Hello!

[Loög]

Greetings everyone!
 
Short introduction: I started my journey when I was forced to attend a separate "faith class" after school (literal translation, basically what you call Bible studies in the US). There was a huge map on the wall with the Holy Land, since I always liked maps and geography, it was easy for me to quickly get an overview of the story, and where it took place.
 
However somehow I always viewed the Bible as a book tales. Then I asked myself, aren't these stories are just like the mythology of other ethnicities? Greeks have the Greek gods and their stories, Finns have the Kalevala, Germanic peoples have the Scandinavian mythology, Jews have the Old Testament (Tanakh).
 
Each started as an oral tradition, and each revolve around that specific nation, putting it in the centre of the story, and it almost always involves a creation story for the World and also the creation of that specific nation. Starting the story from the shroud of the past, until the first dated historic texts appear.
 
As a child I never understood why one story is regarded as a fairy tale, while another is meant to be taken literally or at least very seriously, when both stories are very similar.
 
So I started to move away from the Bible in a sense, that I began to doubt the existence of a God it depicted. I still believed in some kind of God, and I even continued to pray (as a custom). Later I become a deist and developed my separate explanation for some kind "will", that made the Universe. Then I moved towards Agnosticism. Few years ago I started to become an Atheist.

(By the way I am not English, so I may not explain everything in fully coherent or grammatically correct sentences.)

[Insult to Rocks]

Welcome! May I ask where you're from originally? We have alot of non-US members here, so don't feel shy about your english. Hell, sometimes that native speakers get so drunk that they end up typing something closer to a foreign language. :)

[Hijiri Byakuren]

Welcome to the Dark Side.

[Youssuf Ramadan]

Welcome!  8-)

[GrinningYMIR]

Welcome to the forum!

[Loög]

By the way I forgot to say why I have registered. I sometimes read reactions of theists to arguments atheists use, and I have to admit I am not always able to dodge it. Since I can't post links, I will simply post his comment.

Could you please dissect it and comment each section (where he compares atheist to animals is of course should be ignored). Oh and plese don't post things, like he is stupid or intolerant, or use mockery, because it's not productive and I need some specific explanations, so I can use them when I encounter this argument again.

The basis of his argument is that since atheists use the word "omnipotent" with the wrong definition, all of their arguments relying on this (and other percieved attributes of God) are void.

Here is his comment:

 
"

Short Answer: When we say "God is omnipotent" we mean "He has the power to do whatever He pleases". There are other definitions, such as "capable of doing anything man can think up", but by such definitions He would not be considered "omnipotent".

Semantics

As indicated in the wikipedia post you linked, there are many definitions for the word omnipotent. As with many of the heavily debated topics in Christianity today, the controversy arises when we begin to mix two different definitions during a debate. (Other examples: "evolution", "knowledge", "free-will", "love", "life", "evil", and so on.) The word omnipotent literally translates as "all-powerful", but as usual, the meaning of the word is determined by the person using it, and is clarified by the context of their usage.

So here's the story behind this controversy: Christian theologians have studied the Bible and noticed some things about God (such as His great power), and have summarized those things using simple terms (such as omnipotence). For a Christian, the word omnipotent is simply a term used to refer to the teachings of Scripture about God's great power - nothing more, nothing less. Heathens (in their blindness and ignorance) have noticed Christians attributing "omnipotence" to God, have used a different definition of the word which is based on a misunderstanding of the Christian usage, and have then used this heathen definition to attack and accuse Christians. Modern Christians (in their laziness) often accept the heathen definitions, neglect to study the topic in Scripture, but have faith that God must be omnipotent, and then try to reconcile their view of God with the heathen definition.

The solution to all of this confusion is for Christians to study the Scriptures and understand what was originally meant by the term omnipotence in Christian theology, and stop trying to train "unreasoning animals" to understand things which are impossible for them to understand, and which they are unwilling to accept. With that said, let's take a quick look at the definition commonly used by heathens.

The Heathen Definition

Heathens often use the word omnipotent to mean "capable of doing anything." Modern (naturalistic) heathens have a field day in debates using this definition, because it opens up all sorts of nonsensical attacks, such as "can God create a rock so big He cannot move it?", which is essentially the same as asking, "does God have the power to create a situation in which He is powerless?", or even more plainly, "does God have the power to not be God?" As C. S. Lewis pointed out, this is nothing more than shrewd, nonsensical wordplay.

A Scriptural Definition

Let's look at what the Bible says and see what sort of picture is actually painted in Scripture.


"I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, " who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty." -Revelation 1:8

Passages such as this one teach us that God is "almighty". It is most accurate to think of this word as meaning "God has unlimited might, which enables Him to do anything He wants to do", rather than interpreting this to mean "it is possible for God to do anything we can think up." The following passage describes this more clearly:


our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases. -Psalm 115:3

In other words, once God desires to do something, He has the power to do it, and He does it. This does not mean that God has the capacity to do whatever we can think up. It means God has the power to do whatever He wants to do. Of course "what He wants to do" is going to be consistent with His nature. As we learn more about the nature of God, we can better understand what sorts of things He would do, and can better understand how He works, how we should pray, etc. For example, God is love, God is good, God is just, and so on.

