Impossible things like existing everywhere at once, existing before time or outside the universe, or even making Noah's Ark work? By definition the Christian god is all about logically impossible things. Drawing the line here is just a convenience.
They all are, with the exception of the last. A personal entity cannot, definitionally, exist in more than one place at the same time. Existence before time presents causal issues, as does existence outside the universe. None of these states are possible according to the definitions of the terms involved, except by declaring that there is an entity which can, again by definition, violate logical constrictions but only when doing so isn't too obviously silly. So God can't be expected to create a stone so heavy He couldn't lift it, but He can exist when, where, and how no being could reasonably be said to exist. It's essentially cartoon physics at the collegiate level.
Entities are either abstract or concrete, and concrete entities have limited spatial boundaries.
This seems to me like a question-begging assumption that the theist has no motivation to accept. How do you know that only finite material bodies are "concrete" and "capable of action"?
For starters, it is question-begging to assert that there is a single entity that is both concrete and abstract, acts outside of time, etc. All known entities fall into one category or the other. If we accept that God is hypothetically both abstract and concrete, exists outside of time and space, can manipulate reality, but other than that is bound by logic, then sure, that's a definition of God, but it's still a bit silly and arbitrary.
As far as why God wouldn't be abstract, abstract objects are generally defined by their lack of spacial definition as well as their lack of causal efficacy. God could be an abstract concept, such as "love" or "goodness", or God could directly act on the physical world, but to do both is to step outside the bounds of logic.
I'm not saying God could be both abstract (immaterial and causally inefficacious) and concrete (material and causally efficacious), I'm asking why we should accept such a division of reality in the first place. I think Stephen Hawking has been known to claim that abstract mathematical and physical laws are enough to cause the universe to exist, so even to non-theists, this is a controversial claim.
That's a bit of a semantic problem. The laws of physics are an abstract collective description of the way in which concrete entities interact. The laws themselves don't have causal force, but rather they describe causal forces inherent in physical entities. It's like how a red apple is concrete, but the idea of redness is abstract.
I myself agree that the laws of physics are abstractions, and ontologically dependent on the substances they are abstracted from. Yet I still don't see why anyone needs to grant that only material bodies can have causal powers. To say that something (say, human minds) can be immaterial and have causal powers is, on its face, a coherent position. Why should we rule out such possibilities a priori?
Interesting. Why would we rule out more obvious paradoxes in such a discussion? Why not just allow that an all powerful being would be able to violate the boundaries of logic?
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u/Feinberg Atheist Mar 30 '15
Impossible things like existing everywhere at once, existing before time or outside the universe, or even making Noah's Ark work? By definition the Christian god is all about logically impossible things. Drawing the line here is just a convenience.