Is God an incoherent concept (impossible?)?

[Link]

May God forgive me, but I've decided for the sake of intellectual discussion and augmenting level of debate, to play devil's advocate.

Warning: I know how to refute the arguments I'm about to make.


1. God as one ultimate being is impossible, because you have to choose between traits (compassion vs justice), and you can't maximize in any.

2. Greatness has to be earned and gained, while by definition, God is eternal, and hence can't earn praise, honor, greatness but would have always had it. This shows by paradox God is impossible.

3. Virtues and morality is often situational and context related, courage and bravery doesn't make sense for eternal all powerful Deit(y)(ies), and so most virtues can't stem from God's application of them, and God by definition has to have all virtues or would not be God.

 

[Lain]

May God forgive me, but I've decided for the sake of intellectual discussion and augmenting level of debate, to play devil's advocate.

Warning: I know how to refute the arguments I'm about to make.


1. God as one ultimate being is impossible, because you have to choose between traits (compassion vs justice), and you can't maximize in any.

2. Greatness has to be earned and gained, while by definition, God is eternal, and hence can't earn praise, honor, greatness but would have always had it. This shows by paradox God is impossible.

3. Virtues and morality is often situational and context related, courage and bravery doesn't make sense for eternal all powerful Deit(y)(ies), and so most virtues can't stem from God's application of them, and God by definition has to have all virtues or would not be God.

Why do you have to choose? Why is the second not just a reference to human greatness? Why are these not just human virtues?

 

[Link]

Why do you have to choose? Why is the second not just a reference to human greatness? Why are these not just human virtues?

If you punish less, you are less just, if you punish more, you are less compassionate/merciful. Have to choose between mercy and justice for example.

 

[Link]

Why is the second not just a reference to human greatness?

Why make God the exception? human Greatness is the greatness we know.

 

[Link]

Why are these not just human virtues?

It would mean God lacked virtues though, which is problematic.

 

[Lain]

Why make God the exception? human Greatness is the greatness we know.

Because God is by definition not like anything we know of and we are just using analogies to discuss Him.

 

[Link]

Because God is by definition not like anything we know of and we are just using analogies to discuss Him.

How do we know it's great then? If it's greatness has nothing to do with ours?

 

[Spirit of Light]

May God forgive me, but I've decided for the sake of intellectual discussion and augmenting level of debate, to play devil's advocate.

Warning: I know how to refute the arguments I'm about to make.


1. God as one ultimate being is impossible, because you have to choose between traits (compassion vs justice), and you can't maximize in any.

2. Greatness has to be earned and gained, while by definition, God is eternal, and hence can't earn praise, honor, greatness but would have always had it. This shows by paradox God is impossible.

3. Virtues and morality is often situational and context related, courage and bravery doesn't make sense for eternal all powerful Deit(y)(ies), and so most virtues can't stem from God's application of them, and God by definition has to have all virtues or would not be God.

A question (not a critique of you)
What are you trying to prove or tell with all these different OP`s you making about God?

 

[Link]

A question (not a critique of you)
What are you trying to prove or tell with all these different OP`s you making about God?

I want people to see and attain certainty in God. I believe God and his Oneness is worth discussing.

 

[Spirit of Light]

I want people to see and attain certainty in God. I believe God and his Oneness is worth discussing.

That is all well and good of course, But is your understanding the only way possible to understand God? Maybe other people do believe but in a different way?

 

[Link]

That is all well and good of course, But is your understanding the only way possible to understand God? Maybe other people do believe but in a different way?

Off-topic. There is plenty ways to skin a cat, so no to your question. Let's not change the subject of this thread.

 

[Lain]

How do we know it's great then? If it's greatness has nothing to do with ours?

By a comparison with ours and His acts which we receive and discern. For instance, we may say that powerful people are able to effect their will, but we discern in God that He is able to effect all possible things, so we say He is all-powerful.

 

[Kooky]

Warning: I know how to refute the arguments I'm about to make.

Most skilled debaters knows how to refute arguments they've constructed themselves specifically with the purpose of refuting them.

Try taking on other people's arguments without the benefit of a God's Eye view on the issue if you are seeking enlightenment rather than self-gratification.

 

[Link]

By a comparison with ours and His acts which we receive and discern. For instance, we may say that powerful people are able to effect their will, but we discern in God that He is able to effect all possible things, so we say He is all-powerful.

So are you saying our power and his power are totally unrelated? Our goodness and his goodness totally unrelated, no connection?

 

[Link]

Most skilled debaters knows how to refute arguments they've constructed themselves specifically with the purpose of refuting them.

Try taking on other people's arguments without the benefit of a God's Eye view on the issue.

As for argument 2, @Deidre can testify, I became Atheist for a short time because of it when I made it myself.

And she can testify I was obsessed with the argument of evil and refuting it in my Deist/Neopagan (not sure which I was really, more like what I felt that day, sometimes I believed in Angels and soothsayers other times not, this is why I say neopagan/deist but I didn't equate anyone with God's Level).

I took the arguments seriously. Too seriously.

 

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if you are seeking enlightenment rather than self-gratification.

I'm sharing my answers, because, I struggled with these notions for a time myself.

 

[Link]

@Lain, keep thinking. I will share my answers eventually but I'm sure you can solve them.

 

[Lain]

So are you saying our power and his power are totally unrelated? Our goodness and his goodness totally unrelated, no connection?

The connection is that we have a faint reflection of what He has.

 

[Link]

The connection is that we have a faint reflection of what He has.

So why can't he give it to us all in a very high amount and that we don't have to earn greatness and goodness if he doesn't have to gain it and earn it?

 

[Lain]

So why can't he give it to us all in a very high amount and that we don't have to earn greatness and goodness if he doesn't have to gain it and earn it?

For we are created and finite but He is uncreated and infinite, it is impossible to have a creature have precisely the same traits in the same way as God for the nature of their existence is infinitely different.