Contradictions and God

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My song and praise to God's glory.

1. But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.

2. If this statement 1 is true then it should be possible for my lord and savior to be able to not have the ability to do something.

If statement 1 is true then statement 2 should be true as well because God not having an ability should be possible as well. The problem though is statement 1 and statement 2 is a contradiction. Can God be a contradiction meaning can he do E and ~E at the same time? The answer to this question is no in this contradictory form but into non-contradictory form yes. He can either only exist or not exist. He can only be E or ~E. If you look make a truth tables for both E and non-E there are no T's that are next to each other. They're either T or F or they're either F or T. He can shield his presence. He can't do contradictions in their contradictory form but in a non-contradictory form that is resolved he can do.

Let's say we have the set of all Contradictions possible C. God cannot do anything that is in contradictory form but is able to resolve them to non-contradictory form. Let's resolve the statement 1 and statement 2 contradiction. It is possible for it to be impossible for him to be a contradiction and he can and does resolve contradictions to their non-contradictory form when he resolves the contradiction therefore creating tautologies and non-contradictions.

This means there things that are possible including things which are possible for things to be impossible for him to do. There are things God can do and there are things possible that God can't do therefore resolving the contradiction between 1 and 2.

Let's say we have P for possible things God can do. All things are possible with God which include things that are impossible for God to do. This means All ~P are a subset of P. If God couldn't do anything that was impossible then it would violate the rule that All things are possible with God. This would mean if there was no true impossible thing God could do then God could be around sin and God would be a contradiction which is false. Therefore, all things are possible with God including the possiblity of having possibilities for which God can't do therefore completing his perfect and omnipotent nature.

This means All ~P are a subset of P which means all non-possiblities are possiblities he can do. In ~P we have this list of what is possible that God can't do.

1.I already stated he can't be a contradiction, c is a subset of ~P which is a subset of P. I showed why it is possible for it to be impossible for him to be a contradiction.
2 It is possible for it to be impossible for him to be around sin, s is a subset of ~P and ~P is a subset of P.
3. It is possible for it to be impossible for Jesus to know when he is coming for the 2nd coming. coming, k is a subset of ~P which is a subset of P.
4. It is possible for it to be impossible for God to be tired. tired,t is a subset of ~P which is a subset of P.
5. It is possible for it to be impossible for God to lie. lie,l is a subset of ~P which is a subset of P.


I am now going to show this through a different view.

1. For with God nothing shall be impossible.
2. It should be not impossible that with God all things are possible.

This means the subset of P is now in the subset of ~P. I am going to now use the same examples but through this lens.

1. It is not impossible for it to be possible for God to not be a contradiction. c is a subset of ~p and ~p is a subset of p

2. It is not impossible for it to be possible for God to not be around sin. s is not a subset of ~p and ~p is a subset of p.

3. It is not impossible for it to be possible for Jesus to not know his own second coming. k is a subset of ~p and ~p is a subset of p.

4. It is not impossible for it to be possible for God not to be tired. t is a subset of ~p and ~p is a subset of p.

5. It is not impossible for it to be possible for God to not have the ability to lie. l is a subset of ~p and ~p is a subset of p.

By the way, if a is a subset of b and b is a subset of c then a is a subset of c through the transitive property.

This is how all of this is possible including the possiblility of it not being possible. .

God may not be able to be a contradiction but he can get close to it. I am going to use one contradiction as an example. Can God exist and not exist at the same time? No, he cannot but I ask why can't he simulate it. Imagine existing equals on and non existing equals off. Now imagine God turning this characteristic on and off periodically. Imagine, him turning this metaphorical switch on and off at a certain rate of speed like 500 mph.

Imagine it keeps increasing and increasing eventually reaching the speed of light and going past it. The goal is to be able to achieve contradiction or tautology but in order to reach contradiction he would have to keep going faster and faster until he reached an infinite amount of speed to reach contradiction depending on his goal. Now imagine the set of contradictions that he has to resolve. He has to do the same thing to all members of the set of contradictions.

