil exist with or without God.
Define "all powerful"... Can God make a rock soooo big that even He can't move it? does all-powerful include the illogical? does impossible exist? If there are logical contradictions involved (like can God force everyone to be loving? but then love cannot be forced etc.) I don't think that falls in the realm of "all-powerful"... I think omnipotent only applies to the realm of what is logically possible.
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leibowde84
Veteran Member
"I also believe that there are some rules that even God is bound by ..."
- Does this mean that you accept that God cannot be "all-powerful", which requires an absence of limitations.
idea
Question Everything
I believe God would "cease to be God" if He did anything unjust etc., so yes, there are rules that even God has to obey. Euthyphro horn "a".
Guy Threepwood
Mighty Pirate
One way to look at it; a programmer is 'all powerful' with regards to his software creation, which has certain limitations by design-
Similarly an all powerful being is powerful enough to set his own limitations, or he wouldn't be all powerful would he?
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arthra
Baha'i
Well in the Baha'i Writings it suggests that "evil" is more the absence of Good.. as shadow is the absence of Light... Once the Light is shown on a subject the shadow disappears.. It has no inherent reality in itself. In my view... those who confer more substance to "evil" are close to dualism.
In a book entitled "Some Answered Questions" in which Abdul-Baha is responding to various questions... He says:
"....ignorance is the want of knowledge; error is the want of guidance; forgetfulness is the want of memory; stupidity is the want of good sense. All these things have no real existence.
In the same way, the sensible realities are absolutely good, and evil is due to their nonexistence -- that is to say, blindness is the want of sight, deafness is the want of hearing, poverty is the want of wealth, illness is the want of health, death is the want of life, and weakness is the want of strength."
Abdul-Baha continues with
"...it is possible that one thing in relation to another may be evil, and at the same time within the limits of its proper being it may not be evil. Then it is proved that there is no evil in existence; all that God created He created good. This evil is nothingness; so death is the absence of life. When man no longer receives life, he dies. Darkness is the absence of light: when there is no light, there is darkness. Light is an existing thing, but darkness is nonexistent. Wealth is an existing thing, but poverty is nonexisting."
~ Abdu'l-Baha, Some Answered Questions, p. 261
leibowde84
Veteran Member
If an all-powerful being is limited by anything, whether or not he put those limitations on himself, that being is not "all-powerful", as there would potentially be a greater amount of "power" in a being that had no limitations.
In other words, any limitations = not all-powerful.
leibowde84
Veteran Member
God might have been all-powerful, but he gave up some of that power through limitations on himself, so he is no longer all-powerful. Unless, that is, he can choose to disregard those limitations ... but, then they wouldn't be limitations at all.
Guy Threepwood
Mighty Pirate
If you set strict limitations on yourself, not to eat/drink whatever you want when you want, does this make you weaker or more powerful?
I'd argue the future exists for God as the present does for us, therefore he foreknows but we are free insofar as we are not predetermined by him into anything, yet alone our final end in the afterlife. We are still the authors of our own decisions even if we don't actually know what those decisions will be until they happen.
leibowde84
Veteran Member
If the future is already determined, which would be necessary for God to know what the future will hold, how is it that we are free? Or, are you saying that God does not know what the future holds?
leibowde84
Veteran Member
Those aren't really limitations, as you can choose not to adhere to them. Are you saying that these are the kind of "limitations" on God? Is he free to disregard them at any moment, or is he actually bound by them?
The future only exists insofar as we view things within temporal constraints as beings within a particular spot in space and time. This doesn't apply to God who simply isn't subject to this. Hence the future isn't set in stone but entirely contingent on our own decisions. Yet, he foreknows us not because of a set future he has access to, but because he does not exist within any particular spot in space and time.
Any non-monotheistic religion has gods that can be described as benevolent but not omnipotent, as no gods in polytheisms are omnipotent. And non-theistic religions don't ascribe to the idea of gods at all.
