Can ancient religions with an omnipotent god be discussed into a definite answer about if the religion is real or not?

Question

I find that trying to prove that a certain religion which has as a characteristic to have an omnipotent god is right or wrong according to current knowledge and well established observations is pointless. This is what I mean about being discussed, that there's no possible discussion that leads to a "religion is true" or "religion is false" if there's a being in the religion that's omnipotent.

According to an omnipotent god every thing would be possible: for example, an omnipotent god would first make the earth flat and later could make it spherical in any moment it wished, it may split the moon and later make it look is it would have never happened, make a giant flood and later not leaving signals that it happened, create the different species and later make it look as if they had evolved.

Of course that doesn't prove that a religion is true, it just makes it something that cannot be proved or disproved in any way. Only way to check if the religion is real or not would to invent a time machine and check it where the religion originated.

For actual religions we could check them indeed, we'd just need to do some brain imaging and we could test if the person who talks about that has invented it or not but that cannot be done with ancient ones.

By the way I consider myself agnostic, so it's not like I'm trying to convince anyone about being religious, I just find that trying to discuss any ancient religion that has an omnipotent god in the terms I'm explaining is pointless.

How does philosophy treat the possibility of the omnipotence making all possible religion basis unable to be determined on their truthfulness?

Answer 1

Well you ask the question: "How does philosophy treat the possibility of the omnipotence making all possible religion basis unable to be determined on their truthfulness?" and the short answer is there isn't a clear answer simply because there is no consensuses on the topic throughout philosophy. That being said When you look at it from an empiricist perspective you have to take a look at the claims that that religion makes and find examples of that in nature. If everything adds up than as far as empiricism is concerned than that religion is True. However most Empiricist including David Hume (who is basically the patron for Empiricism in the Empiricist vs Rationalist debate) employ a certain level of skepticism for every claim you make you have to put effort into disproving to find if it holds up. And to answer your root question it comes down it depends on if the religion made any claims to truth that it hinges on, then yes it can be discussed on the basis of that truth if not than no. Now things do get a little complex when you start entering into the territory of well because the god or gods are all powerful they can change the status of that truth you cant argue that point with the same approach and discussing that quickly becomes fruitless. At that point the discussion has to shift into the discussion of How we determine what is true In witch i would direct you back to the empiricist v.s rationalist argument.

Answer 2

If you accept classical logic, then it is a logical fact that there cannot be an absolutely omnipotent entity that can do anything at all, simply by the law of excluded middle. For a specific example:

It is impossible (for any entity) to create an uncreated object.

Note that this is an absolute restriction on any God, because it is absolutely impossible, unlike the (ridiculously unlikely) possibility that the physical world did not exist one second ago.

The only way out is to not only reject classical logic but also insist that it is possible for something to be both unconditionally true and unconditionally false. Note that this is not about beliefs held by a person (which may be inconsistent), but about unconditional facts.

There are various weaker versions of omnipotence (such as those listed in the Wikipedia article), and assuming classical logic we can analyze some of them. Similarly we can analyze some notions of omniscience.

Of course, if anyone rejects classical logic, it is really on him/her to precisely specify the logic he/she wishes to use and explain why we should believe it is valid or reasonable. You can say that this is my opinion, but I can justify it easily; so far everything that we have observed about the real world seems to obey classical logic, in the sense that everything we have deduced by classical logic has never been disproven.