Paul asked:

Why is God's existence not looked at as simply illogical?

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The first point to make is that it's harder to prove a negative than a positive. It's harder to prove that
God doesn't exist, than that he does. When you take into consideration our own feeble-mindedness,
which is surely capable of making us judge that something is illogical when it is not, you can see that
refuting belief in God's existence is not quite so simple as it might seem.

According to the 'problem of evil', the combination of properties traditionally attributed to God, being
all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good, is inconsistent with the existence of natural and moral 'evils' in
the world. Being all-powerful, God cannot lack the power to prevent evil. Being all-knowing, he knows
whenever evil occurs. Being all-good, he cannot wish evil to occur. But this is not a knock-down
argument. Theologians are well versed in strategies for dealing with this problem. I won't say anything
more about this, as I have discussed it elsewhere. (See my reply to Miguel,First set of Questions
and Answers.)

But can any existing object be all-anything? I can see a legitimate question here regarding the very
idea of an existing thing that possesses any property to an infinite degree.

Consider God's power. Logically, nothing an be more powerful than God. But here's an old objection.
Can God make a stone so heavy that he cannot lift it? If God can make a stone so heavy that he
cannot lift it, then God's power is limited. Potentially, there exists a stone that God could make but
couldn't lift. If God cannot make a stone so heavy that he cannot lift it, then God's power is again
limited because there is something he cannot make. Either way, God's power is limited.

I don't think that this is a good objection for the following reason. If one asked, Can God make a
perfectly spherical cube? the answer is, legitimately, No. The description 'perfectly spherical cube' is
self-contradictory. If you add up all the self-contradictory descriptions you can think of, that's an awful
lot of things that God can't make. But let's not get involved in a fight over whether God is obliged to
obey the laws of logic. If someone claims that God cannotexist because his existence is illogical,
then they are presumably relying on the principle that no object can exist, whose existence conflicts
with the laws of logic. If an object cannot exist, then it surely cannot be any meaningful limitation on
God's power that he cannot create it.

Given that we have defined God as all-powerful, 'a stone so heavy that God cannot lift it' turns out to
be just another example of a self-contradictory description. We have just established that it is no
limitation of God's power that he cannot create objects whose description is self-contradictory. It is
therefore consistent to hold both that God is all-powerful, and that he cannot create a stone so heavy
that he cannot lift it.

What about God's other putative attributes? I have an objection to the definition of God as 'all
knowing'. I'll leave you to consider whether or not you think that it is convincing. Being all knowing,
God sees things from every point of view, including yours and mine. He knows what it is like to be
you, and he knows what it is like to be me. But it seems to me that I know something God does not,
and cannot know. What God knows is only what things are like for someone satisfying my total
description.He knows, for example, what it is like to be struggling with this question. But what God
cannot know is what it is like for the individual satisfying that total description to be I. From God's
point of view, every individual is 'I'. From my point of view, only one is.

Geoffrey Klempner