God and the Problem of Self-Contradicting Concepts

As much as one might like to believe in God, if something is self-contradictory, then it cannot exist.  The following concepts of God are self-contradictory and renders those concepts to be impossible.

God is all powerful

Creating and designing things requires decisions to be made.  One cannot make decisions without motivating factors (There have to be reasons why someone "wants" to do one thing more than another.).  These factors are the result of prior conditioning and the constraints that such conditioning imposes.  A God without prior conditioning would have no desire, nor constrains.  Constraints allow one to choose what is most practical or achievable over all fathomable alternatives.  Without constrains everything is equally possible, thus there would be no motive produced from having to choose as to what is the best alternative.  An all powerful God would be locked into a state of equal motivation to do all things, thus not be able to do a thing.  This fact is overlooked by most people, even atheists, and deserves an example to make it clear:  Suppose you are trying to decide whether to go on vacation to Hawaii or Antarctica.  This would normally be an easy choice, and naturally the vast majority of people would decide on Hawaii because it's just too cold in Antarctica.  However, if you were all powerful you could make Antarctica warm and put a great beach there.  You could also just turn yourself into a penguin and enjoy the freezing cold.  Without constraints all scenarios become equally possible and equally desirable, thus no choice as to what you should do could be made if you happen to be all powerful.  

We can actually see lack of decision making power in people who have few constraints.  Adolf Hitler made poor decisions in fighting WW II because he became too powerful.  Just a simple thing like his right to sleep and not be disturbed, and at the same time his right to make all war decisions spelled the German army's defeat at the invasion of Normandy.  His generals were afraid to wake him, so he could send reinforcements; and they were to afraid to take charge and send reinforcements on their own, so no decision could be make to thwart the invasion.  Several Roman emperors went virtually crazy from having too much power.  Lack of restraints causes chaos.  Complete lack of restrains from having complete power would result in complete chaos, or just no decision capability at all.       

In coming to terms with this reality some theists argue that God can turn off his all powerful ability for some specific reason.  For example, in creating Adam and Eve, it is often argued that God would have known beforehand what Adam and Eve would do, so how could he have chosen to give them a test -- why bother?  Christians sometimes say that God apparently turned his power of premonition off to allow for the test and so Adam and Eve could be free to do as they wish apart from God's will.  However, choosing to turn off his omnipotence and thus create constrains constitutes a decision that he would have to make.  If he is already in a state of non-motivation by not having any constrains, then he would never have the ability to decide to turn off his omnipotence.  In order to make decisions, he would always have to have some of his omnipotent powers turned off, thus he could never be all powerful.  If he is never all powerful, then he cannot be determined to in fact be all powerful.

In relation to the vacation scenario, God would need to turn off some of his power, so as to produce unequal motivating options to allow for a decision.  However, there would be no greater benefit in turning off his power to change Hawaii into Antarctica, than there would be to turn off his power to just go to Hawaii.  He could never decide which power to turn off.    

Let's examine the issue of being all powerful and lack of decision making power in relation to Adam and Eve and original sin.  We have a problem right off the bat because God would have needed some type of conditioning that would have made him want to create living things, but an powerful God could not have had conditioning, since that would have limited his powers.  But anyway, let's just assume that there is just something that god's have - an innate desire to create.  From all fathomable alternatives he would have had to have had some ideas of what to create.  In order to have ideas he would have had to impose constraints upon himself to help him decide.  But, in determining what constrains he should impose upon himself he would have had to already know what he wanted to create.  It just becomes a vicious circle.  Let's just continue anyway and say somehow he got to a point where he actually wanted to create human beings, so he creates two people which he names Adam and Eve.   An all powerful God wouldn't even have been able to decide on the names, because he would have needed constraints to allow him to choose two names over all others.  Anyway, then he decides to give them a test of obedience to see what qualities they possess, but first turns off his power to foretell the future because if he knows what will happen he might intervene and change the outcome by forcing his newly created people to do as he wishes, and then his creation would have no "free-will" apart from him.  Of course, even if God did not directly make them behave in a certain way, he made them behave in a certain way indirectly by the genetics traits he gave them and the conditioning he gave them, so for all intents and purposes they had no free will apart from God anyway.  Now, if there if there was ever a time when he was omniscient then he would have already known the outcome, so he would have had to have turned off his omniscient power from the beginning of time, making him eternally not all powerful.   Anyway, he later finds out that they failed the test, were disobedient, and punishes them.  If God were all powerful, he could have just kept himself from intervening by changing any other constrains that would have cause him to not intervene, but that would not have been possible since any alternative set of constraints would have led to exactly the same outcome, thus no choice could have been made. 

Anything that is all powerful will just have no motivation to do one thing more than another because all alternatives will ultimate lead to the same outcome based upon what is desired in the first place.  And, nothing even could have been desired in the first place if there has not been some kind of prior conditioning.  Decision making power comes from all conditioning that exists up to the point of the decision, which excludes the possibility of anything being all powerful, since conditioning will always give one constraints.

Any plausible concept of God would have to be that he is very powerful, but not all powerful.

 God is all knowing

Being all knowing implies that God would know his own thoughts and actions beforehand.  He therefore would be forever caught in a mental feed-back loop of reasoning, but already knowing the outcome of such reasoning, and basing his thoughts upon the outcome.  This would automatically lock God's mind up into a steady state pool of knowledge that just exists all at once, which is in essence God being pure "Logic" like what we have postulated.

God is eternal

Anything that exists right now and is eternal would of had to have experienced eternity going backwards in time.  Nothing can realize eternity because eternity is boundless -- not even a spirit being.  Therefore, God cannot be eternal.  Some say God exists outside of time.  This is more possible, but would render God to be incapable of doing anything that requires time, such as thinking, designing, and creating.  Anything that's doing any designing is just something that neither requires time or space, again we are left with a static state mind, or logic itself. 

What can God be?  Very powerful, but not all powerful; and not able to perceive the future; and is not eternal, unless it lives outside of the time space continuum; and of course must have proper conditioning in order to want to create things, and of course must be capable of creating things out of nothing.  So does this describe any concept of God that people have?  No.  Perhaps some sort of Alien being??  A steady state mind that consist of just logical deductions of what must exist and happen seems to be the only answer.  In other words the universe in just natural.  Nothing really created it.  It just exists and functions in a way it has to, and there is no real God being in any traditional sense.