If God is omnipotent, can he destroy himself?

[Justintruth]

If he is truly omnipotent then he must be able to, but if he is capable of being destroyed, is he truly God?

Omnipotence is the ability to do anything possible. Omni potent - all possibility. If God lacks the potential to not be then destroying God is not a potential, and so a being that can do any potential could still not destroy God.

Possibility must be understood here in its widest sense. If I drop a rock on earth the laws of physics say it is not possible for it not to fall. But that is not what is meant here. No contingent law can constrain possibility in the sense used here. God could make a rock go up.

The really hard thing to see is that asking whether God can not be is more like asking whether 6 can not be instead of whether something like a rock can not be. Why is it possible that God exists by definition instead of through creation?

God is not a creature, He is the creator, and as such lacks the potential not to be. Is seems like this lack is a violation of omnipotence because one assumes that some possibility is left out of God's ability but no such possibility is left out because no such possibility exists because it is impossible for God not to be.

[Immanuel Can]

God is not a creature, He is the creator, and as such lacks the potential not to be.

Indeed. But it is a "lack"?

Remember the Ontological Argument...whichever you take (Anselm, Plantinga, whatever) and whatever you think of that particular strategy, one interesting feature, and one relevant to this question, would be the integral importance of "existing" as a perfection.

In other words, if Anselm et al are right, that "existing" makes an entity greater than the same entity with the property of "not existing," then the Supreme Being cannot cease to exist without simultaneously being the somewhat-less-than-supreme-being. For it then becomes possible to conceive of a greater being than the (alleged) supreme-being-minus-existing -- namely the Supreme Being who DOES have existence as a property.

If that's right, then the only "lack" would be to "lack" existence; and to exist would be a potency and a perfection, not a "lacking" of anything.

[Walker]

You are not responsible for my life

Thank you for relieving me of that burden, Walker, it's been weighing heavily on me.

Maybe you can now finally stop pretending.

[surreptitious57]

If he is truly omnipotent then he must be able to but if he is capable of being destroyed is he truly God

If he is truly omnipotent then he could but that would be the point at which he would cease to be God

[surreptitious57]

Why is it possible that God exists by definition instead of through creation

Because the only place where a God that defies both logic and the laws of physics could possibly exist is in the imagination
Manipulating him into observable reality is simply not going to work no matter how much they try to as it is just too flawed

[Dontaskme]

He is CAPABLE of destroying himself.

Is a worm capable of destroying itself ? Or a stone ?
No, they do not have enough will power or even ability.

A dog cannot destroy itself, the instinct of self-preservation prevents it from doing it.

A human being can destroy himself, if he loses his mind.

God could destroy himself, but he never loses his mind so he will never destroy himself.

A human being can destroy itself because the human believes there is something (a self) there to destroy. But that's like saying space can be destroyed ..can space ever become ..not space. ?? ..this is absurd thinking.

Seriously, God is not what thought thinks it is.

Nothing can be destroyed because nothing was created. There are only images and concepts, believed to be real...everything is made in God's image...images and concepts of an imageless - non-conceptual God...aka a living mind.


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[Dontaskme]

Why is it possible that God exists by definition instead of through creation

Because the only place where a God that defies both logic and the laws of physics could possibly exist is in the imagination
Manipulating him into observable reality is simply not going to work no matter how much they try to as it is just too flawed

This is the common error of human thinking.

Eliminate God for yourself is playing God...If there is no God, then you have no business factoring in the existence of a human being in observable reality, that too would be an imagined thing. You cannot play God by allowing yourself first position.

Nothing belongs to you.

[surreptitious57]

Why is it possible that God exists by definition instead of through creation

Because the only place where a God that defies both logic and the laws of physics could possibly exist is in the imagination
Manipulating him into observable reality is simply not going to work no matter how much they try to as it is just too flawed

Eliminate God for yourself is playing God ... if there is no God then you have no business factoring in the existence of a
human being in observable reality that too would be an imagined thing. You cannot play God by allowing yourself first position

Human beings exist. They are part of observable reality. There is zero evidence for God. He is not part of observable reality

[Dontaskme]

Because the only place where a God that defies both logic and the laws of physics could possibly exist is in the imagination
Manipulating him into observable reality is simply not going to work no matter how much they try to as it is just too flawed

Eliminate God for yourself is playing God ... if there is no God then you have no business factoring in the existence of a
human being in observable reality that too would be an imagined thing. You cannot play God by allowing yourself first position

Human beings exist. They are part of observable reality. There is zero evidence for God. He is not part of observable reality

Who's observing? ..can that one be observed?

