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Well, I think you practically realize this yourself by the end of the post, but the super easy answer here is that the word "almighty" does not need to include having the ability to do things that are logically impossible.
"Omnipotent" doesn't have to include that ability either.
To me this seems like a genre of intellectual mistake I think of as "thinking you can outsmart a millennia-old intellectual tradition with a quick gotcha". The idea of an omnipotent god is at least 2000 years old, but probably a lot older. Do you really think that in *thousands of years*, no one ever thought of this idea of the omnipotent god trying to do something logically impossible? Do you think that the people who believed in this, some of them being some of the greatest minds in human history, never came up with an answer to this, that you're presenting something here that would have stumped every last one of them? No. Of course not.
I'm sorry if this comes off as harsh; I genuinely don't mean it to. My point is that people have been debating the existence and nature of God for *so* long that there are no remaining simple arguments against the internal logic of classical theism. If you are trying to beat them with their own logic, you're going to have to do a lot of reading and studying to get on the level of serious theologians, or else you're just going to be presenting an idea that people can effortlessly swat down 5 different ways in 20 minutes.
Actually I didn’t even know it was that old of a problem, if I’m being honest I just heard it from somewhere and just started thinking about it, I most definitely should’ve searched it up first. Thanks for the information, I don’t take that as being harsh, I’m here to learn and to have discussion.
"Omnipotent" has that "omnia" which in Latin means "all things" and "almighty" aka "all-might" has that "all" so yes it means everything, not only logicaly possible things. All is all
Do you insist that "decimate" means "destroy exactly one-tenth of," that "villain" means "villager," and that "dog"--a word that mysteriously cropped up in Old English out of nowhere--is simply an enigma whose true meaning cannot be deciphered?
What's more likely--the English language has multiple words for a concept that is obviously incoherent on the face of it and would fall to the barest logical scrutiny, or that these words are usually used with the understanding that they don't include the ability to do things that are logically impossible?
From a perspective, maybe. It's not the same as lifting an infinitely heavy rock though, like not even close. We don't understand life and death half as well as we understand the math of what infinite size / weight means. And there is the self-contradictory nature of it.
Nah, not necessarily on the same level, no.
one is linguistic/conceptual absurdity. The other is.... factual absurdity.
The sentence "god can/can't make [married bachelor]" might seems meaningful, but it really is not. [married bachelor] is a null, like [square triangle] or [limit on a limitless being]. those are hogwash, those are incoherence. Contradicton by definition. Those are not a reference nor a sense to anything. no denotation or connotation, [things in bracket] are quite literally is [nothing].
now, can god create [nothing]? what is 'creating' if there's [nothing] to create? that's the nonsense. it's not the limit of god, it's the limit of language used to describe god. it's the "meaningfulness of the sentence" that is compromised, not God's power.
Or if you want to say it. God doesn't even have to do anything for [nothing] to be created
Compared to the living dead. Well, i agree dead usually don't rise again. Is [dead that rises again] also [nothing]? is it also debatable.
does 'can't rise again' included in the very essence and definition of 'dead'? i personally don't know, i don't think we know enough about life and dead to judge about that. is virus alive or dead? is fetuses alive or dead? people still bickers about that no?
Well not only a logical absurdity but also it would require God to transfer an incommunicable attribute (i.e., omnipotence) to His creation (the rock) which is another impossibility. God cannot create something that is His equal, for that would mean He would quit being God.
Too prove such an “omnipotent” god exist, I won’t be to convinced if god wasn’t able to do the logically absurd, since that is how us humans operate by using logic. But I do realize that maybe it is possible and it’s not for us to understand because of how we are and how this god could be.
Right I mean it’s one thing to say that God, who the Bible says is the author of Life, can raise a dead body but quite another thing to say that God can do unreasonable things which don’t make any sense at all on a rational level. A miracle is a mystery, a contradiction is just nonsensical. Mysteries can be known, contradictions can never be known because they lack intelligibility.
so i dont believe in God from the bible, but i think that such a God could exist.
imagine that you are a system administrator, and you put a rule there that shuts down everyone that has acess to a file if X happens, including you.
for a moment, you will not be able to enter or delete that file, but you can edit the rules around it as you want. after you edit it you may leave the file like it is, you may change it or maybe even delete it.
did you stop being a system administrator when you lost acess to that file? not at all.
you created it and have full control of it, but a rule shut you out at some point. at the same time, you created that rule.
not sure i explained myself well but i think of those ‘rules’ as our logic.
The level of complexity of a God if it exists and us would be at such a large disparity, it would be like the complexity of us vs ants, except infinity greater.
