God's Logical (In)Consistency and the Married Bachelor

[Guest]

Is God logically consistent? If so, then can God create a married bachelor?

 

[Caroline H]

Could you elaborate on that a bit? Thanks

 

[Guest]

Can an all-powerful God create something which cannot logically exist?

If so, then God is logically inconsistent (i.e., illogical). If God is illogical then we cannot trust God to be who He says He is.

If not, then God could be logically consistent. However, He would not all-powerful because He couldn't create something.

 

[Paidion]

God is omniscient. Contradictions are not objects of power.

Can God create a rock so large that He cannot lift it? The correct answer is "NO". This does not contradict God's omnipotence. If He could create such a rock, He would not be able to lift it, and therefore would not be omnipotent.

 

[Guest]

Can God create a rock so large that He cannot lift it? The correct answer is "NO". This does not contradict God's omnipotence./quote]
It seems you are defining omnipotence as "the ability to do that which is logically possible." Would that be a fair assessment?

 

[Paidion]

Of course. Except I would add "anything" to the definition.

"Omnipotent"--- An omnipotent person is a person who has the ability to do anything which is logically possible to do.

Of course, it is unnecessary to add that proviso, since no one can do the logically impossible, since it is ... well... logically impossible. It's a contradiction in terms, and therefore meaningless.

 

[Sparkey]

He made the Platypus, ryte? I think He can do all things even stymie the minds of the smartest men around. Schrödinger's cat for example:
[youtube:8jgy1v0b]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN-jCuV7BoU[/youtube:8jgy1v0b]

Quantum Mechanics (stuff that we common men are taught and think we know) is based on such things - Take an electron for example. We can not precisely know BOTH the position and the momentum (mass x velocity). In as much as we can determine the exact position, to the same degree it's direction|speed|mass becomes 'fuzzy'. When I was taught about atoms we thought they were the smallest possible part of the universe. I was taught to think about planetary motion as an image for the incredibly small. Yet today there exists a "cloud" of probability that only surmises possible locations. Schrödinger and Heisenburg developed probability functions to predict where an electron might be.

I believe that the existence of the classical "path" can be pregnantly formulated as follows:
The "path" comes into existence only when we observe it."

Now turn your mind to this: If we have a known distance, certainly it is easy enough to halve it. 1ft x ½ = .5 ft Easy, right? It is reasonable that for any given distance we can find one half of that distance and of course this is true mathematically. One half of 1,000,000,000 (billionth) of an inch would be 2 billionths. We can continue that process ad infinitum.

"Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,: And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.

Yet, if we are to limit ourselves to numbers that represent distance in the real world, this can not be done. Current theory demands that time itself is limited into distinct quanta equal to (10 to the minus 43rd power) seconds. No smaller division of time has any meaning. Since time and matter themselves are indivisible it follows that there is a set distance (called Planck Length) from which one can go no smaller.

May I suggest that God has already created your "married bachelor" but 1-upped you in the process?
There are myriad examples in Scripture and nature that can confound. I like reading the book of Job (one of the most ancient) while pondering these things. How DID He set the boundary between day and night??? What is darkness anyway!?! Certainly He didn't create the absence of light (we can't conceive of creating an absence - it is a paradox) to only then turn around and create light? What was it that our universe is made of before light? What did He mean when he said he 'hung' the empty place in the northern sky? What did he hang 'it' on? What is: בּ×â€Ã—•Ö¼ תּ×â€Ã—•Ö¼ (tôhû and bôhû ) "without form and void," with 'void' meaning 'empty'? What is darkness? <shhhh... it's a 'secret place'>

I've read of Dark Matter and / or Dark Energy, but don't begin to understand it. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) held out some hope for actual evidence of this "dark" stuff but we'll have to wait now. It was nothing more than a very slim chance but I was interested. 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy and back in January I had a lot of anticipation for more information to be released. Maybe it will be still? Our God is literally pouring knowledge out upon the earth and I'm still excited to learn.

 

[stranger]

Is God logically consistent? If so, then can God create a married bachelor?

Hello minnesota.

What your citing is a hypothetical case that tests how good our apologetic is in the face of a seeming contradiction.

So here goes - let's presuppose that that God is logically consistent. The weak link will be how logical my reasoning is and how well you reason it to be reasonable or otherwise.

God created man and gave man (generic) a command to be fruitful and multiple. So we have man (one) and his offspring (many). Since man is one man in the generic sense (humanity is one), and yet man is many some of whom marry and others remain bachelors, I may be able to say 'God created man as a married bachelor'.

blessings

 

[Sparkey]

Is God logically consistent? If so, then can God create a married bachelor?

Hello minnesota.

What your citing is a hypothetical case that tests how good our apologetic is in the face of a seeming contradiction.

So here goes - let's presuppose that that God is logically consistent. The weak link will be how logical my reasoning is and how well you reason it to be reasonable or otherwise.