If the switch to the false value from the truth value of both a and ~a is infintely faster than the switch to the true value from the false value then it will reach contradiction infintely faster then reaching tautology. If the converse of this is true then we will reach tautology infintely faster then we will reach contradiction. If both are at the same infinite speed then it will neither be a contradiction nor a tautology. Since, we can never truthfully reach infinity because we're finite then by this configuration we can never reach tautology or contradiction even though we can almost reach either point.

Since all things are possible including the possiblity of things being impossible and non-possible things being possible then the bible is complete and and God is omnipotent. These infinite speed switches might make it possible.

The free will vs. determinism

One method to solving a contradiction is to break it apart by adding another variable. For instance, there is the paradox of time travel. What happens if I murder myself as a baby before I invent the time machine to do this. One solution is to treat time as having multiple timelines. How can a person have free will and God have infinite amount of knowledge at the same time. If there are an infinite amount of timelines then why can't I say there are an infinite amount of me's who made an infinite amount of decisions. If God has infinite knowledge, then he has infinite amount of knowledge of all the me's who made all possible decisions.

Here is another possiblity. Remember we have the axioms all things are possible and nothing is impossible. If all things are possible then it is possible for it to be impossible for God to have infinite knowledge about me at different points of time and space. It is also not impossible for it to be possible that God does not have infinite knowledge about me as well at different points of time and space. This shows the omnipotence,omniscience, the awesomeness, and the glory of the power of God.

The church especially those in the bible belt are more right they they even think because God can choose to change the criteria of himself at anytime. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are not only entities but are a complete and infinite system when taken together in which there is only one basic rule and one basic constraint. This rule and constraint is that All things are possible including the removal of this constraint for different points of space and time for all of space and time in existence.

It's rather painful to watch someone tie himself up into mental knots over intractable delusive inconsistencies.

Um...w0w...

I'm with you Sand, that's really painful.

Instead of going through point-by-point here, because cube appears to be a fellow Christian, I'll only rule only what I know.

While everything is possible and nothing is impossible, it's absurd, in my mind, to go on and on in these circles about what God can and can't do. I guess you could ponder this idea: If nothing is impossible for God, is it possible for Him to create something He cannot do? If it's possible, then it's impossible... And so on...

So while it may be possible to do something that is impossible even for God Himself, that is, logically speaking, then the best conclusion I can come up with is God may have the ability, but it is very unlikely that He will exercise it. God won't contradict Himself, in other words.

The Bible reveals that God is unchanging. It might be possible for God to change Himself, but why would He? Seriously. I "could" burn my own house down with me and my family in it. Why would I WANT to?

In a word,
self-imposed.

I began reading your post and I immediately thought, ah, you are taking things way too literally.

If you put it in context, Jesus disciples were watching a man walk away from Jesus because he had this desire for material possessions that he couldn't overcome. They were like wow, if that lovely person doesn't want to follow Jesus, who can please God?

But God is not as judgemental as humans can be. In time the man may have changed. With God, things that humans cannot see as possible, he can see them being possible.

Only if God exists.

ruveyn

True

Alright, side-tracking for a sec here, but i found this while writing my exam of anthropology of religion :

"Jesus is reported as having said ‘If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple’ (Luke 14:26, see also Matthew 10:35–36)."

Let's see... I don't hate my dad, nor do i hate my mom, nor my inexistant wife, nor my inexistant children, i don't particularly mind my brethren or my sisters or even my own life. Does that mean i'll be left alone by Christians now? ^^; Or will they get me to hate the above? =/ (which would be contradicting the message of love and whatever...)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB3g6mXLEKk[/youtube]

That's a figure of speech. Why would Jesus preach love and forgiveness and turn right around and tell someone to hate?