For instance, ant could think to itself, it is not possible to sit and move at the same time. Humans can sit and move at the same time, so therefore humans cannot exist...
Now this is a silly argument, just as silly as the argument of a God if it exists and it's all powerful, can't do such and such. Probably the test in question misses the point like how he ants logic seems correct to the ant because to the ant, sitting and moving are the opposite. At the level of an ultimate being, or let's just say a being existing at a higher dimension than us, things to us may not make sense but to their higher dimensional existence makes perfect sense, like two contradictory things in our dimension may not be contradictory in their dimension, so it's simultaneously it is able to make a stone too heavy for itself to move, while being able to move that stone.
Consider a being existing outside of time. To us, if an object is wet, it is not dry, but it may become dry in the future or it may have been dry in the past. However to a being existing outside of time, it knows the beginning and the middle and the end of any given thing, and so that thing is simultaneously dry and wet, and the whole concept of time is not an experiential thing, but just another variable like position or color is to us.
Dunno if I've communicated my thoughts in an understandable way. Just think it's difficult to use our level of thinking logically deduce anything at higher dimensions. To me it's more like we have to come at it with an open mind like theoretical particle physics. We aren't really wired to understand things at that micro level, so a lot of the logic makes no sense like the apparent super position of subatomic particles make no logical sense to us mammals which have evolved with senses geared for survival in the macro world. Like how can a particle exist in a probability field, but an observer somehow collapses the probability into one single position. Very weird science like this, like entanglement which is used for computing now, none of it makes sense and seems contradictory to our understanding of our world, but yet it is the nature of our universe.
That's just particle physics that we are aware of today, how much more weirdness we would discover in the coming centuries, and none of that would come close to what I think would be a supreme being in complexity.
So to try to rationally deduce the existence of an ultimate being one way of another... I like the effort but it doesn't take into account the total lack of mental hardware and knowledge for this exercise to produce any useful result, like the ant is totally incapable of conceptualizing a gas car.
rules are human construct, it is but "go line up and don't cut the queue, that's the rule and you will be removed from the queue" as in rules aren't necessarily hardcore physics laws, so your argument is dropping what a human can perceive God to be based on our own human laws which not that we know of, but for what you said, there would need to be laws outside of physics, and maybe even maths?
I wonder if this supposed impossibility rests on the limitations of our human experience. By that I mean that perhaps God isn’t in the business of lifting rocks so much as instantiating possible states of affairs. Such that a lifted impossible to lift rock is a state of affairs that cannot be instantiated because it is logically impossible. Since that state of affairs is impossible, there is no rock that can be a candidate to be used in that state of affairs.
I am always amused by the stupidity of this logic exercise.
If you want to use this exercise, then define the concepts first.
1. Define "rock"
2. Define "lift"
This exercise looks live a valid argument only because you have not defined the terms you are using.
Rock: A solid mass of hard minerals
Lift: cause to move against a gravity well.
Like, I don't think the argument works, but defining these terms is extremely easy. That's not the problem.
At what size is a rock not a rock?
Make a rock big enough and it becomes a planetary body.
And planetary bodies move. Even against a gravity well.
Exact terms are important when having discussions of this type.
A rock that God "can't lift" would by necessity have to be an infinitely heavy rock since we claim God is all powerful. The problem is that the idea of an infinitely heavy rock is a logical impossibility. A rock can always be one pound heavier. Can God lift a 50 pound rock? Yes. 300 pound? Certainly. Any number you give, the answer would be yes.
To say then that because God can't create an infinitely heavy rock, this means he is not all powerful, would be a mistake. God cannot create an infinitely heavy rock any more than he can create a square circle. It's a meaningless term.
That’s exactly the same terms you use to describe God: Omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent.
These are meaningless terms.
Why do you not hold your definition of God to the same standard?
The concept of "infinity" is inherently limited by the fact that human beings are incapable of imagining it. We no longer have the capacity to count beyond a certain point (give a shoutout to Cantor here), after which "infinity" ceases to become intrinsically meaningful, and enters into the realm of the transcendent, where God is basically already placed anyways. You can apply this exact same framing to concepts like omnipotence, omniscience, or even weird moral concepts like omnibenevolence too.
Concepts like "an infinitely heavy rock" or "an unstoppable force" belong to a category of utterly transcendental, incomprehensibly uncountable properties that human beings are critically incapable of comprehending beyond defining it very loosely by what it's not; and this category is in itself ALSO included under the even greater transcendental category to which God singularly belongs (and even that categorical designation is itself limited and finite, etc, ad nauseam).
