Jim on :
Great show this week, gentleman. I laughed out loud multiple times. You brought your A game this week. But for some reason the show's not coming up on iTunes. And enjoy some comments about omnipotence below (or loathe them, whatever.) Coming soon... thoughts on morality. That should only take a sentence or two.
After my brief treatment of omnipotence, Joey and Peter responded that the Q are possibly collectively omnipotent rather than any one Q being impotent singularly. This, however, is impossible.
Anything that has omnipotence has an infinite magnitude of power. Can such power be divided up among a group?
Let us say for a moment that it can. So, the Q collective is infinitely powerful… until they kill Amanda’s parents at which point they lose some particular power (i.e. ability) or magnitude of power (i.e. degree). To the former loss, one might argue that the Q continuum has redundancies and therefore did not lose any abilities at their deaths. However, since not every power of the Q continuum resides in any individual Q and the Q have proven to be mortal, further deaths could lead to a curtailment of powers. Since one cannot take anything from infinity, Q powers were not infinite to begin with. Likewise, one cannot remove a magnitude of power from that which is infinitely powerful. Therefore, the Q are not omnipotent.
No collection of beings can be omnipotent because adding power or ability cannot reach to an infinite degree. The easiest proof of this is to consider the continuum of numbers. One does not reach an infinite degree by merely adding one and adding one and adding one (ad infinitum). The number line continues infinitely so that any number x to which 1 is added does not yield a result of infinity. That is to say x+1 never equals infinity. From this we can deduce that infinity is not an aggregate but a unity. No collection of powers ever yields an infinite array or degree of powers.
After my brief treatment of omnipotence, Joey and Peter responded that the Q are possibly collectively omnipotent rather than any one Q being impotent singularly. This, however, is impossible.
Anything that has omnipotence has an infinite magnitude of power. Can such power be divided up among a group?
Let us say for a moment that it can. So, the Q collective is infinitely powerful… until they kill Amanda’s parents at which point they lose some particular power (i.e. ability) or magnitude of power (i.e. degree). To the former loss, one might argue that the Q continuum has redundancies and therefore did not lose any abilities at their deaths. However, since not every power of the Q continuum resides in any individual Q and the Q have proven to be mortal, further deaths could lead to a curtailment of powers. Since one cannot take anything from infinity, Q powers were not infinite to begin with. Likewise, one cannot remove a magnitude of power from that which is infinitely powerful. Therefore, the Q are not omnipotent.
No collection of beings can be omnipotent because adding power or ability cannot reach to an infinite degree. The easiest proof of this is to consider the continuum of numbers. One does not reach an infinite degree by merely adding one and adding one and adding one (ad infinitum). The number line continues infinitely so that any number x to which 1 is added does not yield a result of infinity. That is to say x+1 never equals infinity. From this we can deduce that infinity is not an aggregate but a unity. No collection of powers ever yields an infinite array or degree of powers.
