Is God's omnipotence compatible with His impeccability?

Omnipotence is typically defined as God's ability to do anything that is logically possible. So, it is logically impossible for God to make a square circle, or for God to make a married bachelor.

Impeccability is typically defined as God cannot sin.

So there appears to be an inconsistency here, God can do anything but sin. So, if God is impeccable it appears that He cannot be omnipotent. I think the most helpful way to think of this problem is to analyze sin as a negative action. Meaning that it is more difficult to refrain from sinning than it is to sin. In fact, if we define sin as missing the mark, or falling short of our goal, then we need omnipotence not to sin.

I would like to claim that for a being that is omnipotent and impeccable it is logically impossible to sin. To use an analogy, consider an omnipotent basball player. This baseball player can do anything he wants when he is at bat. Sometimes this baseball player chooses to strike out when he is at bat, full well knowing that he can hit a home run at any point in time. If we add a stipulation that this player must play his best at all times, then he can no longer strike out. We certainly wouldn't consider the ability to strike out something that we can do, rather we would consider it a failure. That is how we ought to conceive of God's sinning. God sinning isn't the ability to do something, rather, it is a lack of ability to refrain from sinnning.

Working the Brain Muscles

Mondays I always plan on working out after class. However, I have my philosophy of religion survey course from 3 to 6 then from 7 to 10 I have a seminar on vagueness. What's vagueness about you ask??? Well, allow me to tell you what it is about. We are attempting to ascertain whether vagueness is a semantic, ontic, or epistemic feature of the world. But those aren't the only theories of vagueness, oh no! There is also a discussion of whether there is such a thing as higher-order vagueness. Higher-order vagueness is the idea that there are borderline borderline examples - or vague vagueness. Then you have borderline borderline borderline cases. Myself I'm an epistemicist, which rejects higher-order vagueness. After that there are logical solutions to vagueness. Needless to say on Monday nights after vagueness I'm exhausted by all of the thinking.

... yet, I think it's good for me to think

The Allergy Season

My left ear is plugged up again. This is more annoying than anything else. For whatever I think that the type of pollen in the air effects my ear. Yesterday the pollen count was low - my ear was fine. But Wednesday and today the pollen count is high - my ear is stuffed. . This is what weatherbug has to say about the pollen count.

Predominant Pollen: Ragweed, Grass and Chenopods.

Today
The amount of pollen in the air for Thursday will be falling into the very low range. The cause for the falling pollen levels is falling temperatures, rising humidity and heavy rains in the morning and evening which tend to wash pollen out of the air.

Outlook
The quantity of pollen grains in the air for Friday will be greater than today's levels in the high range. This increase is due to seasonally normal weather conditions which are favorable for the production and dispersal of pollen. If you have these allergies, tomorrow will likely be more difficult outdoors.

Allergy Fact
Ragweed pollen grains are highly sculpted and have surfaces covered with large spines. Interestingly, this menacing appearance has nothing to do with its ability to cause hay fever

Emergent Church

So, my friend from Austrailia took the theology quiz and scored as emergent postmodern. This was a week or two ago so I figured that I would eventually comment on this, though a little belatedly. Simply put, the emergent church wants first century Christianity without absolute truth. That isn't very helpful (sorry). So I will try to further eloborate on my position. The emergent church wants to hold that all positions are true, so someone who is in the emergent church would say that they are a protestant and a Roman Catholic. So, all of the contradictory positions in the theological world and emergentist would hold to. The emgergent church movement is also very experiential when it comes to worship - almost touchy-feely. Instead of relying upon revelation (the Bible) to learn about God they rely upon their feelings and experiences to learn about God.

I'm sure that there are other things for me to help better explain what emergent theology is but I need to read a paper on reduction for my naturalism class. So, I'll post more thoughts on emergentism later.

Sorities Paradox

The problem of vagueness is derived from the sorities paradox. Here is a typical example of a sorities paradox:

(1) One grain of sand is not a heap.

(2) If one grain of sand is not a heap. [n + 1 is not a heap]

(3) Therefore, 100,000 grains of sand is not a heap.

The step that I reject is (2) maybe 3 or 4 grains of sand is a heap but there seems to be some point at which several (many) grains of sand becomes a heap. Another move made is the reverse march.

(4) 100,000 grains of sand is a heap.

(5) If 100,000 grains of sand is a heap, then 99,999 grains of sand is a heap [n - 1 is a heap]

(6) Therefore, one grain of sand is a heap.

I'm not quite sure where grains of sand become a heap, but there definitely seems to be some type of cutoff where sand becomes a heap.