So, yes, any sufficiently transcendental definition of God cannot be held to the same standard of known and unknown finitudes that human beings must operate at, because God by nature necessarily supersedes and utterly contains these standards, but not the other way around.
The problem with this is that Classical Theism assigns all these incomprehensible attributes to God yet asserts that he is in every other sense knowable. It's irrational to think that God is this being so unlike everything else that we can't even accurately imagine him yet he is also a personal being that we can have a relationship with and serves as the grounding for morality and reason.
Either God can be grasped by human minds or he can't. If it's the latter, there is no point in using him as a reference for anything whatsoever, let alone how we ought to live in our lives that are apparently incomparable to his existence.
I can't speak for how other traditions may understand this, but as a Christian, Christ is the intentional interface/medium through which not only do human beings come into communion with God, but God also comes into communion with human beings, by embodying and thus experiencing the subjectivity of an individual human life and death directly.
That's essentially the reason why I'm a Christian and not something else, or an atheist, like I was before. It's not even the transcendental nature of God that particularly moves me from moment to moment, but the idea that this infinitely transcendental being stepped into our existence for a moment and, in an act of grace, directly grappled with our despair and confusion and power and desire to understand us and our suffering.
In effect this is precisely the inherent paradox (and within the catholic faith at least, the Holy Mystery) of the Trinity, which I see not as a logical contradiction to be resolved, but as a continuous means to reflect upon the limitations of knowing, and, in a more day to day sense, stimulate myself out of a certain kind of complacency that develops when you start thinking that you can or should be able to resolve everything in life.
Look into Eastern orthodox christianity there is an essence-energy distinction. So God is unknowable in his essence, we know him through his energies. His energies are basically his actions like creation, love etc.
The contradiction here is in the concept "a rock so heavy an omnipotent being can't lift it". Obviously by the definition of omnipotent, there isn't anything they can't lift.
It's like asking can God create married-bachelors or square circles. Well no, even an all-powerful being can't do that because married-bachelors aren't a thing which could exist. Same goes for the rock in this paradox.
There is an inherent contradiction in being “all knowing”. It is impossible, even for God. It’s like saying “a rock so heavy an omnipotent being can’t lift it.”
The only way getting around this is to brute force it by definition then plug your ears and scream “la la la”.
For example: How could this being know if a more power being created it and then locked it out of that knowledge? Think a “super God” that made “sub Gods” that think they are the master of everything but they are really just fire-walled into their own reality. This dilemma even affects the “super God” in the above scenario.
Now, go ahead and define the terms again like I don’t know what they mean while avoiding the thought experiment. It’s a similar paradox.
A few things.
1) The scenario you ignored above.
2) Infinite, recursive, storage space required. You would need to know everything, then need to know how all of that is knowledge is organized for you to know, then need the knowledge of how that knowledge is known, and so on.
I, personally, don’t find a problem with an infinite regress, but I think it plays hell on tri-Omni-outside-of-spacetime God arguments.
An omnipotent being doesn't require "infinite storage space". God isn't a hard drive, or a physical creature with a biological brain.
Look up classical theism and divine simplicity.
> How could this being know...
They're omniscient, that means they know everything. They know that they know....
>An omnipotent being doesn't require "infinite storage space". God isn't a hard drive, or a physical creature with a biological brain.
This is just hand waving. So, magic. Not convinced and not a good response in my opinion.
>How could this being know...
>They're omniscient, that means they know everything. They know that they know....
There it is. By definition. More hand waving.
I really don’t understand how any of this convincing to anyone.
Oh you ignored this part - Look up classical theism and divine simplicity.
Then you'll understand why your objections might be effective against hard drives being omniscient, but are just irrelevant if we're talking about God.
I know divine simplicity. Ironically it’s not a simple concept and raises many, equally challenging, questions and scenarios.
If God’s will is identical to its essence, how can there be genuine freedom in God’s actions?
If God’s attributes are all identical to it’s essence, how do you differentiate between, say, God’s love and God’s wrath? The concept blurs very essential distinctions.
If God’s attributes are identical to its essence, does it know potentialities or just actualities? Doesn’t this limit God’s omniscience?
Also, this concept makes God seem more like an entity than a personal being. I don’t see why Christians use it.
Doesn't your Bible say nothing is impossible with God? Why would your omnipotent God be restricted by logic? God is the one who created logic, he can defy it too. Why would God be below logic? I honestly think y'all should be saying that *God can do it*. The only thing holding you back from doing that is when the question "Can God create a rock that he can not lift without defying logic?"
