The monotheistic all powerful one.
A similar one would be can God create a rock so heavy he can’t lift it. The problem with these statements is that they’re not logically sound. As this would be akin to saying, can god be god and not be god at the same time? Which is contradiction and syntactical jargon. A simpler example is like someone saying they have a squared circle.
Your “akin to saying” doesn’t track with the paradox. It is really a matter of anything being “all powerful” which cannot actually exist. There has to be a limit to the power, even if it is itself. That’s the entire point. It isn’t “syntactical jargon” at all.
saying “all powerful” is to say that a being can realize any possibility which can exist. A possibility which cannot exist is like a squared circle. The strawman is that all powerful means to realize even things which cannot exist. In this world there are things which are necessary existence. Meaning they cannot not exist. An example would be the statement “1+1=2” that statement cannot not exist and it is true in all possible worlds. Then you have possible existence such as someone eating an apple. There isn’t anything necessary about it and the person could have very well not eaten it or eaten something else. The apple itself isn’t a necessary existence. Finally, there is an impossible existence. Which would be something that cannot exist like a squared circle. A God which deletes himself or that can create a rock heavier than himself is an impossible existence as it would contradict the very definition we’ve given God. Which is the same as saying A and not A. Or that he can both be God and not God. Thus it is syntactical jargon like a squared circle.
You just replaced the word “paradox” incorrectly with strawman. Your issue is understanding what paradox means. The paradox stands. You also dont understand the full possibilities of “all powerful” since you keep applying things that couldn’t be done by an all powerful being. If there is anything a being cannot do, then they are, by definition, not all powerful.
can god kill god
It’s not a paradox, the words are just incoherent. It’s like asking whether God can taste the color blue. The answer isn’t yes/no, there is no answer.
edit: a word
An all powerful god couldn’t taste the color blue? First, synesthesia exists. Second, the judeo/christain god “smells prayers.”
Also, god died… in the Bible. Anyway w/e. You don’t strike me as someone I want to interact with.
The specific example doesn’t matter much. Google “category error” or read the comment below where I explain the response in more detail.
You don’t strike me as someone I want to interact with.
It’s not like I’m trolling. This stuff is philosophy of religion 101. But, you are, of course, always free to ignore information that contradicts your world view.
This stuff is not philosophy of religion 101, though it might be one seminary professor’s lesson notes in systematic theology for christianity. Specific religions will typically have mental gymnastics or say things like, “It’s just too complicated to understand with our limited capacity as mortals.”
Given a being exists outside of this reality, the laws of this reality do not apply to it. And given a being created this reality, that being can do whatever it wants, regardless of this reality and it’s laws. So the paradox still stands.
If God exists, and God is a non material, intangible being, then God exists outside of the material world. Objects bound to the material universe are born and in turn die, they have a lifespan. If God does not exist within the material universe, then God was never born, therefore God cannot die. God, if they exist, world have no material or tangible properties that can degrade. Also, if God exists outside of the material universe, then God is not bound to the constant of change, and would then be an immutable, un-movable, fixed object, and since death is dependent on mutability, then God could not change their state of existence, as they would be immutable.
I agree with the classical interpretation of an infinitely perfect immaterial God outside of time. But the way out of the paradox is to scrutinize the question itself.
To illustrate the point, take three paradoxical questions: 1) Can God kill himself?, 2) Can God create a stone that he can’t lift?, 3) Can God create a square circle?
#3 Is obviously a meaningless question. The words individually have meaning, but the “square circle” refers to an impossible object whose properties are self-contradictory. Because we interpret God’s power as the ability to do all logically possible things, the inability to create this self-contradictory object is not a limit on his power.
#2 Seems better on the surface because we can posit increasingly larger stones. But the contradiction here is between the object and the nature of God. Once we accept an infinitely perfect God, there can, by definition, be nothing greater than it. If there was a stone that God couldn’t lift, this would contradict the fact of God’s existence. Therefore, as we are under the assumption that God exists, the object itself must be impossible.
