I'm afraid that you severely underestimate the power of ignorance to forge ahead in the face of all knowledge.

Well, you nearly had me there, but then a I though: "what the heck, I'll google it".

There's Thomas Aquinas, the "immensely influential philosopher and theologian":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnipotence_paradox#Proposed_answers

The same article says:
"Another common response to the omnipotence paradox is to try to define omnipotence to mean something weaker than absolute omnipotence, such as definition 3 or 4 above. The paradox can be resolved by simply stipulating that omnipotence does not require the being to have abilities which are logically impossible, but only to be able to do anything which conforms to the laws of logic."

This is really old stuff.

Suit yourself. I don't see how your choices of definitions are relevant, though, because some theists clearly do define God's omnipotence as limited by logic:

"Thomas Aquinas asserts that the paradox arises from a misunderstanding of omnipotence. He maintains that inherent contradictions and logical impossibilities do not fall under the omnipotence of God.[14] J. L Cowan sees this paradox as a reason to reject the concept of absolute omnipotence,[15] while others, such as Rene Descartes, argue that God is absolutely omnipotent, despite the problem.[9]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnipotence_paradox#Proposed_answers

So what? Are you going to stop using logic because of that? If you are, then let me wish you the best of luck with your next argument!

You're right, the logical impossibility of such a rock requires the assumption of omnipotence (that is, omnipotence per my definition). Let me duplicate a reply I wrote to another gentleperson in this forum:

A possible argument would be:
1. God is omnipotent
2. Therefore, no rock could exist that God would not be able to lift.
3. God's omnipotence does not imply His ability to create things that cannot exist. He can only create things that can exist. That's still one heck of a superpower, mind you.
4. Therefore, God cannot create a rock so heavy that He himself cannot lift.

I put forth that this argument is consistent, though not necessarily correct.

As I hinted elsewhere, I'm actually an atheist, but this supposed paradox does not strike me as a good argument.

OK. A theist might believe in a God that is not quite omnipotent but is still capable of doing anything that is logically possible. Call it quasi-omnipotent. All the politics follow as before, and the rock argument got us nowhere. That's my point.

When we speak of God, which God is that? The God I posit did not necessarily create the laws of logic, and hence they may as well be fixed for all I know.

A possible argument would be:

1. God is omnipotent
2. Therefore, no rock could exist that God would not be able to lift.
3. God's omnipotence does not imply His ability to create things that cannot exist. He can only create things that can exist. That's still one heck of a superpower, mind you.
4. Therefore, God cannot create a rock that he himself cannot lift.

I put forth that this argument is consistent, though not necessarily correct.

Who said anything about logic alone? Logic sets the boundaries, and He makes the moves (or not, I'm not really a theist, I just play one on slashdot).

"Evolutionists" can't provide sufficient evidence to disprove this so-called "null hypothesis" because this hypothesis is unfalsifiable. So making intelligent design the null hypothesis is a way of rigging the debate such that only ID can win. Nice try.

The ID hypothesis is unfalsifiable because it gives rise to 0 predictions. Hence, there's really no point debating the ID hypothesis - it cannot be used to make any judgement about the probability of events, and therefore cannot lead us towards or away from useful (or harmful) choices of action.

The term "null hypothesis" is used in statistics to indicate the hypothesis that a suggested effect does not exist. In this case, a proper null hypothesis might be: "organisms developed completely at random, and long-term genetic change is unaffected by the environment". Or the null hypothesis might be "organisms have always the way they are now". Note that both of these hypotheses are falsifiable, in that they state things that can be indirectly observed and hence falsified.

So, to distinguish science from faith, we need to look at the falsifiability of a theory. It would be a start, anyway - if we don't agree on that, we cannot proceed to more complicated notions like parsimony (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor#Science_and_the_scientific_method).

What if we define omnipotence as "can do anything that is logically possible"? As in, not bound by physical laws, but still bound by logical laws?

In this case, God cannot create a rock so heavy that even He cannot lift it, because no such rock could logically exist. So God's inability to create such a rock does not diminish His omnipotence. It's as if you asked: "Can God create a white sheet of paper that is also completely black?" Either the sheet is white or it is black. Similarly, either God can lift the rock, or the rock's existence is logically impossible.

<quote>

Because Saddam was a viscously successful survivor. ...
</quote>
Damn straight. It's the viscosity that always put Saddam ahead of all those other survivors.

Generally, I'd call someone who leaked documents in order to expose a wrong done a "whistle-blower". A whistle-blower may be correct or he may be misguided, but even a misguided whistle-blower is not necessarily a traitor. A "traitor" I'd call someone who acted to sabotage the military effort of his nation due to allegiance to another nation, or for money, or for some other sort of reward. Bradley wasn't promised any sort of reward, not a tangible one anyway, and there's no evidence to suggest that he transferred his allegiance to another nation - unless you count mankind as "another nation". So he's a whistle-blower, not a traitor.

At least, there is no evidence of her ever saying that, and Rousseau wrote "let them eat cake" in his book "confessions", apparently no later than 1769.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_them_eat_cake

May I suggest another first-hand perspective?

Livni should not have said your version of the sentence, because it is not true - the current government that came to power shortly the aforementioned negotiations was markedly more right-wing than the one in which Livni served.

Look, I don't like the current government. I didn't like the Olmert and Livni government either. But to claim that it was not democratically elected, or that it does not reflect the will of the people, would be misleading. A small majority of the Knesset seats is held by parties clearly identified as the "right wing" - Likud, Yisrael Beytenu, Shas, etc. Many, and possibly most of the voters of these parties outright object to the creation of a Palestinian state in the west bank. The rest of these voters want a government that is "tough", and do not care much if the Palestinian state is created or not - they're not sufficiently interested in it to vote to any party that is seriously committed to a 2-state solution.

It's true that Yisrael Beytenu ostensibly claims to support some form of a 2-state solution - as does parts of the Likud - but you can see from the lack of willingness to negotiate just how uncommitted they really are. From decades of experience of living in this country, I can assure you that almost no right-wing voter is going to protest the lack of peace talks.

Now, if you claimed that the elections do not represent the will of the people because the west-bank Palestinians don't get to vote, then you'd be somewhat correct (some of the Palestinians do have their own government now, of a sort). But as long as you're talking about Israeli citizens, the current government has very firm implicit support for its line of no-serious-negotiations. The main pressure they feel from the electorate is not to cede any territory.

A final note - none of them is a psycopath. It's just that these governments and their voters do not care much about democracy. The way some of them see it, the Arabs were pretty much ready to murder every Jew in this land back in 1948, and to repay those Arabs with anything less than genocide is being "generous". I don't agree with that point of view, but I can see where they're coming from.