http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6358325.stm
Good or bad?

Would he legalize polygamy? How much do religious views influence politics in the USA?

Quite a lot. Even before Bush started his holy war.

Well, to his benefit, there's an extra 'm'.

He doesn't seem like a bad guy. Of course, no one really cares for Bush these days. My vote is for Arnold though...

Onewing: Terminator new president?

Have they changed that law that requires the President to be born in the US?

TF: um I don't think so. That's a pitty, but I'm sure he'll be back

Can we have a liberal this time please?

Secular Progressives are no longer allowed to lead this country. They're all Satan worshipping gay lovers!

I support Richard Phipps plea.

1890 Manifesto. Congratulations, welcome to 1890.
(Text is here for those interested)
And here is the current stance on the subject

Seriously people, Mormon does not imply polygamous, nor does polygamous imply Mormon (just like Islam does not imply terrorist, Atheist does not imply intellectual, Jewish does not imply businessman, etc.)

EDIT:

As for Mitt Romney, unless he can give me a reason not to vote for him, he has my vote. (Several reasons; shares my stance on abortion, seems to be fiscally responsible, != Hillary Clinton (Obama could possibly sway me, not that it would matter, as I live in the most Republican district in the whole country), seems to understand that an immediate withdrawal from Iraq could not necessarily be the best thing (as most of the Democratic candidates seem to be pushing for) (well, it would probably be fine for the US, but when Iraq goes to hell due to the Iraqi government collapsing further than it is already, it won't exactly help anyone; We made the mess, we should probably clean it up.) etc.)

Fuck that. How about we grow a brain cell or three and decide to stop bouncing between extremes for a moment. Moderate is the way to go.

What about a puppy? A puppy as president could make America look a little less...bully-ish. Plus, a puppy is more loyal and doesn't make as many decisive choices.

That's the most important qualification.

Have you heard of Unity 08?

What if it was the Evil Puppy:

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http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/12/24/romney_left_mass_on_212_days_in_06/

Romney's announcement proclaims him the former governor of Massachusetts. My article claims he spent more time outside Massachusetts than in last year. Do you really want an absentee president? I would rather have a moderate. BTW, I'm from Massachusetts.

USA
For a country which is said to strive to separate church and state, religious beliefs are a huge influence in not only current laws but on our entire history.

Also for a country which touts itself as a beacon of justice and democracy it sure doesn't have much of it

I dunno about Mitt Romney... I don't think I'd want him as the president.

Hahaha, so Mr. Joe wrote an addendum to the Bible that said that God authorized plural marriages in some cases (especially for himself!). That is classic. So luckily if I'm Mormon, I can claim that God has authorized plural marriages for me!

It's quite interesting that the church got this "revelation" to quit authorizing polygamy during the same time the federal government was saying that Utah couldn't be a state if they practiced polygamy.

Hehe, I misread the title as "A Moron President?". Couldn't figure out why Phipps raised the question, with the world-wide consensus on this

From this side of the world, Obama seems the best choice to us..

Obama has the best chance a non-white has ever had, but I doubt he will win because most of the African-American community don't consider him "black" because he was raised by his white mom who didn't have ancestors who were enslaved by Americans at some point.

Also, he comes from a chiefly Democratic state, so that won't help him pick up any easy electoral votes. However, he will benefit from the "anybody but Clinton" mindset.

I'm not sure I see why people are so against Clinton, the last time she was in office, she did a bang up job. Got the economy up, and didn't start any wars.

Er, you mean let the economy collapse on the way out.

The way I hear it, Bush inherited a climbing economy, and managed to twist it into a total failing economy.

edit, thats not quite what I heard, its really more along the lines that he inherited an economy the best it had been in decades.

Alot of people hold a lot of animosity toward Clinton. I'm not sure exactly why, Watergate, Lewinsky, malodorous breath, etc... But she seems to be the most moderate Dem. She's not advocating a timeline for withdrawing from Iraq for example. I think that's were Obama has screwed up. I think public opinion against the war is very strong, but I also think most people realize pulling out on MM-DD-YYYY would be a bad thing. Plus he's an admitted drug user, pot and cocain. That won't fly with the Right. But on the other hand he has a +5 to charisma.

