Can God can create a rock which is too heavy for himself to lift up?

[gvozd]

The title's been corrected: Can God create a rock which is too heavy for himself to lift up?

Mods, I'm sorry if this is the wrong forum. I have a great deal of difficulty if this thread is worth being in Great Debates. Silly me.

[twickster]

No prob, gvozd. Theological questions go in Great Debates, regardless of size or weight.

Also, you need a mod to fix a thread title -- so I fixed that for you as well.

twickster, MPSIMS moderator

[The Hamster King]

Of course He can! An omnipotent God is not bound by the rules of logic.

[Chimera]

God is the rock.

[silenus]

Yes or no. Depends on His mood.

[John Mace]

Can God create a poster who can asks this question and who doesn't have a join date in the same month the thread was created?

[Maggie the Ocelot]

Originally Posted by Chimera

God is the rock.

This.

[blondebear]

Our God is a rockin' God, amen.

[Captain Amazing]

If you assume God isn't omnipotent, there's no reason it isn't possible. If you assume God is omnipotent, the question becomes nonsensical.

[BrainGlutton]

I believe St. Augustine pronounced that it is sin to suppose God is any the less omnipotent because he cannot do logically impossible things, like dividing something into three equal halves.

[Lobohan]

Originally Posted by BrainGlutton

I believe St. Augustine pronounced that it is sin to suppose God is any the less omnipotent because he cannot do logically impossible things, like dividing something into three equal halves.

I believe St. Augustine was full of shit.

[Mangetout]

Cvazn Gvozd cvrezate vaz rvozck whvizch vizs tvozo hvezavy fvozr hvizmself tvoz lvizft vuzp?

[The Other Waldo Pepper]

Originally Posted by Captain Amazing

If you assume God isn't omnipotent, there's no reason it isn't possible.

Can we assume a rock so big it takes God six whole days to make the thing, at which point He rests instead of picking it up?

[x-ray vision]

C. S. Lewis argues that when talking about omnipotence, referencing "a rock so heavy that God cannot lift it" is nonsense just as much as referencing "a square circle"; that it is not logically coherent in terms of power to think that omnipotence includes the power to do the logically impossible. So asking "Can God create a rock so heavy that even he cannot lift it?" is just as much nonsense as asking "Can God draw a square circle?" The logical contradiction here being God's simultaneous ability and disability in lifting the rock: the statement "God can lift this rock" must have a truth value of either true or false, it cannot possess both. This is justified by observing that in order for the omnipotent agent to create such a stone, the omnipotent agent must already be more powerful than itself: such a stone is too heavy for the omnipotent agent to lift, but the omnipotent agent already can create such a stone; If an omnipotent agent already is more powerful than itself, then it already is just that powerful. Which means that its power to create a stone that’s too heavy for it to lift is identical to its power to lift that very stone. While this doesn’t quite make complete sense, Lewis wished to stress its implicit point: that even within the attempt to prove that the concept of omnipotence is immediately incoherent, one admits that it is immediately coherent, and that the only difference is that this attempt if forced to admit this despite that the attempt is constituted by a perfectly irrational route to its own unwilling end, with a perfectly irrational set of 'things' included in that end. In other words, that the 'limit' on what omnipotence 'can' do is not a limit on its actual agency, but an epistemological boundary without which omnipotence could not be identified (paradoxically or otherwise) in the first place. In fact, this process is merely a fancier form of the classic Liar ParadoxA: If I say, "I am a liar", then how can it be true if I am telling the truth therewith, and, if I am telling the truth therewith, then how can I be a liar? So, to think that omnipotence is an epistemological paradox is like failing to recognize that, when taking the statement, 'I am a liar' self-referentially, the statement is reduced to an actual failure to lie. In other words, if one maintains the supposedly 'initial' position that the necessary conception of omnipotence includes the 'power' to compromise both itself and all other identity, and if one concludes from this position that omnipotence is epistemologically incoherent, then one implicitly is asserting that one's own 'initial' position is incoherent. Therefore the question (and therefore the perceived paradox) is meaningless. Nonsense does not suddenly acquire sense and meaning with the addition of the two words, "God can" before it.

