Defending the qualities of the Abrahamic god

[Jaywalker]

Examined individually, the three main qualities of the Abrahamic god seem defensible.

-Omnipotence can be said to mean the ability to do anything logically possible for that being to do. Although that raises the question of whether my toaster is omnipotent. Maybe define it as the ability to do anything possible.

-Omniscience means the possession and understanding of all possible information.

-Omnibenevolence is simply doing maximal good all the time. There may well be beings able to do that, maybe future humans.

Once we combine them, they obviously don't make any sense. Since it knows everything it's going to do, it's limited to a single course of action. Not only can it not do everything, it can't even do any one thing different. That means it's not an agent, it cannot act. Omnipotence becomes a meaningless term. "Good" or "bad" also become meaningless, every moment in time is equally and maximally good, there is no such thing as bad.

Essentially, this god is not the creator of the universe, it IS the universe, a deterministic one. But its qualities are ill defined.

If I was a theist, and I just had to accept that a free god can have these qualities, I would probably be more comfortable declaring that God isn't defined rationally since it isn't bound by the rules of logic. The logical axioms we use do not represent reality, and there is another fundamental model out there that can't be expressed by our limited vocabulary. I would ignore logic and opt out of discourse.

We're in the age of the internet, not knowing about these objections is virtually impossible. Why do theists still think it's acceptable to use logic to prove an illogical god? Why do professional apologists still cling to these definitions?

[brimstoneSalad]

-Omnipotence can be said to mean the ability to do anything logically possible for that being to do. Although that raises the question of whether my toaster is omnipotent. Maybe define it as the ability to do anything possible.

Possible must be logically possible if it means anything. And in order to be logically possible, that means it takes into account the limitations of the thing doing it. So yes, your toaster, and everybody and everything, is omnipotent in that sense.

A more coherent form of "omnipotence" is the ability to alter the state of a "reality" within the arbitrary limits of certain parameters. We could see this form in a computer programmer, which is clearly not omnipotent, but may appear to be something like omnipotent to inhabitants of the program.
The trouble is the arbitrary parameters limiting the power: there's no way to set a point at which it's omnipotent, so this also makes us all omnipotent as long as we can create models (although your toaster would not be). Anything with an imagination (or creating a simulation) would be omnipotent relative to the imagined (or simulated) world.

Theists probably prefer this usage, since 'god' can be defined as that imaginer of our reality: while relative, there's still only one immediate god for us.
It does create a problem of infinite regress, though, if you surmise a creator works in this way -- meaning there are an infinite number of more powerful meta-gods, and it never reaches the end (which is the ultimate god, so such an ultimate god doesn't exist).

There was a thread in which I debunked the simulation hypothesis.

-Omniscience means the possession and understanding of all possible information.

Gödel's incompleteness theorems.

-Omnibenevolence is simply doing maximal good all the time. There may well be beings able to do that, maybe future humans.

Totally selfless and not at all malicious. Maybe possible. But given limitations in knowledge and ability, this doesn't necessarily mean that much since it can still make mistakes. That just means being well intentioned and trying your best.

We're in the age of the internet, not knowing about these objections is virtually impossible. Why do theists still think it's acceptable to use logic to prove an illogical god? Why do professional apologists still cling to these definitions?

Just in my time on the internet, I've seen them back off this. Internet communities of theists have become more insular, and are now going by the "You just have to have faith", and "Only god can lead somebody to him, you can't reason somebody into believing" stuff.
It's a process of memetic evolution in action. Those theists (and traditions of apologetics) who were dedicated to using logic failed and either became atheists or switched schools of thought. Now we have the presuppositionalists who won't even have a conversation with you unless you start by assuming god is real. Religion on the internet is in its death throes, and the only way it's surviving is by isolating itself from argument.

[Jaywalker]

Possible must be logically possible if it means anything. And in order to be logically possible, that means it takes into account the limitations of the thing doing it. So yes, your toaster, and everybody and everything, is omnipotent in that sense.

The theist could then claim that not everything is omnipotent because things are only able to do what their own set is capable of and there are many sets with different capabilities . God however is the all-encompassing set, so we would be justified in calling the god set omnipotent and not its members. This seems semantically convincing to me. Of course not every theist will be comfortable with pantheism, but I don't think these are mutually exclusive beliefs, are they?

Totally selfless and not at all malicious. Maybe possible. But given limitations in knowledge and ability, this doesn't necessarily mean that much since it can still make mistakes. That just means being well intentioned and trying your best.

True, mistakes can happen. But if someone is mentally trained to the point that they can do as little harm in their daily lives as humanly possible, donate everything over living expenses, and spend every waking hour either helping others or working to earn more money to donate (whatever they discover to be more efficient), I would be fine with calling them omnibenevolent.

Gödel's incompleteness theorems.

I heard of that before but didn't quite grasp what it meant. Is it about self-contained systems and how axioms are "proven" (or demonstrated to be valid)?
Does it have anything to do with what Feynman is talking about here? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaUlqXRPMmY
It appears to me like he suggested that mathematical models will one day be complete.

[brimstoneSalad]

This seems semantically convincing to me. Of course not every theist will be comfortable with pantheism, but I don't think these are mutually exclusive beliefs, are they?

I think they are mutually exclusive. Neither pantheists nor deists are really theists nor believe in a god that theists believe in. A theistic useage panel would probably reject such a definition of a god, and encyclopedias generally concur that these are distinct.

http://www.britannica.com/topic/theism

Theism, the view that all limited or finite things are dependent in some way on one supreme or ultimate reality of which one may also speak in personal terms. In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, this ultimate reality is often called God. This article explores approaches to theism in Western theology and philosophy.[...]
Theistic views of God
Theism’s view of God can be clarified by contrasting it with those of deism, pantheism, and mysticism.
[...]
Theism sharply contrasts with pantheism, which identifies God with all that there is

I heard of that before but didn't quite grasp what it meant. Is it about self-contained systems and how axioms are "proven" (or demonstrated to be valid)?

With respect to omniscience, it's sort of the equivalent of creating a rock too heavy to lift.

Gödel's theorem shows that, in theories that include a small portion of number theory, a complete and consistent finite list of axioms can never be created: each time a new statement is added as an axiom, there are other true statements that still cannot be proved, even with the new axiom. If an axiom is ever added that makes the system complete, it does so at the cost of making the system inconsistent. It is not even possible that an infinite list of axioms exists that is complete, consistent, and can be enumerated by a computer program.

Does it have anything to do with what Feynman is talking about here? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaUlqXRPMmY
It appears to me like he suggested that mathematical models will one day be complete.

I don't think so. I'm not sure what he's talking about.