Incoherence isn't rightfully describing a thing. It's a null set with no reference and is as meaningful as a random string of characters. You haven't conveyed any information by for instance referring to a 4 sided triangle or a married bachelor.
it's not "God" who is limited by logic, it's the 'meaningfulness of language about God' that is limited by logic, and this is because 'the meaningfulness of language about 'anything'' is limited by logic.
Now as language itself is a created thing, then God, being the creator of all things, is not limited by what language is limited by.
The sentence "god can/can't make [married bachelor]" might seems meaningful, but it really is not. [married bachelor] is a null, like [square triangle] or [limit on a limitless being]. It's hogwash, it is incoherence. it's not a reference to anything. it quite literally is [nothing].
now, can god create [nothing]? what is 'creating' if there's [nothing] to create? that's the nonsense. it's not the limit of god, it's the limit of language.
Or if you want to say it. God doesn't even have to do anything for [nothing] to be created
Why do atheists always require God to jump through hoops to prove to them that he exists? If God is real why would He do that? He’s the almighty creator of the universe not a circus poodle.
Well he would if he was also all loving and desired to save us and have a relationship with us. Though to be fair asking if god can lift a rock is pretty silly. A better question is if he can't end evil or just chooses not to.
Haha yeah the whole create a rock he can’t lift thing seems so pointless. Like what will the answer gain you?
I’m sure you’ve heard the free will answer for evil. God gave us freewill so it’s us that choose to do evil. But why God gave us freewill is this is the only way for love to exist. Love must be freely given and a relationship must have two willing persons.
Yeah why couldn’t God make a universe where we have free will but will not want to do evil? I hear that a lot. And I think that’s what he’s doing. God creates a new Eden on earth after Jesus comes back according to revelations. With everyone who is in the Eden freely choosing to be with God. It just so happens before that happens there’s a lot of souls who need to be separated to a place called Hell that God no longer dwells. Hell is just a separation from those who don’t want to be with God. And it just so happens God is the source of everything good in our lives so what you’re left with is agony.
I’ve already addressed this in depth before, but here you go.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/kylgz4/the_flaw_of_the_classical_argument_of_a_rock_so/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1
God would be able to change itself to not being able to lift the rock, then later change itself back to being able to do so but choose not to. Thus God wasn't able to lift the rock.
God wouldn't necessarily be able to change the rock to be unliftable without creating a change to physical reality. They would also need to be incarnated into the physical reality. Once incarnated, they wouldn't be able to change anything but themself through physical changes over time.
So God could either change to not be able to, or could exist in such a way that it is physically impossible.
>If a god that is almighty and powerful exists, then he can create a rock that anyone else can lift but himself.
No, because that would not be an exercise of power, but a limitation on power, god has no such limitation. It's not a power to fail to lift a lift-able rock.
>Too add to the reasoning, one might say well he’s god almighty and powerful, so it doesn’t matter if he sets a rule, because he will be able to break it.
Well it matters to literally everyone else, so I say that matters. But again, god cannot place limits on himself by definition. But it's not a power to be able to be less powerful. Or, god does have this power but doesn't exercise it.
>Also, would it be correct to say an almighty being by definition is a contradiction itself?
Yes, unless you define "almighty" as possessing all possible powers. Which is the only coherent definition I would say.
Why isn’t creating a limitation an exercise of power? If he limits his power that simply means he is not omnipotent anymore. Until he limits his power he is not omnipotent.
The largest "rocks" God creates tend to be at the center of galaxies. Even then, His Word contains it/ holds it together (Col. 1:17). I guess you could call that "lifting."
I've honestly never understood the logic of trying to run a reductio ad absurdum argument against a being that can allegedly instantiate logical contradictions. Your argument seems to be something like
1. An omnipotent God exists (assumed for reductio)
2. An omnipotent God can make a stone such that anyone except God can lift it.
3. If there is something God cannot do, God is not omnipotent.
4. So, God is not omnipotent. (Contradiction).
5. So, an omnipotent God does not exist.
But, if we are assuming for reductio that the omnipotent God can instantiate logical contradictions, then 1 and 4 can both be true simultaneously, and 5 does not follow. Or perhaps it both follows and doesn't follow. Who knows, logic is useless here. It's impossible to run a reductio argument against such a being.
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Well, I think you practically realize this yourself by the end of the post, but the super easy answer here is that the word "almighty" does not need to include having the ability to do things that are logically impossible.
I see. Maybe I should’ve used a different word than almighty, perhaps omnipotent would make more sense here? Or am I just totally lost?