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

[Craz3d117]

Only if God chooses not be able to lift it.

[John Mace]

Originally Posted by Chimera

God is the rock.

I thought Peter was the rock.

[The Tao's Revenge]

Fight my ignorance, but square circles are impossible in Euclidean space, but if space is curved enough, seems a square would be rather round.


Likewise an invisible pink unicorn could be an ordinary pink unicorn in the dark, or behind a someone else's problem field or something. or something.

I guess what I'm saying is we need to throw off the shackles Euclidean space, and prohibitions against mad science narwhal-equine genetic engineering. We could be gods I tell you! Fools I'll destroy you all!

[sisu]

God is not a magician

[Max the Immortal]

Take a page from Erwin Schrödinger.

1) Create rock in secluded location nobody else can reach or observe.
2) (Attempt to) lift rock.
3) Refuse to tell anyone whether the attempt was successful.

[Czarcasm]

Yes/no.

[TriPolar]

Sure he can create a rock bigger than he can lift. He can also destroy it, so he doesn't care.

[The Tao's Revenge]

Originally Posted by Max the Immortal

Take a page from Erwin Schrödinger.

1) Create rock in secluded location nobody else can reach or observe.
2) (Attempt to) lift rock.
3) Refuse to tell anyone whether the attempt was successful.

Also, every time someone masturbates, both kill and not kill a kitten in a box.

[BrainGlutton]

Originally Posted by Lobohan

I believe St. Augustine was full of shit.

So do I.

[Miller]

Originally Posted by John Mace

I thought Peter was the rock.

I thought Dwayne Johnson was The Rock.

[XT]

I thought The Rock was off the coast of Spain.

It's an old question, but thought I'd share an anecdote about it since the thread doesn't seem to be going anywhere. I asked a priest once about the whole rock to heavy to lift thingy when I was a kid (yeah, it's THAT old a question) and he said 'Of course he can'. Thinking I had a gotcha I said, well, doesn't this limit Gods power then...he CAN'T make a rock that even he can't lift after all, so he's not omnipotent! The response was that, assuming God wanted to play along, the answer is that he creates such an unliftable rock, then his power grows and he could lift it.

Later in life I saw all the obvious flaws with the above, but at the time it seemed like a good answer, and the reason it stuck is that it showed the lengths people will take to make their God or gods 'logical', and that asking them silly philosophy questions to try and get them usually doesn't work, since there is no common ground about what is or isn't logical, consistent or 'the right answer'.

Hopefully the OP will learn this lesson and come up with some more interesting topics to discuss in the future. Hope springs eternal and all that.

-XT

[pravnik]

Mu.

[El_Kabong]

Originally Posted by gvozd

Can God create a rock which is too heavy for himself to lift up?

Yes, but one roundhouse kick from Chuck Norris and it'll be in pieces your grandmother with the bad hip would have no problem lifting.

[Chimera]

Logically speaking, a rock of sufficient mass becomes a black hole.

Then there is the question of just "what" it is to be lifted against. Gravity? The gravity of what now? And just how does one actually define lifting it?

It is nothing more than a nonsensical proposition put forward by people a lot less clever than they imagine themselves to be.

[Lobohan]

Originally Posted by Chimera

Logically speaking, a rock of sufficient mass becomes a black hole.

Then there is the question of just "what" it is to be lifted against. Gravity? The gravity of what now? And just how does one actually define lifting it?

It is nothing more than a nonsensical proposition put forward by people a lot less clever than they imagine themselves to be.

You don't have to be clever to find problems with an omnipotent God. It's absurd on its face. If the omnipotent God is also omni-benevolent it's outright insane.

[John Mace]

Originally Posted by Miller

I thought Dwayne Johnson was The Rock.

He's The Black Rock. And we know how that turned out for the Losties!

[BigT]

Well, just to be serious for a moment:

With that specific wording, I'd say yes*. There's nothing logically impossible about lifting something that at one point was too heavy to lift--you just have to change the parameters so that it's no longer too heavy, without actually lifting the object before doing so.