Also, Jesus represents the fulfillment of the Law, from which we get "Honor your father and mother..." Again, Jesus would not have good reason to contradict Himself.

"Hate" in this sense might be read either as a hyperbole or as a different contextual meaning. Jesus is just saying that for one to follow Him, one must let go of the people and things that hold him back from following Jesus.

Perhaps a different way of explaining this would be how Jews feel towards accepting Jesus and Christianity. They would feel that the events and teachings recorded in the NT are incompatible with their own religion, though many of us Gentile Christians have no trouble at all accepting teachings of the OT and NT alike. So for a Jew to convert to Christianity would be the ultimate betrayal and might result in being completely cut off from his family. I might add that it was a Jewish convert that told me this, and this lady still observes all the rituals and feasts, keeping Kosher, and the like, because she feels that certain things in her traditions found fulfillment in Christ and that her practice of Jewish traditions is even MORE meaningful now (because Jesus came to the Jews FIRST).

So what Jesus is basically saying here is that in following Him and being His disciple, a Christian assumes tremendous risk to possibly his familial relations or even cultural/societal relations. Living according to Christian principles and being a witness isn't going to get you a raise at your job, for instance; it may even get you fired. Jesus clearly is using extreme language to drive His point home. I'd have loved to have been there when Jesus spoke to people, not just to hear it, but to see just how many people gave up and ran home because they were unable to find the strength within themselves to face their families had they continued in Jesus' teaching.

I read it more as "If you had to, if your family wouldn't tolerate your new beliefs, could you REALLY go the distance and lose everything for the sake of Jesus? Even at the cost of your own life?"

The verse in Matthew is the one about Jesus not coming to bring peace, right? Funny how He is called the "Prince of Peace." Yet again, this verse isn't really a contradiction. While Jesus also championed peace, He was also honest about telling His followers that faith wasn't a free ride and the rest of the world would not initially be supportive of a person's decision to follow Christ. I imagine that quite a few homes were broken up because family members couldn't understand an individual's break with tradition. And there was NOTHING peaceful about the crucifixion. History tells us that Romans enjoyed turning Christians into cat food. So no, these verses aren't really contradictions.

It doesn't pain me. I am not the one with the knots.

ruveyn

People will pray to god for rain or to make their friend Bill well.

If it rains or Bill gets well then they say "God has answered my prayer"

If Bill dies then they say "It was god's will"

Well if it was god's will that Bill should die then there was no point praying in the first place was there?

I love the way that Catholics pray to saints to intercede for them.

I imagine god sitting on a huge throne. All around him are saints pulling on the hem of his robe and saying "Hey god. Bill Smith asked me to ask you...."

And god says "I KNOW ALREADY! I KNOW EVERYTHING! STOP BOTHERING ME'

I think it's better to ask, because at the very least you can say you tried. How do you really know God wouldn't have granted a request if you never asked in the first place? I've found in my personal experience that God didn't answer my prayers because He had bigger/better things in mind--kinda like the stupid way I pined over this girl once because she kept losing interest in me every time I ran out of money. At one point, I would have said that the woman I married was a way of settling for second best. As it turns out, though, the "second best" chick was (and still is) WAY out of my league and for SOME reason that I can't explain other than divine influence she actually WANTS to be with me. Prior to going out with Maneater I'd been stuck on a girl that I had an extreme mutually co-dependent relationship with. The momentary distraction with Maneater revealed to me I'd been selling myself WAY short, and long-story-short I eventually gave up on Maneater and ended up with Truly Awesome Girl. My point is that it was Maneater I was praying for, and I actually ended up doing MUCH better.

In the case of "Bill" dying, we say it's God's will because, though God didn't answer the prayer EXACTLY, God didn't exactly prevent his death, either. We can draw a few conclusions from this. Bill might have lived out his purpose on Earth, therefore illness was simply a way of God "calling Bill home." It could be that illness rendered Bill's body unfit for continued life. If Bill is a believer, then God HAS healed him through death, and death is a process of God's mercy. If Bill is an unbeliever, perhaps it could be that all has been done that COULD be done and death is both an act of mercy (cessation of earthly existence in a tortured and diseased condition) and an act of condemnation (Bill chose eternal separation as an unbeliever).