#1 Is another form of the omnipotence paradox in #2. Can God do something that contradicts his own properties? This would make God immutable/eternal and yet not immutable/eternal. But an infinitely perfect God is, by definition, immutable/eternal! So any action that would contradict himself is a contradiction in terms and thereby logically impossible. Just like in the case of #3, the answer to the question isn’t “no”. Rather, the question itself is nonsensical.
It’s only nonsensical if you have the additional assumption that God cannot do things that are logically impossible. Granted, if they can, that kind of throws all logical explorations of this sort out the window.
For #1 "Can God kill Himself.?"This presumes God is a physical and material being. If God is a non material being, not consisting of matter, then God was never born, as no material substance was brought into being, therefore God cannot die. So the answer would be no, because God was never born.
For #2 “Can God create a stone he cannot lift?” No. If God is a non material being, that creates the potential for material objects, then God would presumably create the potential of the material stone, and then the potential for a material being, that God could then animate through consciousness. God would then be both a non material being, and a material being in which he animates, that has the potential to lift the stone. Now if you belive that every material object has consciousness, then God would be the being lifting the stone, and the stone itself, so in essence God would be lifting Himself.
For #3 “Can God create a square circle?” Yes. God is a non material being that creates the potential for material objects, form and shape. The measurement of these shapes are arbitrary, measured by material beings, of form and shape. The circle and the square are the same object, a shape, only differentiated by a distribution of points, where one object can configure itself to be the same shape as the other object, by redistributing each objects respective points. So can God create the potential of a shape that can reconfigure itself into another shape, Yes.
Think of it like this, say you have a group of nanobots that are positioned in such a way that they form a shape that we label a circle. Then those nanobots reposition themselves into a shape, that we label as a square. Now did those nanobots create 2 different shapes, or a single shape that reconfigures itself? If it’s just a shape that reconfigured itself, then the shape is neither a square nor a circle, it’s just simply a shape, that is arbitrarily measured, whose measurement does not change the fact that what is being measured is still just a shape.
The Astley paradox.
If you ask Rick Astley for his copy of Disney Pixar’s Up, he can’t give it to you, because he’ll never give you Up. But by not doing so, you’d be let down, and he’ll never let you down.
Testing this scenario is ofc incredibly risky to the state of our reality, so the Astley paradox must remain a thought experiment.
Why is “can god kill god” a paradox? They either can or they can’t (picking “they” because your particular god might not be a he). If they’re all-powerful then the answer is yes, because they can do anything. I don’t see how that’s paradoxical.
If the answer is yes, then it negates “all-powerful” because it cannot withstand it’s own power. Similarly, if “no”, then it is not strong enough to destroy itself and, thereby, not all-poweful.
So, it’s a paradox because “all-powerful” is typically used as “unkillable”, but also carries a connotation of “can-destroy-anything”. So, can something that is capable of destroying anything and cannot die kill itself?
Greek mythology had the dad-god “defeated” by being cut into literal pieces and scattered, but he wasn’t really dead. And Zeus’ siblings were eaten by his dad so they wouldn’t usurp him, but they didn’t die and he later puked them up.
But none of these were touted as all-powerful, biggest than bigger bigly, cannot be killed but can kill everything else.
A similar question on this line is can an all-powerful god make a rock too big for even said god to lift?
If the answer is yes, then it negates “all-powerful” because it cannot withstand it’s own power.
I disagree. If a god dies when it willingly chooses to die, that’s not negating all-powerful. It has the ability to live and the ability to die; choosing one option or the other doesn’t mean it never had the ability to do the option it didn’t pick. Similarly, if a god chooses to never kill itself, that doesn’t negate it being all-powerful, because it may have had the option to kill itself and just not done it.
A similar question on this line is can an all-powerful god make a rock too big for even said god to lift?
That’s a much better paradox because that actually brings ability into it. Killing yourself only indicates the ability to kill yourself, not any lack of ability to do not-killing-yourself.
Trick question; Lemmy is god!
