Re: USAGE: "omnipotence" (was: Re: USAGE: "racism" )

On Fri, 14 Jan 2000 14:53:50 -0600 Ed Heil <edheil@...> writes:
> Steg, the difficulty is that if the deity *could* create a boulder so
> big that it couldn't lift it, then its omnipotence would be flawed
> by
> its inability to lift the (as yet nonexistent but potentially
> existent) boulder.  Whereas if the deity *couldn't* create a boulder
> so big that couldn't lift it, then its omnipotence would be limited
> by its inability to create the boulder in the first place.
> So the boulder doesn't actually have to exist to be a problem.
> But yeah, it's all about how carefully you define "omnipotent."  The
> paradox is only really a problem if you define "omnipotent" to mean
> "for any possible verb phrase X, the sentence 'God can X' is true."
>                        edheil@postmark.net
.

I guess that is the point of disagreement after all - for me, the quality
of "omnipotence" is completely practical.  What would happen afterwards
doesn't matter to me.


-Stephen (Steg)
 "amô, ê amo.  amâmu, ê nô maçtâmû."