prayer and omnipotence
I was thinking recently about how, while people often pray for outcomes that have not been determined (so far as we humans can tell, anyway), they also often pray for things that have already been decided, as in "Oh, God, please let the test come back negative", or "Jesus, make it my lottery number in the paper today". This has always seemed stupid to me. However, I just noticed that if you're an omnipotent, omniscient God, not tied to one perspective in time, it's all the same to You whether a human prayed yesterday or will pray tomorrow.
I had an interesting conversation with meowse about omnipotence--specifically, about the old question of whether, if God is omnipotent, He can make a rock so heavy He can't lift it. meowse claims the question is nonsense, but doesn't think he has adequate training in formal logic to rigorously prove it. I agree it is nonsense, but that's because I don't believe in omnipotence. Or, rather, I see "omnipotence" as having two possible meanings. Strong meaning: An omnipotent entity can do absolutely anything conceivable, whether it is logically consistent or not. I think this one is nonsense, and I quibble with this use of the word "conceivable". Weak meaning: An omnipotent entity can do anything it is possible to do. Being a pantheist, or something like one, I consider God to be a kind of personification of the sum total of all our (humans', animals', trees', rocks', galaxies') powers and aspirations, at their best. I therefore find the weak meaning tautological; of course some part of the universe can do everything that some part of the universe can do. There may also be a third meaning between these two, which includes everything that is logically possible, even if it's physically impossible, but I don't think this is a very interesting definition, because the difference between "logically possible" and "physically possible" is just a matter of limits of our understanding. Lots of things are miracles if you don't know how they work.
Coincidentally, ozarque has just been talking about prayer, and how it's talked about in the Bible and by Bible-believers. ataniell93 had this to say about it.
I had an interesting conversation with meowse about omnipotence--specifically, about the old question of whether, if God is omnipotent, He can make a rock so heavy He can't lift it. meowse claims the question is nonsense, but doesn't think he has adequate training in formal logic to rigorously prove it. I agree it is nonsense, but that's because I don't believe in omnipotence. Or, rather, I see "omnipotence" as having two possible meanings. Strong meaning: An omnipotent entity can do absolutely anything conceivable, whether it is logically consistent or not. I think this one is nonsense, and I quibble with this use of the word "conceivable". Weak meaning: An omnipotent entity can do anything it is possible to do. Being a pantheist, or something like one, I consider God to be a kind of personification of the sum total of all our (humans', animals', trees', rocks', galaxies') powers and aspirations, at their best. I therefore find the weak meaning tautological; of course some part of the universe can do everything that some part of the universe can do. There may also be a third meaning between these two, which includes everything that is logically possible, even if it's physically impossible, but I don't think this is a very interesting definition, because the difference between "logically possible" and "physically possible" is just a matter of limits of our understanding. Lots of things are miracles if you don't know how they work.
Coincidentally, ozarque has just been talking about prayer, and how it's talked about in the Bible and by Bible-believers. ataniell93 had this to say about it.