Can God make a triangular where the angles add to other than 180 degrees?

[IndigoChild5559]

Last week, I ran across a quote by Thomas Aquinas that there are three things God can't do:
1. He cannot sin
2. He cannot create a replica of himself
3. He cannot create a triangle where the angles do not add to 180 degrees.

I found number three to be especially curious. Thomas Aquinas, in that one sentence, seems to indicate that God cannot violate the laws of Euclidean geometry. Of course this messes with the idea that God is omnipotent.

Please discuss.

PS Yes, I already know that you can have different angle measurements in non-Euclidean geometries. For the purposes of this thread, assume that we are talking standard Euclidean geometry.

 

[exchemist]

Last week, I ran across a quote by Thomas Aquinas that there are three things God can't do:
1. He cannot sin
2. He cannot create a replica of himself
3. He cannot create a triangle where the angles do not add to 180 degrees.

I found number three to be especially curious. Thomas Aquinas, in that one sentence, seems to indicate that God cannot violate the laws of Euclidean geometry. Of course this messes with the idea that God is omnipotent.

Please discuss.

PS Yes, I already know that you can have different angle measurements in non-Euclidean geometries. For the purposes of this thread, assume that we are talking standard Euclidean geometry.

What it means, surely, is that God is subject to the rules of logic and mathematics, isn't it? He could have said God can't make 2+2=5.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Don't eat the menu.

 

[Revoltingest]

Answer to the titular question.
Yes.
Even lowly groundskeepers can make triangles with
internal angles summing greater than 180 degrees.

Spherical trigonometry - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[dybmh]

1. He cannot sin
2. He cannot create a replica of himself

I agree with both of these, and I don't think it compromises God's omnipotence.

3. He cannot create a triangle where the angles do not add to 180 degrees.

For this one, I don't take it too seriously. It's all based on defintions of the words and concepts. God can change all of those. It's just semantics. Change the defintiion of "degrees", there you go. done. Change the definition of a "triange". done. Change the defintion of "angle". done.

The more challenging one is the classic "creating a rock the can't be lifted", which was discussed somewhat at length in another thread. I'll put my solution to that in a spoiler incase it's of interest to any.

Spoiler: Yes God can create a rock that cannot be lifted... or not

Can the absolutely omnipotent create a rock that cannot be lifted? No. Even though this sounds like a limitation, it's not. It's a statement of unlimited power. It means, the omnipotent can lift it OR not.

∃(created-rock) and Not Lifted (created-rock) = False
∃(created-rock) and Not Lifted (created-rock) = Not True
Not (∃(created-rock) and Not Lifted (created-rock)) = True

... Applying DeMorgan's Law and the negation of an existential quantifier ...

∀(created-rock) OR Lifted (created-rock) = True

Because the "and" becomes an "or" the statement is true for any condition of lifting for all the rocks that are created.

For All rocks the omnipotent creates, they can be lifted or not. Even though the answer to the challenge question sounds like it is a lack of power, it is actually a statement of absolute omnipotence. But people get confused, thinking, "I can't lift a rock, so that's something the omnipotent can't do?" But the omnipotent can lift it or not. And that is the meaning of answering no to the challenge.

 

[syo]

PS Yes, I already know that you can have different angle measurements

This.

 

[IndigoChild5559]

This.

please don't truncate what I said. Its a form of misquoting.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Last week, I ran across a quote by Thomas Aquinas that there are three things God can't do:
1. He cannot sin
2. He cannot create a replica of himself
3. He cannot create a triangle where the angles do not add to 180 degrees.

I found number three to be especially curious. Thomas Aquinas, in that one sentence, seems to indicate that God cannot violate the laws of Euclidean geometry. Of course this messes with the idea that God is omnipotent.

Please discuss.

PS Yes, I already know that you can have different angle measurements in non-Euclidean geometries. For the purposes of this thread, assume that we are talking standard Euclidean geometry.

I will step it up a notch.
The problem is not so much what God can and can't do, as much as the weird fact that if I can. based on how I think, prove God is X, then in effect I cause God to be X.
So for all of these in effect internal cognitive rational claims, I just ask how it works that I can cause God to be something based on how I think???

