The Limitations of God

Thet Paing Soe

Professor James Rowe

Philosophy 1500

27 March 2015

Prompt 2

The Limitations of God

The existence of God and the attributes he possess have been a source of philosophical debates and discussions for centuries. It is widely accepted by the Abrahamic religions that God is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, the creator, the sustainer, perfectly free and eternally existing. (qtd. in Swinburne 314). When viewed analytically under certain circumstances, these claims combined together, can be problematic and logically incoherent. The incoherencies of God as an omnipotent, omnibenevolent being will be explored in this paper, while refuting the counterarguments put forth by theologians. Moreover, the logical incoherencies and the counterarguments for them will be explored by using the ideas of the law of non-contradiction, Voluntarism, Augustinian Theodicy, the problem of evil and the free will argument.

The first property to be tackled is the omnipotence attributed to God. One should start off with an assumption that, as an omnipotent being God can determine the fundamentals laws of logic and math. If this preposition is true, this raises the question of whether God can create a stone he himself cannot lift. This paradox popularized by J.L Mackie is a critique to omnipotent being who can do everything. (qtd. in Groarke 22). There are two answers to this question and they both end up with the same result. The first option is to suggest that God can create a stone he cannot lift; however, by being not able to lift the stone he created implies that he is not omnipotent. The second option is to state that it is impossible for God to create a stone he cannot lift. By being not able to create a stone he cannot lift in the first place, the suggestions lead us to the same answer, that is, God is not omnipotent. Based on the paradox of the stone, I exposed a logical fallacy. It is to proof that under certain circumstances God cannot be...