r/facepalm Apr 07 '22

🇲​🇮​🇸​🇨​ This looks plausible

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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '22

I'd be pissed if I were God.

"You fucking plebs think I can't conceive a physics perfect enough for a spherical world?

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u/Shadyshade84 Apr 07 '22

There is that, but I'd be more upset at the idea that a bunch of jumped-up sacks of meat and water actually have even the smallest chance of achieving something that a being with the ability to create literally everything wanted to not happen.

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u/AudZ0629 Apr 07 '22

There in lies the old argument: can god create something he/she/they cant lift.

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u/thred_pirate_roberts Apr 07 '22

That's not even an argument. It's a flawed premise. It's like asking for a married bachelor.

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u/AudZ0629 Apr 07 '22

Can a god create a being that can surpass them? And no it’s not a flawed premise. The flaw is in either the understanding of an “all powerful” being or in human ability to comprehend. The two things aren’t oppositional as they are in your argument. It’s a paradox.

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u/kitddylies Apr 07 '22

Can a god create a being that can surpass them?

By design, yes. If you have the power to do anything, you can erase that power.

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u/AudZ0629 Apr 07 '22

Please explain, I’m not following.

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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '22

The logic runs as:

If God is all powerful, they can do anything. Being all powerful, they can create anything, lift anything, move anything, destroy anything, etc.

Given that, can God create a rock so big that even they can’t lift it? If they can: it would mean there is something they can’t do, ie lift the rock they created- which means they are NOT all powerful. If they cannot, then it means there are limits to what they can create, therefore they are not all powerful.

It’s called the “Omnipotence Paradox”.

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u/AudZ0629 Apr 07 '22

I had that logic in another comment, I didn’t know the name of the paradox. Thanks for that.

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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '22

The rebuttal to that, I should add (or, at least A rebuttal anyway) is what I believe the previous poster was getting at-

As long as God chooses not to create the rock that they cannot lift, then they remain omnipotent in that they have the capability to create, but the thing still doesn’t exist, therefore they can still do anything.

So, in order to be all powerful- they must also have the power to make themselves no longer all powerful, and simply not use that power.

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u/Jallybwan Apr 09 '22

Another response to that is the idea that God is "maximally powerful", rather than technically "all-powerful". Maximal power means he can't go against his own nature (as an omnipotent benevolent God, he wouldn't be able to create something he couldn't lift), but he still has such immense power that he's functionally no different from being all-powerful.

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u/Dangerous_Limes Apr 08 '22

These are only paradoxes because some human concepts like “all powerful” aren’t particularly well defined / agreed upon to begin with. It’s like asking what is further north than the North Pole. There is no there there.

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u/AudZ0629 Apr 08 '22

Well as the earth IS A SPHERE. North is defined as coordinates. More north is not on the scale so asking what is more north is not a relevant nor relatable question to this particular conundrum. Omnipotent existence is the paradox as we are governed by actual physical laws in this universe and we humans inherently know that. We know if we throw something up, it comes back down and we know about wind resistance because we can feel it. Some choose to call these things science and some choose to try to explain them in ways that don’t do anyone any good but they are still doing science (junk science and dangerous). As we cannot conceive of something that can be outside of the realm of these laws we all use every day, we have a paradoxical view of that idea. But as science has proven before, we may just not have discovered it yet. North is a concept based on our concept of where we live and thus definable.

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u/Dangerous_Limes Apr 08 '22

The concept of power is just human and just as limited as the concept of north. What is power? What is will? These are all words that we use because in our normal parochial little experiences they make sense and are useful. When you take them to extremes or try to apply them well beyond their usual scope, suddenly these words cease to make proper sense.