I've lived through enough life-threatening situations to understand that God chooses to protect some and not others. My brother was killed by a drunk driver, for example, when I was still an infant. Had he lived, I know he'd have been the "favorite" and I'd have never had the opportunities that I did, nor would I have had the chance to affect people in the way that I did. One thing I'm proud of is that I helped a student of mine get into an art boarding school, allowing her to do things she couldn't do had she been forced to stay in her home school district. It's quite possible had my brother lived, I'd have never gone to a private school, never studied music, never got teaching degree, never ended up in that particular low-income school district, and never reached that student. I left that school after that year, which coincided with Hurricane Katrina. Why is that important? Because the art school in question was in the area affected by Hurricane Katrina, administration extended the deadline for admissions. This girl didn't even approach me about the school until the week of the original deadline, so it was a bit of a "second chance." So either it's God's will or a LOOOOOOOOONG successive line of coincidences.

I once survived a spectacular car wreck with nothing more than a few bruises, sore muscles, and a mouth full of dirt. All I really remember is hearing a "voice" somewhere in the back of my brain telling me to open the door and step out of the car. The car was flattened in the accident, and I can't conceive of any way I'd have survived by staying in the car. How did I know I'd be ok by stepping out of a fast-moving car while it flipped a time or two? I didn't. Why is it I survived something so horribly unsurvivable with barely a scratch and my brother got his neck snapped? I don't know. All I can do is point to the things I've done that wouldn't have happened any other way. I always think about my former student because many of the teachers and counselors in that school were not so encouraging (they want to keep the good influences despite the fact their classmates just don't care), not to mention new teachers aren't always adept at seeking out the best opportunities for students they don't even know. Why was I the teacher that broke through to one good student? Again, I don't know. It only follows that those things came about as the result of an intentional higher will than mine alone.

What it means is that the Gospels are nonsense. They are incoherent and inconsistent and therefor make no logical or rational sense.

ruveyn

Not true. Such statements reflect gross ignorance of what the Gospels actually say, not to mention a high level of bias against the Gospels possibly arising from a religious upbringing that itself is disparaging to Christian teaching. Misinformation can do that to you.

I've also thought about the role of pure logic and rational thought in terms of any Christian following. Scholarly debate among Jewish priests and disagreement among various Jewish sects in the pre-Talmud time would have been confusing for most people in general. The common person might understand common sense, but more sophisticated reasoning likely would be lost on the average Josephus. Christianity is MUCH easier to digest for more people, even though it shouldn't necessarily HAVE to be, and it's more open to acceptance by other cultures. That is due in large part to some of the more common-sensical approaches and easy language of the Gospels, though the Epistles certainly pave the way for those who are less easily persuaded. If it can be said that the Talmud helps explain the Torah, so the Letters help explain the Gospels.

Inconsistent? Ultimately you have to make up your own mind. It's interesting to me that you picked out one small statement to make your case while failing to read the rest of it (or just outright ignoring it).

well, schrodinger's cat can be both alive and dead at the same time under some views of Quantum Theory.
So... why can't this god be able to do and not do at the same time?
You see... all those prayers you keep sending him... he's doing them and not doing them at the same time, you're just the unlucky SOB who usually opens the the door to find the metaphorical cat "dead" It's your counter-you in an alternate reality who keeps getting most of his/her prayers answered.

note: As sarcastic as I intended this post to be.... It does present a real issue. Under the knowledge of Quantum Mechanics, could such a god, if he were outside the splitting of universes not do exactly that... both do and not do at the same time?

Would require at least a 5 dimensional existence (more likely 6+).... hrm. gonna have to ponder that one... would love input too.