But the republicans, wow, they've got slim pickings: McCain who's 72? and Romney the Mormon, and Giuliani. Giuliani could be a surprise, but didnt' he have cancer? What if that flares up again?

The economy was clearly unstable in early 1999 and rather than be proactive Clinton chose to ride the final year out knowing he'd leave office before the damage become apparent. Economic change takes considerable time; Bush inherited a failing economy rather than the other way around. By the time Bush came into office it was impossible to enact any legislation that would stave off the coming recession.

Note: edited for clarity and link fix.

Mormon president? Pfft. Boring!
Now a marmot president on the other hand...

Extremes? Where?

How about a moron president? What? It has been done before? Aww...

In other news: Bob strikes again!

How about a marmoset president? There's already a monkey in office, apparantly.

ABC is airing a special on a polygamist Mormon community right now.

Today I learned a new word.

I guess a marmite president is beyond most here?

I'd like a marmalade one. Especially if he's grapefruit marmalade.

Polygamy requires a lot of responsibility plus you've got to have a big salary to support all your wives and their children which makes not sense. You can have a lot of sexual partners without being married. To legalize it, I don't think its wrong. Everyone has the right to live the way they feel - that's freedom.

Who'd want to have more than one wife? After five minutes I'd tell them to carry on without me.... and keep the noise down.

Screw that, I don't even want one.

Amen to that!

Q: What's the best way to make your girlfriend gain 100lbs?
A: Marry her.

LennyLen: What would you feed her? For some of the girls I know, 100lbs would almost duplicate their weight.

You don't have to feed her. It just happens. It's one of nature's miracles, just like the fact that she can also be bitchy about the weight at the same time.

This makes me think of John Safran vs God Episode 4.. [EXTREME MORMONS]
not that it has so much to do with a Mormon President..

Do you guys have a problem with overweight people? For shame...

Um, no.

Africa will stop suffering from hunger once scientists crack this miracle.

I am overweight myself, and have no problem with slightly overweight women.

Clipper chip. National health care.

and "I'm not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers. We are the president" -- Hillary Clinton commenting on the release of subpeonaed documents.
(in relation to Whitewatergate)

quoted from http://www.rightwingnews.com/quotes/clinton.php

Slightly overweight women are only sexy and feminine! The weird idea that women have to be thin and their behinds have to look like boys' behinds is coined by fashion creators, most of which are gay. Face it, they don't mind if fashion models have small boobs. Sadly, this ideal fashion model body has become the western standard for what is considered sexy. Well, boobs have to be big, but the rest of the body is a young boy's body. Thanks but no thanks.

What an absolutely enthralling conversation you have going on here.

Why not just make a "Presidential Speedhack" out of your favorite (or least-favorite) candidate? Then, you can show everyone who you would save/destroy.

If you got lucky, some news station (or political campaigns) might even catch wind of the winning entry (or one of the runners-up) and you could get your 15 minutes of fame...

Your games would all have to have catch-phrases. I think every game needs catch-phrases. Like, "Billy, put down that flaming cat. B...Billy?!" or "Away with ye! I have peons to roast!" or "No, Timmy, dominating the world doesn't mean THAT!"

No, that's regular sized women. The "fashion ideal" is seriously underweight.

Lot's of people are hiding behind religion these days. Instead of going to a Star Trek type society where science and logic dominates...

And it is really strange, because no one has ever seen anything remotely close to proving even the slightest bit of any religion as true. Which means that humans are not really logical, even with all the sciences and other stuff that has been invented.

If I was a US citizen, I would vote for any party that promised equal opportunities for all instead of promoting their own agenta, even if their religion was totally opposite to mine. What the Earth needs is less injustice, not more religion.

Every candidate promises equal opportunity but follows thier own agenda when elected. They run because they want to change things to be more favorable to them, and they promise everything including the moon to get elected.

Okay, this had to be done.

Don't we have one of those already?

Oh. Wait. Mormon.

Yes, yes it did.

How about "I did not have sexual relations with that woman?"

And of course, the game would have to have nucular weapons.

I know. Get Chelsea pregnant and make Hillary win the election. You'll have a mormor president.

I can't make Hillary president, but I can... never mind.

"The President's brain is missing" and call it Star Wars.