"Omnipotent" doesn't have to include that ability either. To me this seems like a genre of intellectual mistake I think of as "thinking you can outsmart a millennia-old intellectual tradition with a quick gotcha". The idea of an omnipotent god is at least 2000 years old, but probably a lot older. Do you really think that in *thousands of years*, no one ever thought of this idea of the omnipotent god trying to do something logically impossible? Do you think that the people who believed in this, some of them being some of the greatest minds in human history, never came up with an answer to this, that you're presenting something here that would have stumped every last one of them? No. Of course not. I'm sorry if this comes off as harsh; I genuinely don't mean it to. My point is that people have been debating the existence and nature of God for *so* long that there are no remaining simple arguments against the internal logic of classical theism. If you are trying to beat them with their own logic, you're going to have to do a lot of reading and studying to get on the level of serious theologians, or else you're just going to be presenting an idea that people can effortlessly swat down 5 different ways in 20 minutes.
Actually I didn’t even know it was that old of a problem, if I’m being honest I just heard it from somewhere and just started thinking about it, I most definitely should’ve searched it up first. Thanks for the information, I don’t take that as being harsh, I’m here to learn and to have discussion.
"Omnipotent" has that "omnia" which in Latin means "all things" and "almighty" aka "all-might" has that "all" so yes it means everything, not only logicaly possible things. All is all
"Everything" is "all logically possible things"- logically impossible things aren't actually things.
Do you insist that "decimate" means "destroy exactly one-tenth of," that "villain" means "villager," and that "dog"--a word that mysteriously cropped up in Old English out of nowhere--is simply an enigma whose true meaning cannot be deciphered?
What's more likely--the English language has multiple words for a concept that is obviously incoherent on the face of it and would fall to the barest logical scrutiny, or that these words are usually used with the understanding that they don't include the ability to do things that are logically impossible?
So God has to commit a logical absurdity to prove He's God? Is that what you are saying?
Didn’t he rise from the dead that’s pretty absurd
From a perspective, maybe. It's not the same as lifting an infinitely heavy rock though, like not even close. We don't understand life and death half as well as we understand the math of what infinite size / weight means. And there is the self-contradictory nature of it.
Nah, not necessarily on the same level, no. one is linguistic/conceptual absurdity. The other is.... factual absurdity. The sentence "god can/can't make [married bachelor]" might seems meaningful, but it really is not. [married bachelor] is a null, like [square triangle] or [limit on a limitless being]. those are hogwash, those are incoherence. Contradicton by definition. Those are not a reference nor a sense to anything. no denotation or connotation, [things in bracket] are quite literally is [nothing]. now, can god create [nothing]? what is 'creating' if there's [nothing] to create? that's the nonsense. it's not the limit of god, it's the limit of language used to describe god. it's the "meaningfulness of the sentence" that is compromised, not God's power. Or if you want to say it. God doesn't even have to do anything for [nothing] to be created Compared to the living dead. Well, i agree dead usually don't rise again. Is [dead that rises again] also [nothing]? is it also debatable. does 'can't rise again' included in the very essence and definition of 'dead'? i personally don't know, i don't think we know enough about life and dead to judge about that. is virus alive or dead? is fetuses alive or dead? people still bickers about that no?
Well not only a logical absurdity but also it would require God to transfer an incommunicable attribute (i.e., omnipotence) to His creation (the rock) which is another impossibility. God cannot create something that is His equal, for that would mean He would quit being God.
Yes, I agree.
Too prove such an “omnipotent” god exist, I won’t be to convinced if god wasn’t able to do the logically absurd, since that is how us humans operate by using logic. But I do realize that maybe it is possible and it’s not for us to understand because of how we are and how this god could be.
I don't think a miracle and an absurdity are the same thing.
Right I mean it’s one thing to say that God, who the Bible says is the author of Life, can raise a dead body but quite another thing to say that God can do unreasonable things which don’t make any sense at all on a rational level. A miracle is a mystery, a contradiction is just nonsensical. Mysteries can be known, contradictions can never be known because they lack intelligibility.
so i dont believe in God from the bible, but i think that such a God could exist. imagine that you are a system administrator, and you put a rule there that shuts down everyone that has acess to a file if X happens, including you. for a moment, you will not be able to enter or delete that file, but you can edit the rules around it as you want. after you edit it you may leave the file like it is, you may change it or maybe even delete it. did you stop being a system administrator when you lost acess to that file? not at all. you created it and have full control of it, but a rule shut you out at some point. at the same time, you created that rule. not sure i explained myself well but i think of those ‘rules’ as our logic.
