"The idea of God with all his traditional attributes is a reasonable one to have" Do you agree?
Darren Staunton 13R Re – Miss Davies
“The idea of God with all his traditional attributes is a reasonable one to have” Do you agree?
The idea of God being all loving, caring, omniscient, omnipresent and so on is a reasonable one to have, as it has been attached to God for years and years. Before science, nobody even questioned God’s attributes, just accepted them for what they were, but with the rise of science, talking about God attributes brings about problems.
When science started to question God’s attributes, they asked the questions, which religions found hard to answer, “if God is omnipotent, can he make a rock big enough, that he cant pick it up?” God is supposed to be omnipotent. If He is omnipotent, then He can create a rock so big that He can't pick it up. If He cannot make a rock like this, then He is not omnipotent. If He can make a rock so big He can't pick it up, then He isn't omnipotent either. Either way demonstrates that God cannot do something. Therefore God is not omnipotent. Therefore God does not exist.
Is this logical? A little. However, the problem is that this bit of logic omits some crucial information; therefore, its conclusion is inaccurate.
What the above "paradox" lacks is vital information concerning God's nature. His omnipotence is not something independent of His nature. It is part of His nature. God has a nature and His attributes operate within that nature, as does anything and everything else.
. His omnipotence is connected to His nature since being omnipotent is part of what He is. Omnipotence, then, must be consistent with what He is and not with what He is not since His omnipotence is not an entity to itself. Therefore, God can only do those things that are consistent with His nature. He cannot lie because it is against His nature to do so. Not being able to lie does not mean He is not God or that He is not all-powerful. Also, He cannot cease to be God. Since He is in all places at all times, if He stopped existing then He wouldn't be in all places at all time. Therefore, He cannot cease to exist without violating His own nature.
The point is that God cannot do something that is a violation of His own existence and nature. Therefore, He cannot make a rock so big he can't pick up, or make something bigger than Himself, etc. But, not being able to do this does not mean He is not God nor that He is not omnipotent.