I realize that you're trying to make new discussions, but this one feels a bit redundant to me.

Yer, most atheists don't care about the aspects of a fictional being; and most theists think God is omnibenevolent.

rayNimagi, if you've quoted something from the 8th google search result of "can god sin" should I assume you have read the first seven results ( (okay fine the 6th and 7th ones aren't very resourceful)? Because they've provided insight and issues crucial to answer this question, things which people on forums often overlook. If not, then let me address one of said issues simply: What's clear from scripture is that God's ways are not like ours, his thoughts are not like ours, his measures/attributes are different from ours (The book of Job has an elaborate explanation of this).

Back to what your friend said. Yes one of God's many attributes is wrath and yes wrath is one of the seven sins but there is a difference between our wrath and God's wrath. For details see here. I will say this though, the biggest difference between our anger/wrath and God's anger/wrath is that his is against sin. This offers a better explanation of as well as what sin is.

As for the topic itself:
This is identical to the rock argument. I'll simply point you here (which happens to be the third search result).
Here we go: from what scripture tells me, God does not sin. However, I am willing to listen if you want to argue otherwise (the list of verses from that forum post you quoted is a good place to start). To address this properly you have to know what the Bible says about the differences between attributes we consider to be sin and to be that of God. I'm not saying that your definition of sin is wrong but if you really want to dive into this issue, we have to know what sin is and how to address it from the Christian/Biblical perspective.

This is one of the topics that are good on paper but just falls apart... the main problem is its strictly divided between a line and most people who post most likely aren't in the grey area. And you really need to be in the grey area of theist and atheist to truly argue in this topic but that just imo.

First off I'd like to address the general topic of people trying to find aspects of God which imply some sort of logical contradiction or other implication which they can "use against theists": you can't. It's impossible. If God is truly fictional as atheists believe, then the man who invented him was extremely clever because he invented a being which will defy any bounds of logic. If God is truly extant and capable of doing the impossible, then he defies the bounds of logic as well. Essentially, it's impossible to derive the aspects of an illogical being using logic.

This is nonsense. God can simultaneously be omnipotent and unable to lie. Because God is omnipotent, he may do the impossible, because he may do the impossible he may be both omnipotent and unable to lie. Any logical contradiction can be reconciled with "he may do the impossible". Let me illustrate further:
Amy: "God can't lie."
Bob: "Assume God is omnipotent. Since there's something God can't do, he doesn't have every power in the universe, therefore he isn't omnipotent."
Amy: "But God is omnipotent, therefore he can not lie and still be omnipotent."
Bob: "But that's impossible!"
Amy: "Exactly! God may do the impossible! He's omnipotent!"

Secondly, I'm sure "we are also told that God cannot lie" is a vast misinterpretation of whatever text it stems from. God would simply choose never to lie, very different from being unable to.

Third, God's "inability" to lie may simply stem from his intimate relationship with the nature of the universe. If he is the all-powerful Creator, then any "lie" spoken by God may simply change the entire nature of the universe to reflect a truth in his statement instead of an untruth. For example, if you were holding a red sock in your hand, and God said "you are holding a blue sock", if you were to look down in your hand you might have a blue sock in your hand, and the red sock may never have been there at all.


Assuming logic is capable of encompassing God, this is true, but I think that assumption is not useful or valid.
This is not true at all. If God can and has sinned, then he is not infallible. He may still be omnibenevolent.
Examining whether or not God "can" sin is pointless. God will not ever sin by choice, because he is God, whatever reason you prefer. God 'can't' sin because he will never choose to sin.

Anger isn't a sin...righteous anger is a good thing. Anger at, say, not having a nice enough car, or some kid for poking his tongue out at you would be sinful anger, but being angry at a murderer or rapist would be a good thing. When God is angry, He's always angry at sin.

And no, God doesn't sin. Not because He is incapable of it, but because He won't.

the God of Bible is a contradiction, so therefore it hadn't sinned.

I think you've missed a few steps in your thought process. I could try and assume what you mean but I wouldn't want to be wrong and bother attacking a standpoint that I don't fully understand.

As such...

You say "God of bible is a contradiction" ... Does this mean that the christian god (the one that is described in the bible) is a contradiction? Are you saying that any god described by a holy book is a contradiction? Why is he a contradiction?

You say then "therefore it hadn't [sic?] sinned." Are you stating that if something is a contradiction then it cannot exist, therefore it cannot sin? How is this a constructive or useful argument to make in the first place (if that is what you meant)? The argument is set with the pretext that there IS a god of some sort. As a matter of fact it was stated expressly in the original post that
making your further observations really just repetitions.

The deity called God is a specific kind, known commonly as the Christian god (proper English dictates lower-case G). People often confuse this for meaning god, but they should not be confused.