We can't have both?

No, religion is based on faith not logic.

As has been explained before, this is idiotic. No one believes in something without a reason unless they're insane. But I guess topics like this attract the ignorance ... carry on.

Let's not open that can of worms again.

Having a reason not always implies having a logic reason.

I'll shut up now.

Granted, but irrelevant. It's still not blind faith.

The logical conclusion to which is that religious people are insane.

So you'll stop trying to reason with us and shut it? Glad to hear it.

I've never tried to reason with you - I know full well that would be futile, as the truly devoted will never change their colors - just expose you all to any spectators as the lunatics you are. It's about saving those who are swaying in the middle.

The good news is that Christians in the USA are finally starting to stand up to fundamentalist creationism!
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/dn11145?DCMP=ILC-Top5&nsref=dn11145

Can we please have the ban on religion discussion reinstated? Pretty, pretty please?

Hey how this thread got derailed to endless religious discussion? It's OP was something about moron president. D'oh, it was mormon - aha...

The topic is about religion, actually. It is about a Mormon president, i.e. it is about if religion should define politics or not.

But the reason does not have to be a proven proposition, or something logical.

The brain works by using pattern matching. Religion is an attempt to solve the unsolvable problem of the universe's existence, and since the brain can not give a definitive answer, the selected pattern is that 'a divine entity must have created the universe'.

The truth is, though, that without religion, there would be fewer wars, less excuses for the politicians to abuse people, less discrimination, less craziness.

In other words, the topic is about the nature of politics, not religion.

That's such a cheap copout. How can we debate religion's impact on politics if we can't talk about religion?

If you can't figure out how to discuss whether or not religion should be a part of politics without having to discuss the nature of various religions (and more importantly, belittle people with religious beliefs), then you're not as smart as I thought you were.

The discussion does not need to get heated. Religion is part of politics, as any other aspect of life.

For me, it goes like this: since religions are all fake (personal belief, no need to get upset), politics should not be mixed with religions.

The funny thing is, most religions say this about all other religions.

Well done, Lenny. Resorting to red herrings and ad hominems, are we? Good to hear you don't have any real arguments.

That reminds me of a cute little quote by Stephen Robertson: "I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."

TIME PARADOX APPEND:

And why can't we debate that? Just because the law says that doesn't mean we have to when we're debating it. Again, if we're going to debate the impact some particular religion would have on politics, we're going to have to examine that religion! There's just no two ways about it. Anything else is a bleeding copout, probably by someone who can't stand to have his superstitions challenged by rationality.

I can not know if there is an entity that created the universe, but I certainly know that all the dogmas of all religions are wrong. In that light, all religions are fake.

In my country the law establishes that members of the church are not to deal with politics in any way. That rule is from 1850, but has been relaxed with the more catholic-oriented government we had the past 6 years.

I thought it was too obvious to state, but here you are: The constitution of said country states that ALL religions are considered equal under the law. Therefore you do not need to discuss the merits and practices of individual religions.

The need for religion or lack of it in politics is a matter worth discussing, but there is no need to discuss why people are religious, and whether this makes them insane or not.

A religion thread, and I wasn't invited!? WHAT IS THIS TOMFOOLERY

http://www.duckiehorde.net/religion.jpg

Mmm, hamburgers...

There'd also be less charity, less goodwill in general, and less motivation for a lot of people to have any sort of positive vision for their own lives and the world around them. And without science, we'd have a lot less death and destruction from various form of weaponry.

It's not religion, and it's not science, because both have been tools for good and evil. It's people. This is also a discussion we've had before; even if religion had never existed, there'd still be wars. You don't honestly think GWB or bin Laden really believe their own tripe when they talk about God in relation to events of recent years, do you? For someone who keeps going on about how they prize logic, I shouldn't have to repeat this stuff to you. You are NOT this stupid, stop acting like it and start thinking.

Truly devoted? I was an athiest for decades, and I'm open to intelligent argument. I'm not "truly devoted", just not as gullible as some people here would like me to be. I also like playing devil's advocate, which is fairly easy in this case because I used to be you and axilmar.

Sorry if I said I'd step out, but if everyone else can copy/paste the same old tired arguments, I'll do the same with the counterpoints.