The Difference

Thus, by the Christian definition, there are things God cannot do, because He cannot contradict His nature. For example, He is faithful, so He cannot be faithless;


If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself. -2 Timothy 2:13

Another example is that since God is truth, He cannot lie:


God, who cannot lie, promised... -Titus 1:2

So by the Christian definition, God's actions are limited by His nature, while the heathen definition requires that God be capable of anything -- even things contrary to His "nature."

How to debate with heathens

Heathen: "Christians say God is omnipotent, but that's impossible. Let me illustrate with a question: Can God create a rock so big He cannot move it? If you say yes then He can't be omnipotent because He can't move it, and if you say no then He can't be omnipotent because He can't make a rock that big."

Christian: "That question doesn't really make sense. The rock you described is a nonsensical object. The size of a rock doesn't change God's ability to move it. That's like asking if God can make a ball so green that He can't roll it; the color of a ball doesn't impact God's ability to roll it anymore than the size of a rock impacts God's ability to move it."

Heathen: "My point is, if God is omnipotent then He should have the power to do anything, but does He have the power to make a contradiction? Can He create a square circle? Does He have the power to limit His power?"

Christian: "You are confused about the meaning of the word omnipotent when it is used by Christians. We use that word to refer to God's ability to do whatever He wants to do. Your example is equivalent to asking if God has the power to not be God. Not only is that nonsensical, but it would require God to act contrary to His nature, which He cannot do."

Heathen: "So God isn't really omnipotent?"

Christian: "God is almighty and does whatever He pleases. There are things He cannot do, such as lie, so if your definition of "omnipotent" includes the capacity and ability to do anything man can think up, then He would not be "omnipotent" according to your definition."

Heathen: "So God isn't really omnipotent. In that case He can't be God."

Christian: "You are using heathen definitions and heathen criteria for classifying a being as 'God' to show that it is impossible for the Christian God to exist. Not only is this arrogant and insane (since the human brain is far too small to draw such a conclusion), but your method presupposes your conclusion that there is no God. If God were real, He would be the only one qualified to explain His attributes and nature, and it would be our job to learn from Him. Christians believe He has done this in Scripture. If you wanted to see if the Christian view were internally consistent, you would have to look at Scripture, and according to Scripture, you would need to know Him in order to understand His ways. So if you are interested in knowing the truth, start by seeking God in prayer and reading Scripture. Once He begins to open up your eyes to the truth, these things will begin to make more sense to you. If you are not interested in knowing the truth, feel free to continue scoffing at God, but these arguments only 'disprove the possibility of God's existence' from a perspective which presupposes His non-existence. This is what the Bible refers to when it says 'the wisdom of this world is foolish to God'."

edited Jul 24 '13 at 16:43, answered Jun 28 '12 at 21:15, Jas 3.1

"

[Mister Agenda]

Howdy!

[Sal1981]

Welcome to AF. I understand you just fine.

[Plu]

Welcome aboard.

The short, short version of debunking the above "explanation" is that the word omnipotent means nothing until we define exactly what God pleases, which we don't know because "he's beyond understanding", which means it's just an attempt to make more meaningless words in order to avoid scrutiny of belief.

Under this definition, god can do everything except the things he can't, which is basically what everyone in the world also does. Whenever someone comes up with something that would be logically impossible, this gives the christian the option of saying "yeah but he doesn't want to do that, so it's moot". And whenever something comes up that defies the laws of physics and thus should be physically impossible, they can say "yeah but god wants to do this so he can."

It's basically just trying to wordsalad your way out of making definite claims about anything, and definite claims are the first steps to being able to prove your statements are correct.

[aitm]

Howdy there. How do you pronounce your name, those oompa loompa things always confuse me.

[Loög]

Howdy there. How do you pronounce your name, those oompa loompa things always confuse me.

Holy shit, internet explorer encountered fatal error, and my 2 page text basically disappeared.

Okay, I won't write all that stuff again, here is the short version:



Western christians want to exterminate -> adopt christianity.

Contemporary latin alphabet isn't capable to correctly transliterate native languages, it has only 23 letters, 4 of them unusable, thus 23-4=19 -> it would need 23 more letters for phonetic transcription.

Monks don't know shit about local grammar, they invent grammar out of thin air, and use double letters and such to mark foreign sounds.

Long sentences become tedious to write, they adopt diacritics. Some digraphs remain, however these are only digraphs from a Latinised point of view, because they use multiple latin characters to make up one sound, in the ancient non-latin text they were marked with one symbol.

//http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_alphabet
//http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_alphabet
//http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbian_alphabet
//http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuanian_alphabet
//http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovak_alphabet
//http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latvian_alphabet
//http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbian_alphabet
//http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_alphabet

Some of the pages contain spelling for english users.



My name comes from an accident, I started to write a word starting with Log, but I accidentally also hit the ö button, so it stayed. Ö is similar to Boeing, but not quite. There are also unused letters in many languages that were purged during communism (because they were "barbaric", or some kind of other BS reason), these include: ?, ä, ?, ë, ch, etc.