elfshadow wrote:
Well, I took two hits and had to bite one bullet. I believe that my bullet was an unfair one, though. The question was "If God exists she could create square circles and make 1 + 1 = 72" and I answered yes--circles and squares and numbers are arbitrary signifiers on our part, and you could call a circle a square for the same reason you call a circle a circle, right? The concept of a square is still a square and the concept of a circle is still a circle, those remain the same no matter what you call them. Am I just arguing semantics here and missing the real point of the question?
I answered yes to that one, too, and I don't accept the bullet, either.
I would agree with Mith that semantics are not the problem here. Sure, we could call a circle a square and a square a circle, names are arbitrary - but you could still not transform the one into the other.
"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet..."
I've already explained what I don't agree with in that one, but as it also contradics what Mith said later, I'll say it again.
Mith wrote:I see no problem in recognizing God's unique Authority here, as creator of the universe and all the natural laws that govern it. BUT, God is a rational being, so God would never 'think' something true that wasn't. God wouldn't decide that 2+2 is anything other than 4. This does not put any limitation on God, rather expresses God's perfection.
I'm shocked - but I have to contradict you there!
Firstly, how do you know God is a rational being? Or what God would think and not think?
The way I think about God, in this world 2+2=4, and I don't think God could change that, unless He re-made the whole thing.
However, I believe He
could have decided to make a world where
nothing is the least bit like what we have here and know.
Either the world is created by God, and then logic is created by God, too, and could have been created differently, or logic is beyond God and somehow exists independently of Him - which would be inconsistent with believing that God is above
everything.
(Mith, I wonder if you didn't get an inconsistency point for this if you chose God as all-powerful earlier and then said He couldn't change logic later?)
So, yes, I think to say that God could not have made a world different from what it is and completely beyond our imagination is to limit God to our level of understanding. And I think that's wrong.
I think that our trying to fathom God is like a grasshopper trying to understand nuclear fusion.
(Not that I'm precluding that a grasshopper might understand nuclear fusion - I don't know because I've not been a grasshopper yet, to my knowledge - I just do think it's unlikely.)