omnipotence was re speculations in article p psilink com robert knowles p psilink com writes date fri apr from nanci ann miller nm w andrew cmu edu can god uncreate itself no for if he did he would violate his own nature which he cannot do it is god s nature to exist he is after all the i am which is a statement of his inherent existence he is existence itself existence cannot not exist then as mentioned above he must not be very omnipotent what do you mean by omnipotent here do you mean by omnipotent that god should be able to do anything everything this creates a self contradictory definition of omnipotence which is effectively useless to be descriptive omnipotence must mean being all powerful and not being able to do anything everything let me illustrate by analogy suppose the united states were the only nuclear power on earth suppose further that the us military could not effectively be countered by any nation or group of nations the us has the power to go into any country at any time for any reason to straighten things out as the leaders of the us see fit the us would be militarily omnipotent but suppose further that the us holds to a doctrine philosophy of not interfering in the internal affairs of any nation such as the current civil war in the former yugoslavian states technically in this scenario the us would have the power to unilaterally go into yugoslavia and straighten out the mess but effectively the us could not intervene without violating its own policy of non interference if the policy of non interference were held to strongly enough then there would never be a question that it would ever be violated effectively the us would be limited in what it could actually do although it had the power to do whatever it wanted the us would simply never want to interfere for such an idea would be beyond the consideration of its leaders given such an inviolate non interference policy god is effectively limited in the same sense he is all powerful but he cannot use his power in a way that would violate the essence of what he himself is i hope this helps to clear up some of the misunderstanding concerning omnipotence regards jim b
