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jhickok

Why is it impossible for God to exist?

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An all-powerful, omniscient being invites some paradoxes/problems:

Homer Simpson's version was "Could Jesus microwave a burrito so hot that he himself could not eat it?"

Also - if you're omniscient and you already know your future, does that imply that you do not have free will?

The first is not a paradox but a nonsensical statement. Omnipotent, (by definition), does not include breaking logic because at its core something illogical is nonsense.

As to free will, well that's something only Catholics and Orthodox hold onto. I don't believe Muslims or many Protestants (Calvin?) adhere to that.

That kind of deity can not be restricted by logical paradoxes, it is beyond their reach so to speak.

That of course raises the question why even attempt logical proofs, but here we are.

You can just claim that omniscience and omnipotence do not require that you can do logically impossible things. For instance, God couldn't will that 2+2=5, or that he could create something so heavy that he could not move it.

> An all-powerful, omniscient being invites some paradoxes/problems:

Not really:

* https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2010/02/dawkins-on-omnipote...

Doesn't matter. He gets to assert that it's possible, so I get to assert that it's not.

In a logic setting, this is a much harder position to hold: it's much easier to assert the possibility of existence than the non-possibility of existence (which requires universal qualification).

The OA isn't a good argument for various reasons that others have noted above, but the possible existence of God (or Unicorns, or Colorless Green Ideas) isn't one of them.

One way to show non-possibility, leveraging universality, is to show that for all A's, one can prove both B and something contradicting B.

Example:

    ∀(G ∈ gods . card(G) = 3) ∧ ∀(G ∈ gods . card(G) < 3)

Whether or not people have "proved" contradictory attributes for gods is left as an exercise for the reader...

cf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sic_et_Non

It's much easier to not exist than to exist.

Clever!

Do you have enough control over your mind to command it to contemplate what the truth of the matter is?

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