[Immanuel Can]

Human beings exist. They are part of observable reality. There is zero evidence for God. He is not part of observable reality

You forgot the personal pronoun. It should read, "my." You can only make cogent statements about your own experience or "reality"...you have no way to say what anyone else knows, or what they have seen in "reality."

You wouldn't know, would you?

[Arising_uk]

Human beings exist. They are part of observable reality. There is zero evidence for God. He is not part of observable reality

You forgot the personal pronoun. It should read, "my." You can only make cogent statements about your own experience or "reality"...you have no way to say what anyone else knows, or what they have seen in "reality."

You wouldn't know, would you?

Show us a 'God' then? As generally for something to be in observable reality it has to be observable by others too.

[Dontaskme]

Show us a 'God' then? As generally for something to be in observable reality it has to be observable by others too.

Show us a Arising_uk then?

How can you talk about what is observable when you have never seen the observer?

Where is the observer then?

[Arising_uk]

Show us a Arising_uk then?

You fancy a beer? Drop me a PM.

How can you talk about what is observable when you have never seen the observer?

How can you talk such waffle?

Where is the observer then?

I'm an observer and I observe others observing me.

[Justintruth]

Why is it possible that God exists by definition instead of through creation

Because the only place where a God that defies both logic and the laws of physics could possibly exist is in the imagination
Manipulating him into observable reality is simply not going to work no matter how much they try to as it is just too flawed

Logic is just a truth function on statements. Wittgenstein's Tractus has its most general form.

"All dog's are mountains, Rover is a dog, Rover is a mountain" is perfectly logical. It's just that all dog's aren't mountain's that makes it wrong. So you have to look not just at logic but the soundness and validity of an argument. Which drags you into meaning - for the statement "all dogs are mountains" is true or false only if you understand it's meaning.

Now discussions like the original post work by conflating two very different meanings. "God exists" does not mean the same thing as "Rover exists" or "That rock exists" for several reasons. But the one relevant to the original post is the difference between a creature and the creator. God is not a creature. He is not a contingent being. He is necessary being. That means his non existence has no potentiality. Therefore being that is omnipotent - that could actualize any potential - does not need to be able to "destroy God" to still be omnipotent. Now there are problems with that you have to appreciate before you shoot from the hip.

As to "defying the laws of physics" you are being rediculous as can be shown very simply as the laws of physics do not make any claim at all as to the existence of God. Nor do the laws of physics claim that what they posit is all that exists.

If you disagree just show me which law and I will yield. Physics deals with a subset of being considering only nature. Physics is not metaphysical although many interpret it that way. But in fact the laws of physics are not metaphysical. They are just natural science and do not bear on the existence of God - or anything else that is not in the standard model or the observations of what possibilities it and the laws of physics define that actually are.

Get this -> natural science makes no statements about the supernatural by definition. It is exclusively a study of nature. That is why it requires experiment to support its conclusions and why its conclusions are inductive and hence never necessary (read Kant and Popper)

Searching to confirm the existence of God by experiment is somewhat like trying to find whether a differential equation has a solution by doing an experiment. You can't confirm a mathematical existence theorem by doing a physical experiment. The situation with God is not the same but resembles it.

It is only those naive in the meaning of physics that claim so. You should look more closely at the standard model and the laws of physics and forget religion (and any understanding of consciousness) until you understand the laws of physics better. You can use the Wikipedia as you don't need to know how to do all the math you just need to be able to correctly identify what defys the laws of physics and what doesn't.

[Dontaskme]

Dontaskme wrote ..How can you talk about what is observable when you have never seen the observer?

How can you talk such waffle?

There is no person looking out of your eyes... the person is just a thought arising in the brain. The thought becomes a named person. You put on a pair of google goggles and see the world through the lens of the goggles which is a unique perspective of A_uk..

..as soon as you take the goggles off and rest them on your head ... there is nothing looking out of your eyes again.

No one has ever seen the looker...there is only looking looking at itself...which is what ever thought thinks it is.

And no one has ever seen a thought either come to think of it.

Strange, but true.

That's what God is.

God is just a symbolic representation of what is looking though the eye of every creature. It's the same one looking through every single eye.