Hey, you seem to miss a key article here. Though I can't believe that you haven't observed it before. Everytime, somebody is going to discuss religion. They're going to tell the same "truths" again, again and again. Nobody is going to accept the "truth" from the other camp. That's why theese discussions are endless and pointless.

Live and let live. If you need to discuss religion relating to the OP, please do so, but above posts seem to go really offtopic.

Granted, which is why I don't start them. But if someone else is going to excrete their ignorance onto the board, I would be remiss to not at least attempt to correct them.

As for the actual topic, I have no idea if this guy is any more a Mormon than GWB is a Christian, so assuming anything of his policies that he hasn't explicitly stated is a waste of time. It's not like the article linked says anything about policies influenced by Mormonism specifically. Oh noes, polygamy! .... uh, no.

And shorter lifespans, much lower standard of living and health.

The dark ages shunned any sort of "science", look where it got them for a couple hundred years.

I'm not shunning science. But anyone who shuns religion for the same reasons should, or else they're fostering a double standard. I'm just being realistic and not throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

TF: at least the Earth would not be overcrowded
23: I just remembered old thing
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I always thought Chelsea was hot for some reason...

I'll tell what them Iraqi's could use, they could use some good old fashioned fire and brimstone, love thy neighbor as thyself, forgiveth your debts and ye forgive your debtors, and some turn the other cheek to boot.

I don't think Islam contains that last concept.

nonnus: in fact it does, as far as I remember they use the Bible as a basic for their religion and building other things on top of that.

Really? I thought it was all 'eye for an eye' 'car bomb for car bomb' type of thing....

The trouble is Muhammad came after Jesus, so his contradictory teachings invalidate everything Jesus said. Jesus was the one with the peaceful messages to put an end to the brutal theocracies of the past millennia.

Islamic faith is more akin to what you see in the Old Testament than what you see in the new. Just because Muhammad came after Jesus doesn't mean he teaches the same things. Read what Jesus taught and compare it to Muhammad, then make your own informed opinion.

Where are all the good new religions?

Like, Scientology?

fret no more: http://www.venganza.org/

He said GOOD.

Doh! I forgot to include the FSM Religion! That's great, obviously..
What else is new & good though?

We demand new religions!

The Church of the Invisible Pink Unicorn is a great religion as well.

Unfortunately it's the people who made Islam what is it now. Now I'm speaking about those skillful imans who abuse Islam for their own purposes to seek power. If you see it objectively normal people want to live in peace.

By the way what I remember from history lessons is that Christians were allowed to live in Islamic countries, they only had to pay some extra tax, because they haven't accepted the whole "truth" (Koran), but they accepted both testaments and it was good. The real trouble was with the Jews.

Also the Jesus is on of the prophets by the Islam. And who do you think began with holy wars? If I remember correcly it was pope in Rome who told that Jerusalem must be in christian hands and called fro crusades in the name of god. Ironicaly under the same god as moeslims have...

ML: All I have to say is: "Fear, in my opinion, is a key article of faith."

Maybe it should be part of the constitution that presidents aren't allowed to try to convert their and other countries to their own religion.

Isn't it always?*

*⁾ _{I'm just kidding. I loathe all religions equally.}

The same should aply to lifestyle, goverment type and "democracy".

Yes, it is - from the sight of Islam.

plz

In my country, the Church has a hand in almost everything.

Charity and goodwill are not a function of religion. Look at Asia and Africa: no charity and goodwill there, yet plenty of religion. And in the middle ages, there was no charity and goodwill in Europe.

Polls prove you wrong: religious and superstition people have a negative vision of their own lives and the world; atheists do not.

There would be far less excuses. People would be more informed and less available to exploitation.

GWB's or Bin Laden's authority comes from the people who are gullible enough to vote for them or support them.

Please, no names. Critise my argument, not me.

So perhaps you can answer the following question:

If the universe is so complex that it can only have been created by an intelligent designer, then the designer is more complex than the universe. Who then created the designer?

These discussions are not pointless. We make them pointless, due to our selfishness: we do not want to listen to the arguments of others, we simply state our beliefs.

There is only one truth, because there is one universe. Everyone may focus on a different part of the truth, but there is only one truth after all.

