ramifications of omnipotence for God

The standard view of God in the Christian world is of omnipotence {unlimited power} and it is quite often stated on EVC that he can do absolutely anything.I would be interested in finding out just where the line is drawn by people of faith concerning what God can accomplish.Can God create all men with the capability of free will and obedience to him? If not why not? Surely this is not something which God could not do since that would mean that god is not omnipotent. Yet if God can do such then why does he not do so?

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

how boring to have kids that never have a personality!

I've been thinking about this lately. If God is omnipotent, he can do anything and make anybody or anything do whatever he wishes. But God chose to give man free will and therefore limited himself in his power. He can no longer interfere with human affairs. If he were to do so, man would no longer have free will. Therefore God is not omnipotent - or if he is, we don't have free will.

According to the fundamentalists, this is exactly what he is going to do. When all is over and done with, after Jesus comes back, destroys the world, and recreates it for those who have been saved, then there is going to be no sin. Seeing that everyone will have free will (since, as the fundamentalists always remind us, God doesn't want to be surrounded by robots) but won't sin, then this is entirely possible, and God is actually going to do this.Why he didn't do this at the beginning is a bit of a problem, but one thing fundamentalists are famous for is problematic theology.

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I've done everything the Bible says, even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff! -- Ned Flanders

Is this not a question about gods motives, rather than any limit of gods powers ,and where does one go to gather evidence of gods motive ??Edited by AdminPhat, : spellcheck

This is the question of Epicurus:Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him god?And Shelley got in on the deal, too:If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future? If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him? If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has filled with weaknesses? If grace does everything for them, what reason would he have for recompensing them? If he is all-powerful, how offend him, how resist him? If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at the blind, to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable? If he is immovable, by what right do we pretend to make him change his decrees? If he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him? If he has spoken, why is the universe not convinced? If the knowledge of a God is the most necessary, why is it not the most evident and the clearest.Now, I realize that some of those move beyond the strict question of omnipotence, but they do touch upon it:If god is capable of anything, then why do we live in the world in which we do with all of its faults?

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

So then you agree that God can do anything at all that He feels needs doing? How equally annoying to have kids that never break away to become independent. Besides, your 'point' (if we dare call it even that) is completely irrelevant. Where I work, we all obey the 'Boss', yet each of us has our own personality. Obedience to the same thing does not completely remove the uniqueness of each human being, so your 'response' (if we dare call it even that) doesn't even answer the question. You still have to answer: "if God can...create all men with the capability of free will and obedience to him...then why does he not do so?"Jon

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In considering the Origin of Species, it is quite conceivable that a naturalist... might come to the conclusion that each species had not been independently created, but had descended, like varieties, from other species. - Charles Darwin On the Origin of Species
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ ____ _ _ _ _ _ _ _En el mundo hay multitud de idiomas, y cada uno tiene su propio significado. - I Corintios 14:10
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ ____ _ _ _ _ _ _ _A devout people with its back to the wall can be pushed deeper and deeper into hardening religious nativism, in the end even preferring national suicide to religious compromise. - Colin Wells Sailing from Byzantium

I don't understand. All men do have both free-will and the capability for obedience to God.

Omnipotence means God can do anything. I don't see how God having the ability to create man with free will means that God can't create man with no free will. He already created plenty of things without it. Are you confusing omnipotence with being a control freak?

omnipotent; having very great or unlimited authority or powerI think it's safe to conclude that whatever God wants, God gets(see God's will). However not doing whatever we want or whatever we conclude God wants is not much of a case in determining his omnipotence.It would be interesting as to "what" one would conclude God cannot do in reference to his authority over things. For example, is this of our own needs or His own need? Given our limited insight on things, can we even conclude what effect our own ideas would have on the universe and it's dependencies? And moreso, would such actions be beneficial at all levels of the universe?God, the root of stability and authority, would ultimately exemplify his righteousness in all that he does. This would include, upholding the integrity of all of his living creations physical and spiritual.

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Can God create all men with the capability of free will and obedience to him?

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Either they are free or not. If God created humans in such a way that they could not sin, then they could never claim absolute freedom.

I think what was being articulated is that Christians often claim that man's propensity for disobedience to God, as exemplified by the original sin, is the necessary consequence of God giving Man free-will. That is, God placed choices in our path, by placing the tree of knowledge and giving Adam and Eve the option of obedience or disobedience. Eve and Adam chose disobedience - this was the first act of man’s willful and open disobedience to God.Most Christian doctrine asserts that we have a natural propensity to disobey God because we are Adam's seed and we require the Grace of God to overcome are sinful nature.The question is why is this so? Why does free-will necessarily require a propensity to disobedience to God?God could make us with an inherent and overwhelming desire to obey him and still have free-will.Phat even asserts that this is necessary so that we have a personality. Considering the alleged consequences of disobedience it is absurd to think that God would purposefully create us with the consequence of eternal punishment just so we can "personality".

it may be possible that it is now that we are without free will. in their words "slave to sin." another possibility is that there is some great understanding that we lack which makes doing "right" more efficient or desirable. this knowledge may have been left out of the mythical tree. however, once we learn this piece of information, doing right and obeying god will become so compelling that we don't need to lose our free will to desire and accomplish it.

why does allowing bad things to happen make god malevolent?i think that's a very simplistic assumption. is god malevolent for letting us die? is god malevolent because he allows nature it's course? is god malevolent because he allows men in their capacities to do awful things?i think that's the summation of the bad things in the world. i think you want a sandbox god who absolutely micromanages everything. what's the point of making a functioning universe if you move all the pieces yourself? might as well have a claymation universe.

Maybe, but then what of the reasons that we are often given as to why God refuses to simply come down and show Himself to the world so that we can actually know He exists instead of being left debating His existence in places like EvC? The reason I often hear for this is that were God to do such a thing, the compelling evidence for His existence would be so high that it would virtually remove our freewill to believe in Him”something like, we could deny His existence to others, but we'd still know in the back of our minds that He's real, 'cause we saw Him with our own two eyes.I think from the Christian perspective, any evidence that is so compelling that we simply have no choice but to accept it as truth removes freewill from the equation.Jon