 

[PureX]

Last week, I ran across a quote by Thomas Aquinas that there are three things God can't do:
1. He cannot sin
2. He cannot create a replica of himself
3. He cannot create a triangle where the angles do not add to 180 degrees.

I found number three to be especially curious. Thomas Aquinas, in that one sentence, seems to indicate that God cannot violate the laws of Euclidean geometry. Of course this messes with the idea that God is omnipotent.

Please discuss.

PS Yes, I already know that you can have different angle measurements in non-Euclidean geometries. For the purposes of this thread, assume that we are talking standard Euclidean geometry.

All of these "God can't do these" are based on limited human concepts. So the real question is can God defy our limited human conceptions of the logically undefiable? And the answer is that God already has, by our own definition of it. The conundrum isn't God's, it's ours.

 

[RestlessSoul]

What I think Aquinas may have meant was, that the laws of nature are an expression of the will of God; and it’s a logical contradiction for those rules to contradict themselves.

 

[Hermit Philosopher]

Last week, I ran across a quote by Thomas Aquinas that there are three things God can't do:
1. He cannot sin
2. He cannot create a replica of himself
3. He cannot create a triangle where the angles do not add to 180 degrees.

I found number three to be especially curious. Thomas Aquinas, in that one sentence, seems to indicate that God cannot violate the laws of Euclidean geometry. Of course this messes with the idea that God is omnipotent.

Please discuss.

PS Yes, I already know that you can have different angle measurements in non-Euclidean geometries. For the purposes of this thread, assume that we are talking standard Euclidean geometry.

What it means is that if 3 lines are adjoined at those angles, the shape they form, Man calls a “triangle” and that the angles of anything (regardless of size) in that shape [triangular] will amount to 180 degrees.

But God has made many things and not all things are in the shape which Man calls “triangle”/ have angles amounting to 180 degrees.

In other words, it’s as if you were asking: can God make an apple that is a pear?
The answer is that if God did that, it would not be an apple; it would be a pear.

Humbly,
Hermit

 

[PureX]

On the quantum level everything both 'is' and 'isn't'.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

On the quantum level everything both 'is' and 'isn't'.

Is and isn't what? I honestly do not see how the observation gets much beyond sophistry.

 

[ChristineM]

Can God make a triangular where the angles add to other than 180 degrees?.

I read your P.S but...

Mark out a very large triangle on the surface of the earth measure the angles. The curvature of earth will cause them to add up to more than 180 degrees.

That's how the universe has been measured to be flat. Using a point on earth and 2 points on the CMB.

 

[gnostic]

God cannot eat pork?

 

[PureX]

Is and isn't what?

There and not there. A thing but not: a force. A particle and a wave. Something in nothing.

I honestly do not see how the observation gets much beyond sophistry.

It's not my job to correct anyone's vision.

There's a great deal that we humans don't see or understand. And likely much that we have no awareness of at all. So I don't think it's God that's being trapped by this conceptual conundrum.

 

[IndigoChild5559]

What I think Aquinas may have meant was, that the laws of nature are an expression of the will of God; and it’s a logical contradiction for those rules to contradict themselves.

Good reply. Let me respond. First, if God cannot or will not violate the laws of nature, then we can conclude that miracles do not really happen. The second point is that if you say God cannot violate the laws of nature, then you are essentially saying God is not omnipotent, which is a problem for many religious people.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

​

There's a great deal that we humans don't see or understand.

Still, an appeal to ignorance barely gets us much beyond the god of the gaps.

 

[PureX]

​

Still, an appeal to ignorance barely gets us much beyond the god of the gaps.

Not when you're determined to ignore the significance of it. And let's face it, both theists and atheists alike really want to believe they know what's what. Even though we clearly don't.

Blind skepticism can become as much an expression of our foolish bravado as blind faith can.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Good reply. Let me respond. First, if God cannot or will not violate the laws of nature, then we can conclude that miracles do not really happen. The second point is that if you say God cannot violate the laws of nature, then you are essentially saying God is not omnipotent, which is a problem for many religious people.

All attempts to define God, we might argue, are necessarily in vain. How can you define that which is without limits, or explain that which is beyond comprehension? In order for man to understand God, man would have to become God; a project not perhaps beyond our ambitions, but certainly beyond our capacities.