I couldn't agree more. Modern application of christianity has nothing to do with Jesus' message.

Yes we make them pointless, because we don't know how to lead them, therefore they're pointless.

Ehm, that's only what we think. Have you read "Trouble with the bubbles" by P. K. Dick? Of course that's a science fiction, but gives a good idea of what could be possible, because we don't know this fact for sure.

I will throw in a good question. If somebody would be omnipotent, then he could invent some unsolvable problem. Isn't that paradox? I mean that if you're omnipotent, it means that you can solve everything.

By the very nature of religion, or at least the one in question, believing in magic to some extent, that question answers itself. Although, it is not as if that question is answered sufficiently through logic by any other system of belief, nor can it be, and therefore, is entirely pointless. Whether you choose to believe that an intelligent designer created the universe or whether it was created by an explosion of a near infinitely dense particle, you still have the question of where that designer or particle came from. It is an unanswerable question, invoking no thought other than circular reasoning in an endless cycle and is therefore, pointless.

It is not that people chose not to listen, although for some this is the case, but rather that listening to such arguments leads nowhere. The arguments by their very nature must be incomplete, considering that the "one truth" you speak of cannot possibly be known to any individual. Actually, I think I shall take that back. Everyone knows this "one truth" and no one is wrong. Truth is nothing more than a mere perception of reality, perceive it however you wish, but you cannot expect others to do so in the same fashion.

The bottom line is, axilmar, that all are incapable of knowing anything at all for an unvarying fact without including in a multitude of assumptions. Of course, as time goes on, even more and more assumptions must be included to call anything at all fact.

Basically, you can build your beliefs about the origin of life and the universe off of evidence or you can build it off faith, but either way, your beliefs are unverifiable. Thus, no matter your side of the argument, you are arguing over fiction and "what-if" questions. It is because of this, and not because of self-imposed loss of hearing, that these arguments lead nowhere.

In any event, I now grow bored of typing, and a quite a bit earlier than usual with much smaller paragraphs. Feel free to dispute anything, but it will not lead you anywhere. You cannot even be certain of what you are seeing before your very eyes; claiming to be certain about what might have happened or what occurred an eternity before your eyes came to be is pure fallacy.

I'm ignoring most of the comments because there is no simple answer. If there were, everyone would be a Christian or an Atheist or whatever. But this one always bugs me:

If "omnipotent" means a being can do anything, including contradictory things, then nothing can be omnipotent by its very definition, and therefore the term itself is bogus and should be thrown out of the dictionary.

Omnipotence, when dealing with the Christian God (and I would hope, in general), simply means He has the ability to do anything within His nature. The Bible says God cannot lie. That alone should tell you that omnipotence has nothing to do with being able to do everything.

That sounds strange. Of all people I have met, I must say that atheists tend to have more negative visions.

And these discussions are not pointless. After a discussion like this, someone might change their point of view, in either direction. But the most important thing is to gain understanding of alternative ideas and people who believe in these ideas. I won't turn into an atheist because of these discussions, but I think it is important for me to read what atheists think. Well, for anyone who isn't interested in what people of other beliefs think, this is a pointless discussion. Whether they are Christians, atheists or Potrzebists.

[edit]
Me to God, if I ever meet him face to face: "Please show me how you divide with zero! PLEASE!"

nonnus29 said: I always thought Chelsea was hot for some reason...

I saw Chelsea's portrail in the Beavis and ButtHead movie. I thought it was accurate. As to the Holy War reference, it was a pope who coined the phrase "Kill them all, let God sort them out". Just shows what a theocracy would do when empowered.

Compassion Canada and Watoto, off the top of my head. I'm sure there are more; it's not like I live there.

For every poll you can provide that shows this, I can probably show you a poll that doesn't.

I doubt that highly. Tons of successful propoganda doesn't even come close to being religious and seems to work fine.

You don't make arguments. You preach truisms. Rather religiously, too. The hypocrisy gets tired.

No clue. Firstly, why do you assume this is a foundation of my faith at all, and second, how would my agreeing with the alternative be any less stupid? Another reason these discussions are pointless is because of purely academic questions like that one. If I were to agree or disagree with you, I would be equally illogical. So why waste my time?

