me wrote:Not omnipotent
"In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed. [Ex 31:17]"
Not omnipresent
"But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that men were building." [Gen 11:5]
Not perfect
"The Lord was grieved that he had made man on earth, and his heart was filled with pain." [Gen 6:6]
Strike 1- Your attempt to show that God is not omnipotent is extremely weak. I couldn't even begin to cite all of the scriptures that show that God is powerful. God is called "Almighty." That in itself is omnipotence, buddy. And what is rest? Rest is a break from activity. As in, God stopped creating things. And refreshed is pretty self explanatory.
Strike 2-The Bible makes no claim that God is omnipresent, but it does claim that everything is openly exposed Him and that he is aware of everything. God has a location, in the heavens, and isn't everywhere. So, you get a strike for misrepresentation, again.
Strike 3- You claim that because a higher being is capable of feeling emotion that He is imperfect? How basely stoic is that!
my conclusion: you don't know what you're talking about.
oh yeah, and 'three strikes, you're out.'
Can someone help me with a topic concerning the perfection and omni-everything that is supposedly god? I'm actually getting ganged up on, but this particular guy is really just nitpicking everything I post to death. Any links or help explaining why the biblical god isn't perfect or omni anything would be helpful.
As far as I see it, the biblical god is far from any of those. He get's angry, he destroys his own creations (would a perfect being create a imperfect creation)?
As for strike one, the guy's an idiot because he's relying on God himself basically saying that he's omnipotent even though actions speak louder than words, but you really could have done better for an example.
Strike two is a strawman because (I assume) you weren't saying that the Bible claimed God's omnipresence, but that someone else in this debate did and that that person's wrong.
Strike three is also a strawman; he's not imperfect because he felt emotions, he's imperfect because something he created dissatisfied him.
Strike 1- Your attempt to show that God is not omnipotent is extremely weak. I couldn't even begin to cite all of the scriptures that show that God is powerful. God is called "Almighty." That in itself is omnipotence, buddy. And what is rest? Rest is a break from activity. As in, God stopped creating things. And refreshed is pretty self explanatory.
No-limits fallacy: simply because God is powerful and calls himself "almighty" doesn't mean that he is all-powerful.
Strike 2-The Bible makes no claim that God is omnipresent, but it does claim that everything is openly exposed Him and that he is aware of everything. God has a location, in the heavens, and isn't everywhere. So, you get a strike for misrepresentation, again.
This simply contradicts the verse already quoted: if he's omniscient, then he wouldn't have to "come down to see" the Tower of Babel.
Strike 3- You claim that because a higher being is capable of feeling emotion that He is imperfect? How basely stoic is that!
How stupid is a one-line no-substance strawman of a "rebuttal"? The claim is not the implication you cited, but rather the inference that a perfect being would never need to feel grief simply because he could not create an imperfect creation.
A Government founded upon justice, and recognizing the equal rights of all men; claiming higher authority for existence, or sanction for its laws, that nature, reason, and the regularly ascertained will of the people; steadily refusing to put its sword and purse in the service of any religious creed or family is a standing offense to most of the Governments of the world, and to some narrow and bigoted people among ourselves.
Are there any biblical quotes contradicting his abilities and perfection, that I can use? I'm assuming that to argue with a bible thumber about this, the best approach would to be to use their own material.
Max wrote:Are there any biblical quotes contradicting his abilities and perfection, that I can use? I'm assuming that to argue with a bible thumber about this, the best approach would to be to use their own material.
Actually, I would try to reason a priori omnipotence and omniscience are mutually contradictory, and omniscience contradicts free will. Omnipotence is also self-contradictory (consider the old "can God make a rock so big he can't lift it?" riddle).
EDIT: If you want to use scriptural contradictions, though, check out the Skeptics' Annotated Bible. It's not hard to find scriptural evidence to support a given position, but I tend to like to reason from first principles. It's easier; you don't have to do any research.
A Government founded upon justice, and recognizing the equal rights of all men; claiming higher authority for existence, or sanction for its laws, that nature, reason, and the regularly ascertained will of the people; steadily refusing to put its sword and purse in the service of any religious creed or family is a standing offense to most of the Governments of the world, and to some narrow and bigoted people among ourselves.
Actually, I would try to reason a priori omnipotence and omniscience are mutually contradictory, and omniscience contradicts free will. Omnipotence is also self-contradictory (consider the old "can God make a rock so big he can't lift it?" riddle).
That might work, but there are those who redefine or heavily qualify omnipotence to exclude those abilities that are logically impossible or which contradict other Christian dogmas like free will or omniscience.
The only Biblical episode that comes to mind at the moment is where God expressed fear that humanity would reach the heavens (re Tower of Babel), but the problem with reasoning from those incidents is that God could simply be insane.
As for perfection, that's easy. Ask him to define perfection. Watch and laugh.
Actually, I would try to reason a priori omnipotence and omniscience are mutually contradictory, and omniscience contradicts free will. Omnipotence is also self-contradictory (consider the old "can God make a rock so big he can't lift it?" riddle).
That might work, but there are those who redefine or heavily qualify omnipotence to exclude those abilities that are logically impossible or which contradict other Christian dogmas like free will or omniscience.
Of course, in that case, you simply claim victory because the opponent is redefining the terms in the middle of the debate.
A Government founded upon justice, and recognizing the equal rights of all men; claiming higher authority for existence, or sanction for its laws, that nature, reason, and the regularly ascertained will of the people; steadily refusing to put its sword and purse in the service of any religious creed or family is a standing offense to most of the Governments of the world, and to some narrow and bigoted people among ourselves.
*ping* See item #2. If you can't win a debate with these fuckheads on your own, you shouldn't be debating at all.
Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves…We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed.--Ada Louise Huxtable, "Farewell to Penn Station", New York Times editorial, 30 October 1963 X-Ray Blues
