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ORIGINAL: SuzeCheri

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It is not intended that we "know," so I learned to quit asking.

I'm afraid that at this point in my life, I am not content with ignorance as an answer. It is as useless an answer as "just believe".

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ORIGINAL: Real0ne

(Latin omnipotentia, from omnia and potens, able to do all things). Omnipotence is the power of God to effect whatever is not intrinsically impossible.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11251c.htm

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ORIGINAL: Real0ne

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ORIGINAL: SuzeCheri

Omnipotent means all powerful, nothing is beyond his power, nothing.

And the doctor analogy? Tell me what was it Hitler healed, or Stalin, or Vlad Tepes, or any one of a thousand other murderous tyrants?

And sticking with the medical theme, why is there diseases, why does Ebola exist, or cancer, or AIDS? Why, if God loves us, does he torture us with these diseases?

there you go again you want God to be the pain cop.

here see what you can glean from this:

(Latin omnipotentia, from omnia and potens, able to do all things). Omnipotence is the power of God to effect whatever is not intrinsically impossible. These last words of the definition do not imply any imperfection, since a power that extends to every possibility must be perfect. The universality of the object of the Divine power is not merely relative but absolute, so that the true nature of omnipotence is not clearly expressed by saying that God can do all things that are possible to Him; it requires the further statement that all things are possible to God. The intrinsically impossible is the self-contradictory, and its mutually exclusive elements could result only in nothingness. "Hence," says Thomas (Summa I, Q. xxv, a. 3), "it is more exact to say that the intrinsically impossible is incapable of production, than to say that God cannot produce it." To include the contradictory within the range of omnipotence, as does the Calvinist Vorstius, is to acknowledge the absurd as an object of the Divine intellect, and nothingness as an object of the Divine will and power. "God can do all things the accomplishment of which is a manifestation of power," says Hugh of St. Victor, "and He is almighty because He cannot be powerless" (De sacram., I, ii, 22). As intrinsically impossible must be classed:

1. Any action on the part of God which would be out of harmony with His nature and attributes;
   
2. Any action that would simultaneously connote mutually repellent elements, e.g. a square circle, an infinite creature, etc.

Its fairly well written stuff.


http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11251c.htm

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ORIGINAL: SpanishMatMaster

quote:

ORIGINAL: Real0ne

(Latin omnipotentia, from omnia and potens, able to do all things). Omnipotence is the power of God to effect whatever is not intrinsically impossible.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11251c.htm

And here you have it, Cheri. Using the catholic Catechism instead of the dictionary, Real0ne (as many Catholics) simply reinterprets what is told in the Bible to avoid the contradiction and resolve the problem, acquiring the first answer of my list.

So, for him, God is not omnipotent (not what the dictionary, you, me, and the original authors of the veterotestamentary textes understood under it), but has a "limited power" which avoids the problem.

He could not prevent the tsunami, he could not prevent the floods, he cannot prevent people from killing each other and respect their freedom at the same time, etc, etc, etc.

This is how he resolved the problem.

Best regards.

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ORIGINAL: rulemylife

Sorry, but when the author doesn't know the difference between affect and effect I have to assume he is an idiot.

God cannot effect [something that is produced by an agency or cause] the non-existence of actual events of the past, for it contradictory that the same thing that has happened should also not have happened.

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ORIGINAL: Real0ne

From what I have seen you and the girls are missing some core fundamental elements of understanding.

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Are you sure that you are as far away from it as you think you are?

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ORIGINAL: Real0ne

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ORIGINAL: SpanishMatMaster

quote:

ORIGINAL: Real0ne

(Latin omnipotentia, from omnia and potens, able to do all things). Omnipotence is the power of God to effect whatever is not intrinsically impossible.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11251c.htm

And here you have it, Cheri. Using the catholic Catechism instead of the dictionary, Real0ne (as many Catholics) simply reinterprets what is told in the Bible to avoid the contradiction and resolve the problem, acquiring the first answer of my list.

So, for him, God is not omnipotent (not what the dictionary, you, me, and the original authors of the veterotestamentary textes understood under it), but has a "limited power" which avoids the problem.

He could not prevent the tsunami, he could not prevent the floods, he cannot prevent people from killing each other and respect their freedom at the same time, etc, etc, etc.

This is how he resolved the problem.