PS: I don't see why a creator would have to be more complex. The scientific explanation for the start of the universe seemed to take a simple start and produce rather complex results.

100% agreed.

Also 100% agreed, which is why I laugh at the "God can't make a rock so big He can't lift it" crowd. Matthew also pointed out the usual example of something God can't do. Wow, God can't be omnipotent means God isn't omnipotent? I always thought God can't be omnipotent means God can't exist! The mind reels!

You boys still at this discussion?

There's a Mormon guy running for presidency. So what? Get over it.

"Oh no! This guy's a Catholic!"
"Uh-oh! This guy's a Protestant!"
"Mercy! This guy's a Muslim!"
"What do we do? This guy's a Mormon!"
"What's to come of us? This guy's an Athiest!"
"It's the end of the world! This guy's Buddhist!"

Has it mattered in the past what religion the president is? My personal feeling is that someone who is religious would better be able to relate to my feelings about certain political, social, and economic views than someone who says "God is not, therefore, no one should benefit from believing in God." But that's only me.

If he doesn't impose his religious beliefs on everyone else, but rather believes however he wants, and allows us to believe how we want, what's the problem?

C'mon. You're kicking the wrong horse.

Part of being a leader is imposing your will( and beliefs) on those you control.

3 letters, G W B.

Can God microwave a burrito so hot that he himself could not eat it?

As for the OP, regardless of his religious preferences he is bound to screw up somehow. Presidents these days always seem to find ways to mess up in the public's opinion

There may be more than one universe. Science is still unsure about that..

Exactly. This was my point with that question.

Finaly I have some logical argument I can tell to a friend. We just have and interesting discussion over John Hume's teachings and I said what if our "god" (who holds our universe in "memory") is a creation in his own world which is dominated by some other "god". He kept telling me, that the "god" is "omnipotent" so it's not possible to be a part of another creation.

In other words I have remembered P.K.Dick...

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/02/19/romney_joined_nra_in_august/

Nothing to do with religion in politics. Just another Massachusetts candidate waffling on the issues.

I like the new "big rip" theory. Its really quite interesting. Though I'm not sure how the process is supposed to keep going, shouldn't it make increasingly smaller and smaller universes as it gets split into tiny pieces each time? I dunno.

I'd bet a lot of the reason John Kerry did so badly is that his two daughters inherited his canoe shaped head, and people couldn't bear the thought of looking at them on the cover of People magazine every three weeks just because they're the presidents daughters

It is a paradox.

Just an observtion:
You don't have to be omnipotent to invent an unsolvable problem.
Goldbach wasn't omnipotent but the Goldbach conjecture so far proved unsolvable.

Yeah that's the point.

I don't think this thread is far enough from the original post, so here goes:

So far, but mathematicians tend to solve these kind of things or prove they're unsolvable. Remember mr. Wiles? I'd rather present Goodsteins theorem as an example. It has been shown that it's unprovable in Peano arithmetic but can be proven true with some other methods.

Or maybe even simpler example: present a rational number that can't be expressed in the form p/q where p and q are primes.. Seems quite unsolvable to me.

Maybe you could generalize this statement to the form: "Please show me undefined." Remember to post the answer to a.cc!

So logically then, noone can be omnipotent. I suppose I was agreeing with you if that's whast you're saying.

Yep. I rememeber when I have discussion over this topic (omnipotency) with some people after playing some RPG game which resembled Sphere. They pointed this out. Also recommended me a book "Metamorphosis of prime intelect".

I also remember a discussion with a friend who is theist (I don't keep any prejudice here), he disagreed as well as some others. This friend didn't also get a note which ML posted above - that the God's "omnipotence" is limited by himself/his nature and therefore rejected the thought of "Trouble with a bubbles".

And then God replied:

var foo;
window.alert(foo);

The latest posts remind me of Isaiah 55:11. Did you know God's word never returns void?

If a.cc expended as much energy on making games as it does religious debates, there'd be... well, there'd be a hell of a lot of allegro games being made, that's certain.

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nonnus: That's so funny I almost spilled my coffee over the keyboard. Next time please be less funny.

My friends just looked at me with surprise when I began to laugh.

Next compo be about games filled with propaganda about the coder's religious/antireligious conviction.