Often, you may read, "Does God exist?" This, grammatically, implies that the author was referring solely to what is presumably the Christian deity. Usually this is not what is meant, and should read, "Does a god exist?"

Adhering to this structure would help avoid much confusion, thank you.

Or if that kid called you a baldy? 2 Kings 2:23

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 15 2012, 5:46 pm by NudeRaider. Reason: cleaning up

well, even more soe Abrahamic relegion gods are contradiction, dont know about others.

This can follow from the statement that they can do anything, so can they create something which they cant destroy? one would argue maybe, that well, they can do anything which is not contradiction to "himself". but then consider that God is fully above us (it is not influenced by us) and yet he punishes us, also you can consider that it knows about everything. so its only possible if He is connected to information representing everything or to everything itself, in which case we are "inside" if him, so he is not above us, but defined by us. Same goes if he has a stored knowledge about everything, becaus this way also, ther is a one to one exact relation of this part of universe which we can explore the the knowledge inside ggod, so again, we effectively unfluence him, and we define him actually (because of the exact simmetrical relation between explorable part of universe and his knowledge "base") which has no information content it doesnt infulence this world, so it is non existent for this world, so god if existent should have information content at least sometimes in this universe, preferable forwever at time intevals.

Can't really make an argument, but that doesn't prove that there is no god. I could make all sorts of silly arguments against this piece of information but that wouldn't do much for us. Simply put, trying to put real world constraints on something as unbounded of a concept as god isn't verifiable or believable.Why would the information have to exist within our frame of reality? Why would it have to "exist" at all, for that matter?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 15 2012, 5:47 pm by NudeRaider. Reason: cleaning up

(God is Omnipotent)

Depending on how you interpret Omnipotence this means one of two things, either:



If it's the case that God can do all that is logically possible, then it does not follow that he can create something which he cannot destroy, the existance of such a thing would be logically inconsistant with Omnipotence; his inability to perform the logically impossible under interpretation A brings about no contradiction. It would be like God attempting to create a square triange, the square triangle's existance is logically self-contradictary as the 2-d object cannot have exactly 4 sides and exactly 3 sides (logically impossible).

If it's the case that God can perform acts that are logically impossible... than there simply cannot be a logical contradiction! He can exist in a reality where creating the indestructable thing does not bring about the contradiction to his omnipotence -- he can create a square triangle, a married batchlor, and what have you.

Anywho, in light of interpretation A, the first supposid contradiction is an ancient case of circular reasoning; while interpretation B leads to nonsensical (and if it were the time and place, i'd argue, self-contradictary) views of the world - which pretty much let God off the hook for any feasible contradiciton one could try to raise.




There is much confusion about this paragraph, I would ask you to perform some cleanup so it can be understood. It would appear that you are attempting to raise a problem with having infinite knoledge, but the exact contradiction to his existance is not clear.

The information have to exist if you have perception, because your set of perception (frame of perception if you will) contains differences, and this is information.

Oh I see. This explains my confusion... it's not that I didn't understand your conclusion, I just don't understand your statements at all. Perhaps rewrite them in more concise ideas?

I should point out that a paradox created by the first definition of omnipotence does not violate logic per say, but only the law of noncontradiction. I would refrain from speaking about it further, since it veers far off topic into advanced metalogic.

from my post it can be seen that whatever is the case, if God knows about everything in this part of the universe (the part in which we can exist) you see that we Define Him. However in the bible it is described that he is trully above us, that is however not the case because He is not even separate from us we are inside of him we define him. This is for, if He knows about everything it means that some part of Him is connected to everything, or that he has some parts which store the information about everything, but this information would always correspond ina a one-to one simmetrical relation to the part of world which we can explore, so thereby its also the case that we are inside of him, we define him.

I think you would agree that it is stupid to say the words in a book define the author that wrote them. While the words the author chose are a consequence of the personality and, perhaps closer to the subject at hand, soul of the author, it would be silly to say that the soul of the author is defined by the words the author chose, when it is in fact we know that the soul of the author chose the words, and not the other way around. By analogy I would say the correspondence between God and the universe is not one-to-one, but merely injective, that each facet of God's essence corresponds to a particular fragment of the universe, but there is nothing to suggest every essence of God is mapped from (not to). If not every part has a map, then there is little to suggest that we can "Define" Him (and I emphasize my words intentionally with capitals). To say that our small part of the universe defines Him is analogous to saying that knowing everything about a chocolate chip defines a chocolate chip cookie, when in fact the chocolate chips are merely a portion of the whole.

Edit: written while drunk, don't judge too harsh

Edit drunk 2: Of course, who's to say that we have souls capable of choosing stuff right? Especially if God is necessary for a soul?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 17 2012, 7:50 am by Vrael.

Does that mean if I kill myself part of God dies?