> "can God replete a sequitur of Montana with gorgonzola umbrella?"

Nope. It has to be cheddar.

>
> > I've never understood . . . why a transcendant God would have to obey the principle of non-contradiction.
> > . . . I therefore see no reason why God can't suffer or be suprised. Maybe through faith or reason we may decide that we don't think he *will* do these things, but that doesn't mean that he is unable to; it simply means he doesn't want to.
>
> I don't really see a problem with anything you've said here . . . God does *not* have to obey any logical principles, but man does. We cannot ask illogical questions about God just because God Himself does not have to obey the rules of logic.

True. The point I was trying to make (I may have wobbled from it a bit) was not about the validity of illogical questions about God but logical (or at least logical-sounding) ones. Specifically, I'm talking about the arguments where God is defined as omnicient/omnipotent/perfection of being/etc and then the philosopher goes "Ah-ha! Since God is of type X, and I can logically prove that a being of type X can't do Y (where Y may be suffer, be suprised, have an 'essence' distinct from his existence, or whatever), then God can't do Y!" To me, that's a bit like saying that God can't create matter or raise the dead, since these actions violate the laws of physics and biology.

I wonder if that was any clearer.
>
> Dar "For if that greater than which cannot be thought can be thought of as not existing, then that greater than which cannot be thought is not that greater than which cannot be thought, which does not make sense" ien

Bal"Oh Lord, since in thy sight I hast concieved of a soccer-stadium-full-of-salami, and the existence of a soccer-stadium-full-of-salami is greater than the thought of a soccer-stadium-full-of-salami, than dost thou not grant that a soccer-stadium-full-of-salami must exist?"anthalus