However, if you are asking if God could do something in such a way that he would be unable to undo it, then I'd have to say no, as omnipotence logically comes with the stipulation that one cannot ever lose the ability to do something. Otherwise, the word carries no meaning.

*Of course, if you don't believe in God, then you can say the answer to your question is "no" because God doesn't exist.

[DearestDane]

Originally Posted by sisu

God is not a magician

God plays dice.

[DearestDane]

Originally Posted by John Mace

I thought Peter was the rock.

Peter is Little Rock.

[BrainGlutton]

Originally Posted by DearestDane

God plays dice.

"God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of the players (i.e., everybody), to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time."

-- Good Omens, Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman

[Chronos]

Of course He can. But He hasn't, so He's still omnipotent. There is no rock that He can't lift, because He never created one.

[John Mace]

If God wants to fucking play dice with the universe, he can fucking play dice with the mother fucking universe!

[Maggie the Ocelot]

Originally Posted by DearestDane

God plays dice.

yeah, and the Bastard still owes me $0 from last week's craps game! D:

[rat avatar]

The god of Abraham is bested by simple iron chariots, so I'm betting most rocks are too heavy for him if he existed.

"And the Lord was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron."
—Judges 1:19

[drewtwo99]

Originally Posted by rat avatar

The god of Abraham is bested by simple iron chariots, so I'm betting most rocks are too heavy for him if he existed.

Every super hero has to have a weakness. God is no different. His is iron chariots. Is that any weirder than some random mineral, or the color yellow, or whatever?

[don't ask]

Well if he was able lift the rock he could give himself an ever worsening divine hernia until such time as he was no longer able to lift it.

He'd know how to do it because he can stop people picking up anything. Look at all the guys he's made so that they can't pick up chicks.

[I Love Me, Vol. I]

Why do people debate this as though it's some sort of real world logic problem? One might as well debate whether Goldilocks could have crushed the Big Bad Wolf's throat or whether Rocky could have realistically taken a championship bout with Apollo Creed to 15 rounds.

You can have God do whatever the fuck you want him to... you (and the rest of us) created Him... so knock yourselves out! Get creative! Give him 18 legs and 13 eyes that fire ice cream cones at acorns and snails.

It's all just a nutty screenplay.

[gvozd]

Originally Posted by Mangetout

Cvazn Gvozd cvrezate vaz rvozck whvizch vizs tvozo hvezavy fvozr hvizmself tvoz lvizft vuzp?

Excuse me?

[CalMeacham]

My variation, which i used for a time as a Sif Line:



Can God Make a Chick So Hot He Can't Pick Her Up?

[Gyrate]

He doesn't need to lift the rock. He can just lower the rest of the universe.

[CurtC]

Originally Posted by BrainGlutton

I believe St. Augustine pronounced that it is sin to suppose God is any the less omnipotent because he cannot do logically impossible things, like dividing something into three equal halves.

Some Christian apologists prove God's existence by saying that logic itself had to have a creator, therefore God. So does God have to be bound by the rules of logic, or is he responsible for creating them?

[silenus]

The OP is a one-trick pony with a very old equine and a really stupid trick.

[Candyman74]

Originally Posted by Chimera

Logically speaking, a rock of sufficient mass becomes a black hole.

Then there is the question of just "what" it is to be lifted against. Gravity? The gravity of what now? And just how does one actually define lifting it?

It is nothing more than a nonsensical proposition put forward by people a lot less clever than they imagine themselves to be.

You understand that the question is a metaphor about the concept of omnipotence, right?

[Der Trihs]

Originally Posted by rat avatar

The god of Abraham is bested by simple iron chariots <snip>

Thereby proving the superiority of Godzilla, since he can handle iron chariots.

[erislover]

God doesn't create stones, he creates people.

[Buck Godot]

Originally Posted by BrainGlutton

I believe St. Augustine pronounced that it is sin to suppose God is any the less omnipotent because he cannot do logically impossible things, like dividing something into three equal halves.

Get out of here! If anyone can practically apply the Banach–Tarski paradox it's god.