If by "address the theodicy issue" we mean "the theology (or lack thereof) of this religion renders the theodicy issue irrelevant," pretty much all religions except those with classical monotheist theology do this.
leibowde84
Veteran Member
That seems to scream of a confirmation bias to me, like you are trying to explain away the isssues that arise with omnipotence by removing God from anything that we are familiar with. Our minds are not capable of understanding the concept of a being outside of time/space, so it just seems like quite a convenient explanation. It ends there if its true. But, I am not convinced.
Why do you believe this to be the case specifically, apart from it filling in the blanks? Why can't God just be limited and, thus, not all-powerful?
Classical theism has always asserted that God is non-temporal. Temporal existence originates from him.
God is beyond our comprehension, yet as a matter of faith we assert that God, despite being omniscient and non-temporal, has truly granted us moral freedom. (Unless you're Reformed which embraces determinism). How exactly the relationship between God's foreknowledge and our freedom works is a mystery. Catholicism has no outright doctrine on this only that we avoid the extremes of Pelagianism on one end, and outright Calvinist determinism on the other.
Because firstly, I do not see the God's attributes as described by classical theism to be in anyway incompatible with free will. Secondly, denial of God's attributes would be heretical to a traditional Christian understanding of God. When I say I believe in God, I mean God and not some ultra powerful being. The only limitation (if you would call it a limitation) I put on my understanding of God is that God cannot do the logically incoherent. In other words, God cannot draw a square circle, or create a married bachelor as that entails contradiction.
Guy Threepwood
Mighty Pirate
That's a good question, he is certainly not bound by the laws of his own creation, so I'd imagine there is nothing in creation as we know it, that he is inherently limited by-
But then there is the question of free will which must exist, must be beyond God's direct control to exist, but self imposed rules again?
Also the question of time- a dimension which is part of the universe itself- i.e. in one sense God created all time, every moment, every event. along with everything else simulataneously- so it's not clear that questions about ongoing involvement, decisions, even make sense as we would perceive them
It's a little academic- I'm no Bible scholar but I don't think it uses the word 'omnipotent' anywhere in most translations, and 'all powerful' as a turn of phrase does not have to be taken to a literal extreme to be an appropriate description..
lovemuffin
τὸν ἄρτον τοῦ ἔρωτος
I agree with this, and a point I've attempted to make in the past is that, even within Christianity, where I believe (perhaps alongside Islam) the classical view of an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God came to be prevalent theologically, it does not seem to me to be true that such a theology is inherent to Christianity, in the sense that I think it is possible to understand God in a Christian way without asserting that those attributes perfectly describe God. Especially with regard to the meaning of "omnipotence", the philosophy of the middle ages and onward doesn't seem to perfectly reflect the original meanings of terms borrowed from scripture, or the theological insights of ancient Christians.
In the context of a question about the crucifixion, I wrote about this here: Why did God incarnate in the flesh? | ReligiousForums.com
In a more philosophical way, I've written about the question of theodicy and theology also here: Panikkar, Heidegger, and Plantinga walk into a bar… | Ἐν Αἰνίγματι
I also agree with this. Although it might be fair to say it doesn't render the problem of evil "irrelevant" in the sense that people still wonder at the existence of evil. It just removes the more logical problem of evil, as in the logical contradiction between what theology seems to imply and what we actually experience in the world.
To me, the topic is interesting precisely because it is a theological issue and I think the traditional tri-omni theology is problematic, both philosophically but also based on reflection on my own religious experience.
Guy Threepwood
Mighty Pirate
Especially when you consider; how do you create a book that transcends millennia, continents, races and cultures, to survive as the most influential book in the history of humanity..
i.e. the message has to be understood in different contexts- and to inspire the bulk of free thinking humanity, not satisfy the academic arguments of a handful of intellectuals like Dawkins or Hitchens etc.
will check out what you wrote