A man after my own heart, AJ, a man after my own heart. Go for it!

AJ wrote:
"I don't think you’ve really thought this through properly."

Correct. I'm thinking it through and challenging my own beliefs with the aid of people like yourself. I'm not advocating.

AJ,there are two things that are impossible for God.

Firstly, there are those things that are intrinsically impossible such as creating a five-sided triangle. This is just a play on words.

We have an example of this in your statement:

AJ: “The logic here is similar to, “Can God create a rock so heavy that he can’t carry it?” If he can, then he’s not omnipotent. If he can’t, then he’s not omnipotent. Do you see the paradox now?”

Consider this example. God is omnipotent. From this we deduce that God cannot be a man. Why? Because man is not omnipotent. So it is impossible for God to a man for the simple reason that it is not of His nature.

Similarly, the rock. It is of the nature of God to say “Be” and it is. It is not in His nature to create a situation in which He is not omnipotent (such as a creating a rock so heavy that he cannot lift). So we do not have a paradox but a play with words

The second impossibility is for something to occur which an omniscient god has informed us will not occur. You write:

AJ: “Since it would be a paradox to deviate from what an omniscient god already knew we were going to do, then the fact that we were able to make the choice is meaningless because making a different choice was never an option.”

If an omniscient god had informed us of all our choices “then the fact that we were able to make the choice is meaningless because making a different choice was never an option” But as you know we are not assuming that the omniscient god has informed us of our choices. So as far as we are concerned there are options and they are meaningful.

In summary, what you call a paradox is a play on words and your assertion that the choices are meaningless implicitly assumes an omniscient god informing us of our choices.

Finally, I’ve shown that the logic of your two statements are in fact different.

AJ: “You need to clarify this. “<<If someone is a believer by choice but because of brain injury they become a committed atheist, then the fact remains that they chose to believe and did not choose disbelief.>>

So choices are no longer choices after a brain injury then?”

Clarification: He did not choose to become an atheist.

Jayb: <<A man after my own heart, AJ, a man after my own heart. Go for it!>>

Jayb, you "sceptics" must really whoop it up at your conferences with all these word games (oops sorry, "paradoxes")

David, AJ and Jayb: what say you?

Dear Grateful,

Is a brain any more or less an accident than a brain after a brain injury? We are conceived by a union of a sperm and ovum. A sperm cell has half the genetic complement of the male that produced the cell, and the ovum has half the genetic complement of the female that produced the cell. In either case the half that was kept is a matter of chance. Presumably if another half had been kept we would be making different decisions because we would have a different brain.

We are what we are - a product of arbitrary circumstances. We can create entities such as God or fate which deny the arbitrary circumstances of our conception. I would rather keep it simple and not try to explain as anything but arbitrary the circumstances which has made us what we are.

Unfortunately, grateful, you still haven’t managed to address a single thing I’ve said.

The omnipotence paradox you simply sidestep; the omniscience paradox you dodge completely by attacking a straw man; and you still haven’t clarified the role that spirits play in providing us with free will.

<<God is omnipotent. From this we deduce that God cannot be a man. Why? Because man is not omnipotent. So it is impossible for God to a man for the simple reason that it is not of His nature.>>

No, no. If God has unlimited power, then he could be a human just like any one of us, but if he were to make himself a human like the rest of us, then he wouldn’t have unlimited power.

This is the same as the ‘rock’ paradox. It solves nothing.

<<So we do not have a paradox but a play with words>>

The only one here playing with words is yourself. I’m simply adhering to basic definitions. Your concept of god is inherently contradictory. This is why modern theologians have abandoned it. It cannot be defended.

<<The second impossibility is for something to occur which an omniscient god has informed us will not occur.>>

No, it was our ability, or lack thereof, to deviate from that which an omniscient god already knows will happen. I said nothing about a god informing us of anything. This is a straw man.

<<So as far as we are concerned there are options and they are meaningful.>>

Yes, but that’s not what I mean by “meaningful” now, is it? Whether or not we personally see meaning in our choices is entirely irrelevant to my point. The notion of ‘meaningfulness’ has more than one sense: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/meaningful.

You are addressing 1.1 in the above link, while I’ve been using 1.3 the whole time.

This is the fallacy of equivocation. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation)

<<Clarification: He did not choose to become an atheist.>>

That wasn’t what I was asking you to clarify. What I asked you, was how exactly the existence of a spirit provides us with free will? What is its precise function? (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=18201#324147)