The paradox of omnipotence


"Could an omnipotent God create a rock so big that he himself could not lift it?"

If He can, then He ceases to be omnipotent. If He cannot, then He was never omnipotent in the first place.


Any thoughts?

Ofcourse.

The father, being the creator, can make a boulder so large that Jesus, being a total wuss, can not lift. However the father could still lift it.

and there you go.

HAHA!! I don't think that's quite it. I don't beleive in god, but I do understand this issue, its actually kind of interesting to think about. I think, that there is something wrong with the definition "all-powerful"=Omnipotence. There must be more specific criteria, that has not been thought of.

One could also think of this in a dialect sense. If you dissolve the seperation of opposites, one may look at god, as being both all-powerful and all-weak, because, power can only exist, if there is something "unpowerful" to have power over it. Therefore, god has brought both omnipotence and weakness into being (theoretically). Therefore the power to create rocks to begin with, proves omnipotence over the wieght/mass of the rock itself, but this does leave out, the possibility that god, can create something to lift the rock, even himself.

Anyway, why would an omnipotent being make rocks anyway...? :huh:

Another way to look at this, is to consider that power is not able to make rules overitself. For example, a King may create laws, which he may be able to break. God is not bound his own powerfulness. Any law he makes, he can may break, anyway.

Oh I know, but after the 30th time I've seen this question I go for more...creative amswers.

That's one of the big problems with a question like this and...

...this is another. People have a bad habit of assuming that god is bound to human logic and that's just not right.

Exactly. I've always imagined that a being that could create the very laws of nature could uncreate them to serve it's purposes as it saw fit.

I was alwyas taught that god is all powerful and that he could do anything.

But that's basically the point - He couldn't be all powerful if He couldn't make a boulder to heavy for Him, but He couldn't be all powerful if He did.

It seems to me that saying that God is not bound to human logic is a bit of a short cut or something along those lines. I feel that it's not human logic, it's universal logic.

Maybe, in some other logic that God wishes to create in which He can lift a boulder to prove a point to some humans, there is another paradox - and he has to create another logic in which He can overcome the logic in the previous situation. And it goes on. Perhaps.

Or maybe we could say, "Can got create a paradox that He can not overcome? If He can, then He is not all powerful because He can not overcome it, but if He can't, then He's not all powerful."

I don't know, the possibilities are endless.

Interesting concept.

Makes me question whether God could destroy Satan (being the "unliftable boulder") and if the fallen angel was one of His creations. Some might suggest that God doesn't want to remove the temptation. Also, God is supposed to defeat Lucifer as covered in book of Revelations. Yet it will only bring about a golden era lasting roughtly a millenium, right? So not really destroying Hell or it's contained souls.

Which also brings about the question of whether the Creator can destroy souls themselves.

This is the Christian point of view. But I don't believe in Lucifer and Hell.

And anyway, God isn't necessarily a moral being. If He were, that would mean that morality exists outside the human mind, and that some things are "naturally" good or evil.

I think this is not so much a paradox but an example of the shortcomings of language. Its kinda like "why do we park on a 'driveway' and drive on a 'parkway'?" They are just words and....i dont know. This debate just seems nonsensical to me. Why should the being that is to have created the universe, time, you, me, morality and logic have to abide by any of it?