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man-man

Avatar: 156485 2010-01-24 16:36:14 -0500
24

[Harem and Sushi Bar]

Level 69 Hacker

Selfish fine upstanding member of society

The way omnipresence is normally framed, implies being everywhere, at all times. I suppose omnipotence would imply being able to choose to not be somewhere, but that would be a willing negation of his omnipresence (downgrading to … polypresence? multipresence?). Omni-all gods tend to also be considered necessary facts of the universe – the ontological argument concludes that god must necessarily exist (as opposed to contingently existing) so there would be no way for him to not exist, although omnipotence would suggest that he could choose to do so (if he was truly necessary, such that there are no possible worlds that don’t contain god, then I imagine god’s self-annihilation would bring about the end of the universe). The ontological argument has gaping holes though, so take that however you like.

As far as I’m concerned, all that this semantic wrangling shows us is that the concept of god doesn’t make any sense, because it leads to all kinds of contradictions when you take his every quality to the “omni” level. Some would argue that god is greater than logic and is allowed to do things that are blatant contradictions of logic because he’s god… that reads like special pleading to me, “just inore how bat**** ****ing insane this is, and how it contradicts itself, because I’m talking about god

Frankly, if a concept doesn’t make coherent logical sense, then it’s a failed idea. Tacking on “well he can just do that anyway because he’s god” doesn’t solve anything. Being omnipotent means you can be both the irresistible force and the immovable object at the same time, and the normal solution to that paradox is that only one of those things can possibly exist at once. Being omnipresent means denying any physical/spatial location, and leaves us wondering what the hell god’s supposed to be made of, that he can exist everywhere at once without taking up all the room. Being omniscient denies free will, because it would mean that time is a useless human construct without greater meaning, and actually we’re just moving through a fixed set of physical states towards a predetermined future.

Every time you really look at the qualities ascribed to god, you find contradictions of logic and common sense. I think the cognitive dissonance this generates is probably part of the reason that really strong believers can seem so insane. It’s easy to accept logic if you’re not too hot on god, and it’s easy to accept god if you’re not too hot on logic, but both at once … it’s like trying to force the like poles of magnets together (except maybe for the option of accepting both of them weakly, so you don’t force the magnets together too closely), but people tend to get pushed into one position or the other and take it up strongly, and making the leap in either direction requires a sudden and dramatic change in your beliefs.

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