Can God create a rock that even he cannot move?
If he can, that means he is fallable since he cannot move the rock.
If he cannot that means he is fallable since he can’t create this rock.
I believe that succesfully disproves any notion of an all-powerful being.
I don’t believe anyone has ever thought of that one before.
Me neither, Mangetout. So who was that masked stranger that we came to know and love?
But God can lift a rock that is too big for Him to lift. He is all-powerful, therefore He can do even the contradictory.
He invented reality. This is what we mean by calling Him the Creator of everything, including the laws of logic. He has even the power to alter them.
Good luck in Philosophy 102.
Regards,
Shodan
Yep, guess that takes care of that problem once and for all.
It’s a logical argument, and I have no problem with it, personally. The problem I see here is that true believers might use the counter-argument : “Would God create a rock that even he cannot move?” Then they can just say “No, because he doesn’t have any reason to do so,” and ignore the logic. That’s why logic won’t sway some people.
I much preferred the ‘Can God create a buritto so big that even He couldn’t eat it’ approach to this vexing dilema.
If only I learned to spell burrito properly, I too could have linked to that…
Could god get so skeptical he couldn’t believe in himself?
(no capitals so I don’t finger out one specific burrito-rock-heaving-deity)
My personal favourite was “Can God make a bowl of green pea soup sooooo large that even he can’t eat it”
Brutus, my mnemonic for those Spanish terms is that Judge Ito was a small man – I can remember to spell his name with only one T – and -ito means “small” – a burrito is a small burro, apparently.
So it is a paradox then?
Can God make a small donkey that is large?
The question has about as much meaning as the immovable rock thing.
That brings to mind the line C.S. Lewis gives one of his characters in The Last Battle, to the effect that a stable once held Something much larger than it itself was.
Since I also misspelled ‘dilemma’, I hope this God of dubious existance is a forgiving one.
-Brutusito
P.S. On a side note, when I was in Reynosa, my SO joked that the meat of choice among street vendors was burro. Joke or not, it was good, whatever it was…
This paradox assumes a completely omnipotent Supreme Being, as opposed to a for-all-intents-and-purposes omnipotent Supreme Being.
IF there is a “God”, then having him be “just be” powerful enough to make the Earth (or even simply guide natural forces towards it’s creation) that would be “all powerful” enough for me, even if he can’t make paradoxical rocks or burritos. And I’d be happy to call him “omnipotent & all powerful” if that is what he really wanted.
Sigh. Can God xquifle? If God is truly all-powerful yadda yadda yadda.
Asking if God can do something that He can’t do is the logical equivalent of xquifling yourself. Get a better proof.
Well god can create a rock that even she can’t move because she can great another god even more powerful than her, that can move the rock and create another rock that she can’t move, and, oh forget about it.
“Logical” proofs don’t work because logic only determines whether or not a statement is valid, not if it is true.
It is also very easy to create nonsense paradoxes in english, particularly given implicit assumptions.
For example, your “proof” assumes that God has a physical form with physical muscles. It further assumes that this “too large rock” exists within a gravitational field - presumably generated by an even larger rock, such as a planet. But, since a planet is a rock (usually) then isn’t it bigger than the “too large” rock? So, then the rock isn’t the biggest rock that God could make - but if the rock is bigger than the planet, then the gravitational field of the rock would be greater than the field of the planet, so that any attempt to “lift” the rock would actually move the planet instead. Finally, many True Believers would say that if God wanted to move a planet sized rock that big, he’d just arrange for a star to pass close enough to pull the rock gravitationally in the direction he wanted it to go.
I like the Hitchhikers guide explanation. To wit, saying that something is possible, does not exist, etc… is silly, because in an infinite number of infinitely expanding universes, it’s not a matter of if something is out there, but whether or not you can find it soon enough to exploit it (a planet full of mattresses, used ball-points…).