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28. God / A. Divine Nature / 4. Divine Contradictions

[contradictions in our concept of a supreme being]

17 ideas
In Empedocles' theory God is ignorant because, unlike humans, he doesn't know one of the elements (strife) [Aristotle on Empedocles]
If Plato's God is immaterial, he will lack consciousness, wisdom, pleasure and movement, which are essential to him [Cicero on Plato]
Why shouldn't the gods fear their own destruction? [Cicero]
God can do anything non-contradictory, as making straightness with no line, or lightness with no parts [Auriol]
An omnipotent will cannot make two things equal or alike if they aren't [Cudworth]
Perfections must have overlapping parts if their incompatibility is to be proved [Leibniz]
A God who cures us of a head cold at the right moment is a total absurdity [Nietzsche]
It is hard to grasp a cosmic mind which produces such a mixture of goods and evils [James]
A person with non-empirical attributes is unintelligible. [Ayer]
You can only know the limits of knowledge if you know the other side of the limit [Searle]
If God is omniscient, he confronts no as yet unmade decisions, so decisions are impossible [MacIntyre]
In the Bible God changes his mind (repenting of creating humanity, in the Flood) [Armstrong,K]
Presumably God can do anything which is logically possible [Chalmers]
Omniscience is incoherent, since knowledge is a social concept [Kusch]
God cannot experience unwanted pain, so God cannot understand human beings [Sorensen]
How could God know there wasn't an unknown force controlling his 'free' will? [PG]
An omniscient being couldn't know it was omniscient, as that requires information from beyond its scope of knowledge [PG]