Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26484417-20180225092054/@comment-26484417-20180227005206

AlphaTheHD wrote: ...They can therefore ignore the law of non-contradiction to make it possible for them to be both able and unable to lift the BICL... Well, as I have mentioned above, the issue here is that there is no way to know whether the being is ignoring the law of non-contradiction, or simply cannot lift the BICL and has to change it into a non-BICL before lifting it--or weasels out in another manner. After all, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. =)

But let's say that we know the being ignored the law of non-contradiction to lift the BICL as you propose. I see two questions that need addressing: question would be whether it still counts as fulfilling the original request (i.e., create a block that cannot be lifted). If the original request is postulated with expectations of following the classical logic, then violating the classical logic could be interpreted as failing to adhere to the original request. In other words, the request wasn't "create a block that may and may not be lifted". question would then be whether the being has demonstrated omnipotence, or merely Logic Manipulation.

Now, one might argue that this is merely moving the goal-post, and I admit that the first question could be seen as dangerously approaching the standard, but neither question should be easily dismissed in my opinion. It's basically impossible to determine the answer to the 2nd question, so let's put it aside, but can your solution account for the first one?

Yes! Thank you! Finally someone who gets it! My pleasure! It's always nice to find a fellow with whom to share the "pain". =)

Hegao wrote: But I got to ask about religious Gods? Well, that's an entire question onto itself. Most religious people take the power of their designated deity or deities on faith, which is admirable in a sense, but has no place in an argument. Those who are at least somewhat critical about the would-be power of the portrayed deity/-es often wonder about the validity of the statement as far as I know; especially when the deity is glorified as the standard of benevolence as well, and this is commonly the case. After all, if a deity is said to be omnipotent (includes omnipresence and omniscience), as well as benevolent, how come there are objectively bad things happening? The only possible answers here are that it's either not omnipotent, or that it's not truly benevolent. At this point, I should think that most people would choose to follow a deity that may not be omnipotent, but that is at least truly benevolent, but I imagine this changes from person to person.

This pretty much takes care of the monotheistic religions, for as long as they share a deity--or you ignore the potential conflict between the deities.

Pantheon deities are commonly portrayed as beyond powerful, but rarely made a claim to omnipotence; after all, if one god in the pantheon can do it all, why bother with the other gods at all? Instead, pantheons commonly have each god embody or represent one or more constructs in or beyond the world, and this wiki reflects that by listing them as users of the particular powers.

RoyalGuard-Elite wrote: The real world in any fictional series is the world we observe the characters in. ... By definition, real world cannot be contained within fiction--that's what makes it real. This is also why Deadpool, for instance, has been known to address the readers of the comic books (i.e., us, real people), not someone who is reading a comic book inside the comic book itself. Moreover, the 4th Wall Awareness is also about the only 4th Wall power that can be realistically portrayed given that the real world (un)fortunately doesn't have superpowers. However, at the same time, it's rather strange to argue about the limitations of the real world in a discussion about superpowers; if one cannot look beyond the constraint of the real world, then any discussion about a 4th Wall power becomes untenable. It's a great argument for why none of the characters are wreaking havoc in the real world, but not a very good argument when discussing the hypothetical limits of their powers according to their description.

Moving on, by another definition, omnipotence gives its user access to all powers, including omniscience--therefore if there is a character with knowledge of and a power to interact with the real world (e.g., Deadpool), the user of omnipotence has the knowledge and can interact with it, too.