God created man and gave man (generic) a command to be fruitful and multiple. So we have man (one) and his offspring (many). Since man is one man in the generic sense (humanity is one), and yet man is many some of whom marry and others remain bachelors, I may be able to say 'God created man as a married bachelor'.

blessings

Perhaps, stranger. I do admire the attempt.

• God created man (one) <--- true enough for a Main Premise.
  [/*:m:1e2hualp]
• God gave man (generic) a command to be fruitful and multiply.[/*:m:1e2hualp]

Ahhhhh.... oopsie. God gave man (specific, that is - Adam and Eve) a command to multiply. At that time God was the only bachelor who was party to the conversation.

 

[Paidion]

Sparrowhawke, when you suggest that God can do the illogical, or display supposedly "illogical" phenomena in nature, you seem to be using "logical" in the sense of "being contrary to man's reasoning." This is NOT the way I was using it. "Married bachelor" is illogical because its own constituent terms are contrary. It could be translated "Married man who is not married." It is intrinsically illogical, not illogical because of man's inability to comprehend.

You used some mathematicial examples. Let me give one. It is counter-intuitive, and thus SEEMS illogical that 0.999... = 1. Intuitively 0.999... seems to be a little less than 1. Yet it's equivalency with 1 can be PROVED by simple algebra. So 0.999... DOES in fact equal 1, and so the statement that it does so in not contradictory or intrinsically illogical. What WOULD be intrinsically illogical would be to say that it is both equal to 1 and also less than 1.

The "uncertainty principle" that you mentioned does not prove that an electron is in two different places at the same time, but only that man cannot determine its position at any given moment.

 

[Sparkey]

Sparrowhawke, when you suggest that God can do the illogical, or display supposedly "illogical" phenomena in nature, you seem to be using "logical" in the sense of "being contrary to man's reasoning." This is NOT the way I was using it. "Married bachelor" is illogical because its own constituent terms are contrary. It could be translated "Married man who is not married." It is intrinsically illogical, not illogical because of man's inability to comprehend.

You used some mathematicial examples. Let me give one. It is counter-intuitive, and thus SEEMS illogical that 0.999... = 1. Intuitively 0.999... seems to be a little less than 1. Yet it's equivalency with 1 can be PROVED by simple algebra. So 0.999... DOES in fact equal 1, and so the statement that it does so in not contradictory or intrinsically illogical. What WOULD be intrinsically illogical would be to say that it is both equal to 1 and also less than 1.

The "uncertainty principle" that you mentioned does not prove that an electron is in two different places at the same time, but only that man cannot determine its position at any given moment.

Greetings, Paidion!

Agreed, the infinitely repeating decimal "0.999..." is defined as equal to 1. Your statement evaluates to true. It is logical.

I disagree with your statement about Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. Your statement does not correctly represent what we have called the "uncertainty principle". Your statement here is also logical - only this time it is evaluated as logically false.

Logic can be briefly defined as the study of principles that govern 'correct' reasoning [as defined by man]. The concepts behind Irresistible force paradox can be proven to be logically impossible (within the same universe).

Although it may seem like I dismissed it, I really like stranger's reply:
God created man and gave man (generic) a command to be fruitful and multiply.
So we have man (one) and his offspring (many).
Since man is one ---> man in the generic sense (humanity is one).
And yet man is many ---> some of whom marry and others remain bachelors

I may be able to say "God created 'man' as a married bachelor".

A logical Proposition is a statement that can be True or False.
When we turn to "contradictions" and look to logic for definitions we begin to ask questions like, "Can a fellowman be in a country where he has no fellows?" "Can a secular church exist?" Is there such a thing as a "married bachelor"? Fortunately we have a class of objects where such things do exist. The [Null Class] is defined by all objects that have no true values.

I don't think that I could map out stranger's statements symbolically but it might be fun to try
I'm not young anymore so I've forgotten more than I've ever learned.

~Sparrow

 

[Drew]

The "uncertainty principle" that you mentioned does not prove that an electron is in two different places at the same time, but only that man cannot determine its position at any given moment.

I certainly agree that the uncertaintly principle is not asserting that an electron is in two different places at the same time.

And I agree with the other distinction that you drew - the concept of a "married bachelor" is intrinsically illogical - it is not illogical in the sense that a being with superior mental capacity could make sense of the concept.

To repeat - the uncertainty principle is not asserting that an electron is in two differnt places at the same time. This is from wikipedia:

In quantum physics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that certain pairs of physical properties, like position and momentum, cannot both be known to arbitrary precision. That is, the more precisely one property is known, the less precisely the other can be known. It is impossible to measure simultaneously both position and velocity of a microscopic particle with any degree of accuracy or certainty. This is not only a statement about the limitations of a researcher's ability to measure particular quantities of a system, following the tenets of logical positivism, it is a statement about the nature of the system itself.

Note the stuff in bold. That qualifying statement does not mean that we have to accept some kind of "logical" contradiction. Even though the uncertainty principles says something about nature "in itself", it is not saying anything that could be deemed, in any sense, illogical. Strange and counter-intuitive perhaps, but not illogical.