> On Dec 29, 2016, at 10:50 AM, Helmut Raulien <[email protected]> wrote: > > Very well said, I agree. Dawkins claimed to having proved the nonexistence of > God with the almightiness-allknowingness-paradoxon: If God is all-knowing, > then He knows the future too, but then He is not almighty, because knowing > it, He cannot change it. I think, this is a poor argument, because it > suggests, that for God time is, like for us, inevitable and one-dimensioned. > And, that a paradoxon is a refutation. I guess both are not so: God might > have a lot of more access to time, whose (times) nature we dont understand > close to at all. And a paradoxon is not a refutation, it may be solved, and > if not, it even may unfold (according to Luhmann, not completely understood > by me), and affect reality, so a paradoxon is a valuable part of reality > instead of adressing something as not real. Anyway, hope You have had a merry > christmas (not knowing the nature of time, I cannot exclude the nonfutility > of this wish), and happy new year!
Most of the New Atheist arguments against God are pretty embarrassing as they just aren’t that familiar with the literature. They are on stronger ground when attacking an interventionist quasi-personal God such as is common in theism - although even there the history of the big three religions offer more choices than they typically admit. The main problem with the three classic “omnis” are well known. Often though there are hidden assumptions going on in terms of how to understand the semantics of these terms. Process theologians often play with this a lot. You can see this for instance in disputes over whether God is impassible or not. The traditional reading is to take God as an unmoved mover ala Aristotle whereas process theologians often portray him as the most moved mover. In both cases we have a kind of “highest” property but the assumptions about what omnipotence entails are radically different. To the paradox, the classic way it’s solve is simply to say whatever God is, he’s logically consistent. So the paradox simply defines a non-obtainable state which God need not have power to achieve. The classic “can God create a rock he can’t move” is really the same argument. That said I tend to think there are some inherent conflicts with God as all knowing and all powerful. But it appears not in terms of God proper but in terms of God as embodied in a mortal body. That’s not an issue for Jews or Muslims but it certainly is for Christians. So to my eyes the biggest weaknesses are usually in the theology of the two natures in Christ. However it also seems the case that Jesus is ironically the fastest thing to get jesttisoned by philosophers who think through the class Greek inspired properties. i.e. the omnis classically understood. At that point though it’s worth asking if they are still Christian in their thought. We discussed that relative to Peirce a few months ago. I’m still not sure what Peirce thought of Christ but I assume that (as was common in the late 19th century and early 20th century liberal theology) he tended to not take Jesus too seriously. At least in terms of the traditional theology. To your broader point though there is a strong tradition that sees aporias as inherent to the universe. I’m not sure how Peirce sees that. It seems to me to be a strong philosophical tradition going back to Aristotle and arguably Plato’s early dialogs.
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