I dunno

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They look a bit shifty to me.

A challenger appears

http://pehkonen.1g.fi/mona/tykkaa/haisuli2.gif

Why can't something be omnipotent? Sure, it could create something so large it couldn't lift it, right? Then it wouldn't be omnipotent, right? You're right, but to put it correctly, you wouldn't be omnipotent anymore. If you are omnipotent, you can do anything, even removing your own omnipotence is within your realm. Therefore, anything an omnipotent being does that defeats itself simply falls under the category of the omnipotent being removing its own omnipotence (which an omnipotent being can do). But why would it ever do that?

Just fueling the fire.

Nah. This is just more purely academic babble, especially since we've shown that God is clearly not omnipotent.

I didn't say anything about God (I'm going to stay out of that area). Just trying to prove that omnipotence isn't impossible (or playing devil's advocate).

Onewing: That being wouldn't be omnipotent. Obviously, an omnipotent being should be able to perform any given task. So I kindly ask him (assume masculinity for simplicity) to design a game he himself can't finish coding, then finish coding it. One of the two tasks will definetly fail, thus failing the task.

Ok, now you could say that he'd lose his omnipotence while designing the game. Let's change the task to form: "design a game you can't finish coding without losing your omnipotence blah.."

By the way, I find the usual form of the paradox "create a stone so big you can't lift it" a bit ill defined. Where is the guy standing? If he's standing on earth, he'll just simply push earth with his legs, thus lifting the stone. So, there should be two stones he couldn't move and he should be standing on either one.

This is so much fun I'm getting a headache.

True, but it's the topic (well, as of about post 20 or so it is ), so I wanted to keep it a bit relevant. And I would agree that true omnipotence is impossible, while God is close enough that we should be able to say "he's omnipotent" without having to qualify that statement to the smartasses.

Tricky! Okay, assuming you mean "finsh a game that you design specifically impossible for yourself to finish without ever losing your omni-stuff."

Designing the game is no problem, of course, finishing it is. So our friend Omni creates a free-willed race that learns to live, spead and evolve over many centuries. The goal is that the race will eventually finish the task somewhere over the timeline of infinity. Then of course you have the argument of who finished the game, Omni or the race.

I don't know, I'm not omnipotent.

This is such a headache, it's getting fun.

Ouch, what have I done, what?

Wouldn't "knowing" things fall under omniscience?

What's that coming over the hill? Is it a unicorn? Is it a unicorn?

I'm not claiming that either...

Damn . I intended to ask you where I put the manual for my motherboard .

Does Gödel's theorem apply to a non-omnipotent, non-omniscient God?

I think Gödel's theorem states that it's impossible to say whether a system has no contradictions using only the axioms of the system. Or something like that, I'm too tired to look it up. So I'd say theorem doesn't apply to such a thing.

Eihter that or I didn't get what you're saying/I'm thinking of some other theorem of Gödel. He had a few of 'em.

Edit: paradoxal typo

How interesting

Kali ma is displeased with you all

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Since, by definition, the universe is all that we can sense in one way or another, finding "more universes" would merely expand the universe as we know it (like they've been doing for hundreds of years).

Supernovas don't just happen, ya know. He's using the scientific method to test this.

More anime?

postcount++ lollerskates

Where do all those faces come from? They're not attached to her neck... any neck.

She is God, She does not need to have necks.

I bet you are worse on a bad day..

So Kali ma is a rayman?

Kali ma kicks rayman's arse any day.

God is the guy who, you know, when little kids go to him asking, "Can you make a box big enough to fit all the cheese the Moon's made of?", replies, "The Moon isn't made of cheese." Or was that guy Siddhartha? Or Bodhidharma?

Oh well, I have all the god I need standing on a shelf next to me. So there.
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(Though obviously in capturing him on CCD much of his grace and dignity had to be sacrificed.)

Sporus: that god has too few arms, legs and faces.

Kali ma kicks Sporus' voodoo doll's arse

They didn't have spare parts at the Ikea.
... Pimp my idol?

I figured she would. Though what you didn't see on the photo there is that said hiney is covered by nasty thorns and super glue. Petty, but effective.

Haha that really made me laugh. I know there was a reason I kept reading this thread.