Omnipotence implies the ability to control emotions (along with everything else). Were God only framed as being omniscient, then your answer could explain it. It’s a bit harder to ignore the gap for omnipotence.
OP’s question is a version of the classic Omnipotence Paradox: “Can God make a rock so heavy he can’t lift it?”, which has had a good couple of thousand years worth of discussion, but no particularly satisfying answers. I doubt lemmy will have a breakthrough, but no harm in trying.
BladeFederation@piefed.social 18 hours ago
Controlling your emotions simply means that you do not immediately react the way your emotions would take you, and that instead you act appropriately to the situation. It doesn’t mean that you don’t have emotions, or that those emotions cannotir should not influence your resolve towards the line of action you decide to take.
I also don’t see how it is related to the rock question (or my favorite alternate, could God microwave a burrito so hot that he himself cannot eat it). There is not a paradox between being powerful and having emotions.
Just for fun, as a stab at the paradox: yes, God can limit his own power or prevent himself from doing stuff because he said he would. Like for example in the Christian religion Jesus came as a human and that severely limited himself. At one point he really wanted to not die but couldn’t do anything about it because that was the path he set for himself and he can’t lie. Same principle applies even if Christianity isn’t “the one”.
I think where people tend to get tripped up with this paradox is that things cannot be simultaneously true. God could make the sky totally purple, but he didn’t, so we’re here with the sky being totally blue during the day. He could make it half purple and half blue, but didn’t do that either. That’s not proof of a lack of power. He could make the rock too heavy, and then he could make the rock not too heavy later, kr himself stronger. This doesn’t disprove anything about theoretical omnipotence. And lastly, presumably things are explained to us in a way we understand. Perhaps God does have some sort of hard limits to power, but as far as we are concerned it may as well be infinite. There’s not much of a point in semantics. The very question betrays our human way of seeing things, God probably does not usually have a body to lift things. Does levitating it “count”? Does moving the earth down count? Does asking someone or something else to do it count? It’s an interesting question that has persisted for a long time, I just don’t think it ultimately means much once you break it down.
fiat_lux@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
OP specifically mentioned smiting and wrath, which is often considered violent and destructive anger, so I interpreted the question to include acting based on emotion. If we assume that this is about the Abrahamic religions, we’ve got some examples to consider where God may not have acted proportionally or appropriately.
That’s where the paradox kicks in. Can God feel anger so strong he cannot control his actions? If God is omnipotent and therefore capable of acting appropriately despite emotions, or, because of omnipotence he is capable of not having those emotions at all, then why the carnage?
One example could be the Noahic Covenant, where it was somehow necessary to kill all animals (except two of each species) because of disappointment in human wickedness. Another might be the Ten Plagues of Egypt and ensuing Deuteronomy Covenant where the punishment for one person’s disobedience requires the punishment of others, including children, future wives and livestock. It doesn’t seem at all clear why all the creeping things that creepeth upon the Earth had it coming, when omnipotence allows for simply fixing the problem.