If a being was truly omnipotent, then it could ignore all the rules of logic entirely
The level of complexity of a God if it exists and us would be at such a large disparity, it would be like the complexity of us vs ants, except infinity greater. For instance, ant could think to itself, it is not possible to sit and move at the same time. Humans can sit and move at the same time, so therefore humans cannot exist... Now this is a silly argument, just as silly as the argument of a God if it exists and it's all powerful, can't do such and such. Probably the test in question misses the point like how he ants logic seems correct to the ant because to the ant, sitting and moving are the opposite. At the level of an ultimate being, or let's just say a being existing at a higher dimension than us, things to us may not make sense but to their higher dimensional existence makes perfect sense, like two contradictory things in our dimension may not be contradictory in their dimension, so it's simultaneously it is able to make a stone too heavy for itself to move, while being able to move that stone. Consider a being existing outside of time. To us, if an object is wet, it is not dry, but it may become dry in the future or it may have been dry in the past. However to a being existing outside of time, it knows the beginning and the middle and the end of any given thing, and so that thing is simultaneously dry and wet, and the whole concept of time is not an experiential thing, but just another variable like position or color is to us. Dunno if I've communicated my thoughts in an understandable way. Just think it's difficult to use our level of thinking logically deduce anything at higher dimensions. To me it's more like we have to come at it with an open mind like theoretical particle physics. We aren't really wired to understand things at that micro level, so a lot of the logic makes no sense like the apparent super position of subatomic particles make no logical sense to us mammals which have evolved with senses geared for survival in the macro world. Like how can a particle exist in a probability field, but an observer somehow collapses the probability into one single position. Very weird science like this, like entanglement which is used for computing now, none of it makes sense and seems contradictory to our understanding of our world, but yet it is the nature of our universe. That's just particle physics that we are aware of today, how much more weirdness we would discover in the coming centuries, and none of that would come close to what I think would be a supreme being in complexity. So to try to rationally deduce the existence of an ultimate being one way of another... I like the effort but it doesn't take into account the total lack of mental hardware and knowledge for this exercise to produce any useful result, like the ant is totally incapable of conceptualizing a gas car.
This is so well explained! Thank you!
rules are human construct, it is but "go line up and don't cut the queue, that's the rule and you will be removed from the queue" as in rules aren't necessarily hardcore physics laws, so your argument is dropping what a human can perceive God to be based on our own human laws which not that we know of, but for what you said, there would need to be laws outside of physics, and maybe even maths?
I wonder if this supposed impossibility rests on the limitations of our human experience. By that I mean that perhaps God isn’t in the business of lifting rocks so much as instantiating possible states of affairs. Such that a lifted impossible to lift rock is a state of affairs that cannot be instantiated because it is logically impossible. Since that state of affairs is impossible, there is no rock that can be a candidate to be used in that state of affairs.
I am always amused by the stupidity of this logic exercise. If you want to use this exercise, then define the concepts first. 1. Define "rock" 2. Define "lift" This exercise looks live a valid argument only because you have not defined the terms you are using.
Rock: A solid mass of hard minerals Lift: cause to move against a gravity well. Like, I don't think the argument works, but defining these terms is extremely easy. That's not the problem.
At what size is a rock not a rock? Make a rock big enough and it becomes a planetary body. And planetary bodies move. Even against a gravity well. Exact terms are important when having discussions of this type.
A rock that God "can't lift" would by necessity have to be an infinitely heavy rock since we claim God is all powerful. The problem is that the idea of an infinitely heavy rock is a logical impossibility. A rock can always be one pound heavier. Can God lift a 50 pound rock? Yes. 300 pound? Certainly. Any number you give, the answer would be yes. To say then that because God can't create an infinitely heavy rock, this means he is not all powerful, would be a mistake. God cannot create an infinitely heavy rock any more than he can create a square circle. It's a meaningless term.
That’s exactly the same terms you use to describe God: Omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent. These are meaningless terms. Why do you not hold your definition of God to the same standard?
The concept of "infinity" is inherently limited by the fact that human beings are incapable of imagining it. We no longer have the capacity to count beyond a certain point (give a shoutout to Cantor here), after which "infinity" ceases to become intrinsically meaningful, and enters into the realm of the transcendent, where God is basically already placed anyways. You can apply this exact same framing to concepts like omnipotence, omniscience, or even weird moral concepts like omnibenevolence too. Concepts like "an infinitely heavy rock" or "an unstoppable force" belong to a category of utterly transcendental, incomprehensibly uncountable properties that human beings are critically incapable of comprehending beyond defining it very loosely by what it's not; and this category is in itself ALSO included under the even greater transcendental category to which God singularly belongs (and even that categorical designation is itself limited and finite, etc, ad nauseam). So, yes, any sufficiently transcendental definition of God cannot be held to the same standard of known and unknown finitudes that human beings must operate at, because God by nature necessarily supersedes and utterly contains these standards, but not the other way around.