Best regards.

its fairly good actually.   I am in a different space than any of this.  I went through my trial by fire before these kids were born.

They and you want to get involved in some of the most esoteric philosophy and theology known to man before they learn to crawl.

This is a good place to learn.  You might read some of this, but then of course your purpose may be more to throw rocks at what you do not understand?


Another class of intrinsic impossibilities includes all that would simultaneously connote mutually repellent elements, e.g. a square circle, an infinite creature, etc. God cannot effect the non-existence of actual events of the past, for it contradictory that the same thing that has happened should also not have happened. Omnipotence is perfect power, free from all mere potentiality. Hence, although God does not bring into external being all that He is able to accomplish, His power must not be understood as passing through successive stages before its effect is accomplished. The activity of God is simple and eternal, without evolution or change. The transition from possibility to actuality or from act to potentiality, occurs only in creatures. When it is said that God can or could do a thing, the terms are not to be understood in the sense in which they are applied to created causes, but as conveying the idea of a Being possessed of infinite unchangeable power, the range of Whose activity is limited only by His sovereign Will. "Power," says St. Thomas, "is not attributed to God as a thing really different from His Knowledge and Will, but as something expressed by a different concept, since power means that which executes the command of the will and the advice of the intellect. These three (viz., intellect, will, power), coincide with one another in God" (Summa, I, Q. xxv, a. 1, ad 4). Omnipotence is all-sufficient power. The adaptation of means to ends in the universe does not argue, as J.S. Mill would have it, that the power of the designer is limited, but only that God has willed to manifest His glory by a world so constituted rather than by another. Indeed the production of secondary causes, capable of accomplishing certain effects, requires greater power than the direct accomplishment of these same effects. On the other hand even though no creature existed, God's power not be barren, for creatures are not an end to God.



From what I have seen you and the girls are missing some core fundamental elements of understanding.

As I said one cannot bring you or anyone else to wisdom.

Thats not an insult its just the way life and maturing rolls.

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ORIGINAL: SuzeCheri

I do have faith that the answers will come, that is why I am rejecting Christianity, because the answers I have determined so far indicate that it is a false doctrine. what i know in 80 years is irrelevant, if i know something then that contradicts what i know now, I will again become a believer, but I have no intention of deliberately shutting down my reason and sense for the next 60 years on the off chance that I might learn something some day that contradicts what I have learned so far.

It isn't just being almighty, it is the combination of almighty, all-knowing, perfectly just, and the embodiment of love and goodness that cannot be reconciled with the existence of evil.

If he cannot override the "prime directive", as you called it, then he is not almighty, if he can but will not then he is neither just nor good. An almighty, just, and good God can only exist if he doesn't know in advance what will happen, but God is supposedly all-knowing as well, so the possibility of his existence the way he is conceived in the three main monotheistic religions simply vanishes due to the very definition of God that they hold. God simply cannot exist as envisioned by Christianity, it is impossible to be all those four things and allow evil to exist.

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ORIGINAL: rulemylife


In other words you are pretty much insane.

You spout a lot of words but very few of them are coherent.

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ORIGINAL: Termyn8or

"I hadn't considered the universal forgiveness idea, but you do have a good point, especially since we are supposedly being forgiven all the sins we did commit, but not for the "original sin" that we did not personally commit."

ah yes, gnosis

There is alot more to it for some. You see I have hurt people badly. Not always physically but plotted against them and won in a game that I saw as just a game, but it fucked their life up. No pacifist two thousand years ago can make that right, only the person wronged can make that right by forgiveness.


T^T

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ORIGINAL: SuzeCheri

And what if, we as humans, are fully capable of comprehending, what if the reason that there is no answer is because there is an answer, and the answer is that Christianity is a false doctrine, God, if he exists, is not the God taught by Christianity.

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ORIGINAL: SuzeCheri
You are the third person to basically say "you can't know, so don't ask, just believer" I'm sorry, but that is the biggest cop out of them all. That simply doesn't wash the clothes with me.

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ORIGINAL: SuzeCheri

I don't have a god, remember, I'm the apostate, that is what we are discussing. My premise is not flawed, it is your god that is grossly flawed.

Why does evil exist?

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ORIGINAL: SuzeCheri

I don't have a god, remember, I'm the apostate, that is what we are discussing. My premise is not flawed, it is your god that is grossly flawed.

Why does evil exist?