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Can an omnipotent being like God violate the laws of mathematics and logic? Personally, I don't even believe in God, but I am just asking purely hypothetically if such a being could violate the laws of mathematics and logic. So, for instance, can God make 1+1=3? Or, is even God bound by the laws of mathematics and logic? Also, have any philosophers written about this question? I would like to see some references.

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    It's the same as asking: Can God make an object that God can not move ? There is a lot of reference on the everyday Joe blogs internet.
    – 8Mad0Manc8
    Commented Dec 30, 2023 at 1:41
  • What does it mean to violate mathematical law? I can make 1 + 1 = 3, by just taking a contradiction as an axiom. I think the question is, can God perform contradictions ( move an unmovable rock, or be a married bachelor). I would argue that such notions aren't well defined and so are meaningless to ask if God can do them.
    – Michael Carey
    Commented Dec 30, 2023 at 2:37
  • @user107952 The question was considered also as part of question philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/87317/… and its different answers.
    – Jo Wehler
    Commented Dec 30, 2023 at 3:20
  • This is akin to the Euthyphro dilemma about ethics, and, similarly, there is no answer agreed upon among theologians, see Is God subject to logic? Aside from yes/no, a third position is that logic is a part of what God is (as perceived by us, unable to grasp his nature whole), so the question is nonsensical.
    – Conifold
    Commented Dec 30, 2023 at 4:04
  • 🎶God fought the law and the law won.🎶
    – Idiosyncratic Soul
    Commented Dec 30, 2023 at 4:07

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The question of whether an omnipotent being can make a logical contradiction true is a question that has received many different answers. There is a Wikipedia article on it. The main options are:

  1. An omnipotent being can create true contradictions, but if they do so, we mere mortals would be unable to understand them. This position was taken by Descartes.

  2. To speak of true contradictions literally makes no sense, and so the question of whether an omnipotent being can do something senseless doesn't arise, or is not well-defined.

  3. To be omnipotent can only reasonably be understood to mean: is able to do whatever is logically possible. So an inability to make true contradictions is not a genuine counterexample to omnipotence.

  4. The question assumes an erroneous understanding of what logic is. Logic is a human creation and is a tool for organising and systematising information in order to make our experiences of the world intelligible. If an omnipotent being did weird things that didn't fit our current understanding of logic, we would modify our logic or find other ways of describing what is happening.

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Can God violate the laws of mathematics and logic?

If God can violate the laws of math and logic, then the important consequence is that the laws of math and logic cant be used to prove the legitimacy of any act of God. Reason and Logic become a whim of God who is not obligated to explain anything. This seems like an unstable universe that humans will never be able to comprehend.

I prefer to believe that laws of math and logic have evolved over billions of years to a stable trustworthy system not easily dismissed. It's trusted knowledge that can be passed to future generations. It leads to a universe that humans can (eventually) comprehend.

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Many posts on this site violate the laws of logic, and my accountant regularly violates the laws of mathematics when 'cooking my books', so if we mortals can do it why shouldn't god?

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The "laws" of mathematics and logic are self-contained systems. You may as well print a rulebook that states "There are no rules" and ask "Can God break the rules of this book?" Actually, now that I type that it isn't as convincing as I thought.

There is no "violating" "laws" that don't have states of failure. The laws in question are just descriptions of systems. They cannot be violated. It's like asking if God could decapitate an echo. It's a malformed question because the verb doesn't apply to the noun.

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