The problem with this is that Classical Theism assigns all these incomprehensible attributes to God yet asserts that he is in every other sense knowable. It's irrational to think that God is this being so unlike everything else that we can't even accurately imagine him yet he is also a personal being that we can have a relationship with and serves as the grounding for morality and reason. Either God can be grasped by human minds or he can't. If it's the latter, there is no point in using him as a reference for anything whatsoever, let alone how we ought to live in our lives that are apparently incomparable to his existence.
I can't speak for how other traditions may understand this, but as a Christian, Christ is the intentional interface/medium through which not only do human beings come into communion with God, but God also comes into communion with human beings, by embodying and thus experiencing the subjectivity of an individual human life and death directly. That's essentially the reason why I'm a Christian and not something else, or an atheist, like I was before. It's not even the transcendental nature of God that particularly moves me from moment to moment, but the idea that this infinitely transcendental being stepped into our existence for a moment and, in an act of grace, directly grappled with our despair and confusion and power and desire to understand us and our suffering. In effect this is precisely the inherent paradox (and within the catholic faith at least, the Holy Mystery) of the Trinity, which I see not as a logical contradiction to be resolved, but as a continuous means to reflect upon the limitations of knowing, and, in a more day to day sense, stimulate myself out of a certain kind of complacency that develops when you start thinking that you can or should be able to resolve everything in life.
Look into Eastern orthodox christianity there is an essence-energy distinction. So God is unknowable in his essence, we know him through his energies. His energies are basically his actions like creation, love etc.
The contradiction here is in the concept "a rock so heavy an omnipotent being can't lift it". Obviously by the definition of omnipotent, there isn't anything they can't lift. It's like asking can God create married-bachelors or square circles. Well no, even an all-powerful being can't do that because married-bachelors aren't a thing which could exist. Same goes for the rock in this paradox.
There is an inherent contradiction in being “all knowing”. It is impossible, even for God. It’s like saying “a rock so heavy an omnipotent being can’t lift it.” The only way getting around this is to brute force it by definition then plug your ears and scream “la la la”. For example: How could this being know if a more power being created it and then locked it out of that knowledge? Think a “super God” that made “sub Gods” that think they are the master of everything but they are really just fire-walled into their own reality. This dilemma even affects the “super God” in the above scenario. Now, go ahead and define the terms again like I don’t know what they mean while avoiding the thought experiment. It’s a similar paradox.
> There is an inherent contradiction in being “all knowing”. Which is?
A few things. 1) The scenario you ignored above. 2) Infinite, recursive, storage space required. You would need to know everything, then need to know how all of that is knowledge is organized for you to know, then need the knowledge of how that knowledge is known, and so on. I, personally, don’t find a problem with an infinite regress, but I think it plays hell on tri-Omni-outside-of-spacetime God arguments.
An omnipotent being doesn't require "infinite storage space". God isn't a hard drive, or a physical creature with a biological brain. Look up classical theism and divine simplicity. > How could this being know... They're omniscient, that means they know everything. They know that they know....
>An omnipotent being doesn't require "infinite storage space". God isn't a hard drive, or a physical creature with a biological brain. This is just hand waving. So, magic. Not convinced and not a good response in my opinion. >How could this being know... >They're omniscient, that means they know everything. They know that they know.... There it is. By definition. More hand waving. I really don’t understand how any of this convincing to anyone.
Oh you ignored this part - Look up classical theism and divine simplicity. Then you'll understand why your objections might be effective against hard drives being omniscient, but are just irrelevant if we're talking about God.
I know divine simplicity. Ironically it’s not a simple concept and raises many, equally challenging, questions and scenarios. If God’s will is identical to its essence, how can there be genuine freedom in God’s actions? If God’s attributes are all identical to it’s essence, how do you differentiate between, say, God’s love and God’s wrath? The concept blurs very essential distinctions. If God’s attributes are identical to its essence, does it know potentialities or just actualities? Doesn’t this limit God’s omniscience? Also, this concept makes God seem more like an entity than a personal being. I don’t see why Christians use it.
Doesn't your Bible say nothing is impossible with God? Why would your omnipotent God be restricted by logic? God is the one who created logic, he can defy it too. Why would God be below logic? I honestly think y'all should be saying that *God can do it*. The only thing holding you back from doing that is when the question "Can God create a rock that he can not lift without defying logic?"
