On Omnipotence

Have you heard this argument?

God is omnipotent.
Omnipotence means that you can make the end come into existence independant of any means.
(i.e. means are only used when one can't immediately acheive the end, so an omnipotent being would never use them)
Since the God of Christianity often uses means, this means that either:
A) He's not really omnipotent. or
B) The concept of omnipotency makes no sense in a temporal world.

Here is why this argument is futile: It says, basically, "Here is a rule by which an omnipotent being would always act. He would always go straight to the end, never using intermediate means to accomplish His goals." However, such a rule cannot apply to an omnipotent being, because an omnipotent being, by definition, does whatever He wants. He doesn't have to follow that rule. If He wants to use some means to accomplish an end, He can do that: He's omnipotent. He can do whatever He wants.

I Made a Comment

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2007/04/lessons-from-bowflex.html

The guy either has a common misconception about Christianity, or he's trying to help confirm that misconception in others. Also, he doesn't read the Old Testament carefully enough to make those sorts of claims about it.

On the Brain

I would just like to say that if you believe that your brain was created by evolutionary pressures to survive, you can't really believe that you can know the truth for certain. I mean, your brain would lie to you to get you to survive - Any brains that didn't wouldn't have been selected.

It would also lie to you to get you to mate.

If you're trying to figure out the truth about anything, your brain is a pretty crappy tool.

Mine's not. It was made by God to seek the truth, and that's what it does.

On Absolute Certainty: Why You Want It

If you throw a ball up into the air 99 times, and 99 times it falls back down, and then you throw it up into the air for the 100th time, what do you think it'll do?

It'll fall back down.

Are you sure? Are you certain? Here's the clincher: Would you stake your life on it? You've done it 99 times and it's behaved the same each time. Is that good enough?

Let's say you're flipping a coin. It's not impossible for it to come up heads 99 times in a row - So let's do a math problem: How many times would I have to flip a coin such that there would be a 100% chance of it coming up heads 99 times in a row while I was flipping it? I don't know, but the problem has an answer, and that answer is an integer, and however big that integer is, that's basically how certain you can be that the ball will come down again the 100th time.

But that's not absolute certainty, is it?

The moral of the thought experiment is: Experiments Never Give You Absolute Certainty About the Future.

Would you stake your life on something that wasn't an absolute certainty? I mean, if you were an old man, and you had just a few weeks left to live anyway, maybe you would stake your life on the 100th toss of the ball - But I'm a young man. I wouldn't. It's not impossible that the ball is like the coin, and I just happen to be in a statistical spike. I wouldn't risk it.

What if you had an infinite number of years to live? Would you stake them all on a non-absolute certainty? Think about that.

The claim of Christianity is that you do have an infinite number of years to live (or something like that - Actually eternity is a bit different, but close enough), and that that infinite time is going to be either great or terrible. Do you want to risk that time on anything less than absolute certainty?