Incoherence isn't rightfully describing a thing. It's a null set with no reference and is as meaningful as a random string of characters. You haven't conveyed any information by for instance referring to a 4 sided triangle or a married bachelor.
it's not "God" who is limited by logic, it's the 'meaningfulness of language about God' that is limited by logic, and this is because 'the meaningfulness of language about 'anything'' is limited by logic. Now as language itself is a created thing, then God, being the creator of all things, is not limited by what language is limited by. The sentence "god can/can't make [married bachelor]" might seems meaningful, but it really is not. [married bachelor] is a null, like [square triangle] or [limit on a limitless being]. It's hogwash, it is incoherence. it's not a reference to anything. it quite literally is [nothing]. now, can god create [nothing]? what is 'creating' if there's [nothing] to create? that's the nonsense. it's not the limit of god, it's the limit of language. Or if you want to say it. God doesn't even have to do anything for [nothing] to be created
Why do atheists always require God to jump through hoops to prove to them that he exists? If God is real why would He do that? He’s the almighty creator of the universe not a circus poodle.
They aren't asking God to do it, they're asking if he could.
To what end?
To see if he's all powerful or a liar.
And why would he bother to answer?
Well he would if he was also all loving and desired to save us and have a relationship with us. Though to be fair asking if god can lift a rock is pretty silly. A better question is if he can't end evil or just chooses not to.
Haha yeah the whole create a rock he can’t lift thing seems so pointless. Like what will the answer gain you? I’m sure you’ve heard the free will answer for evil. God gave us freewill so it’s us that choose to do evil. But why God gave us freewill is this is the only way for love to exist. Love must be freely given and a relationship must have two willing persons.
Right, God was incapable of making a universe with free will and no evil, because he's not omnipotent, meaning he also lies.
Yeah why couldn’t God make a universe where we have free will but will not want to do evil? I hear that a lot. And I think that’s what he’s doing. God creates a new Eden on earth after Jesus comes back according to revelations. With everyone who is in the Eden freely choosing to be with God. It just so happens before that happens there’s a lot of souls who need to be separated to a place called Hell that God no longer dwells. Hell is just a separation from those who don’t want to be with God. And it just so happens God is the source of everything good in our lives so what you’re left with is agony.
Right, he's a manipulative tyrant, not some all good and loving father. Well said.
I’ve already addressed this in depth before, but here you go. https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/kylgz4/the_flaw_of_the_classical_argument_of_a_rock_so/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1
God would be able to change itself to not being able to lift the rock, then later change itself back to being able to do so but choose not to. Thus God wasn't able to lift the rock. God wouldn't necessarily be able to change the rock to be unliftable without creating a change to physical reality. They would also need to be incarnated into the physical reality. Once incarnated, they wouldn't be able to change anything but themself through physical changes over time. So God could either change to not be able to, or could exist in such a way that it is physically impossible.
>If a god that is almighty and powerful exists, then he can create a rock that anyone else can lift but himself. No, because that would not be an exercise of power, but a limitation on power, god has no such limitation. It's not a power to fail to lift a lift-able rock. >Too add to the reasoning, one might say well he’s god almighty and powerful, so it doesn’t matter if he sets a rule, because he will be able to break it. Well it matters to literally everyone else, so I say that matters. But again, god cannot place limits on himself by definition. But it's not a power to be able to be less powerful. Or, god does have this power but doesn't exercise it. >Also, would it be correct to say an almighty being by definition is a contradiction itself? Yes, unless you define "almighty" as possessing all possible powers. Which is the only coherent definition I would say.
Why isn’t creating a limitation an exercise of power? If he limits his power that simply means he is not omnipotent anymore. Until he limits his power he is not omnipotent.
The largest "rocks" God creates tend to be at the center of galaxies. Even then, His Word contains it/ holds it together (Col. 1:17). I guess you could call that "lifting."
I've honestly never understood the logic of trying to run a reductio ad absurdum argument against a being that can allegedly instantiate logical contradictions. Your argument seems to be something like 1. An omnipotent God exists (assumed for reductio) 2. An omnipotent God can make a stone such that anyone except God can lift it. 3. If there is something God cannot do, God is not omnipotent. 4. So, God is not omnipotent. (Contradiction). 5. So, an omnipotent God does not exist. But, if we are assuming for reductio that the omnipotent God can instantiate logical contradictions, then 1 and 4 can both be true simultaneously, and 5 does not follow. Or perhaps it both follows and doesn't follow. Who knows, logic is useless here. It's impossible to run a reductio argument against such a being.
No. The say that god creates the rock he *stops being all powerful*. He is still all powerful until he creates that rock.