How do you answer the omnipotence paradox?

[sidetrack]

A common variation of the omnipotence paradox goes like this."“Can God create a stone so heavy that even he cannot lift it?”.This seems to highlight a dilemma between omnipotence and the possiblity of exceeding omnipotence.Here are two ways to answer that question which I hope people dont mind me posting.I sincerely hope that this first one is not blasphemous (it suppose to have a bit of humour in it).Yes God can create a stone a stone so heavy that even he cannot lift it [the trick here is that he makes this LOOK like a* TEMPORARY*** thing].See this works out by having God make a huge and heavy stone and try to lift at first and he does’nt get it up** BUT ** a minute later (after maybe “checking his watch and/or agenda”) he lifts the rock up (thereby kind of satisfying both parties people who’d answer yes or no I guess?).The more serious answer that I’d give is that this paradox is like the result of some linguistic problem like it being a matter of syntax or something to that effect since we are only human and can only percieve of God in human terms (like language) therefore this paradox is meaningless.I’m really curious though to know what the people of forum have to say about this though.Thank you very much so for your time.

 

[Rolltide]

The answer is… it is simply beyond human understanding at this point.

That’s not a cop-out, it’s the truth. We have similar examples of paradoxes that actually exist and are true, but have no logical explanation.

Case in point: The Universe.

Leaving out the existence of God for a moment, there are only two possibilities.

1. The universe has always existed. If this is true, how could something have had no creation? How could something NOT have an origin?

OR

1. There was a point at which the universe didn’t exist, and now it does. If this is true, how could something have been created from nothing?

Both ideas are logically IMPOSSIBLE, and yet one MUST be true. It’s the same situation.

 

[blessedrosary]

The answer is no.

And it’s not a paradox. The problem is- as you noted- a linguistic one, but that doesn’t mean it’s insurmountable.

Look at it in terms of ‘Being 1’ who can lift infinitely large/heavy stones and ‘Being 2’ who can build infinitely large/heavy stones. We say to Being 2, make a stone this large (where we specify some particular- possibly infinite- ‘weight’), and he makes it. By hypothesis he is always able to do this. To Being 1, we say lift this, where we hand him a stone. By hypothesis he is always able to do it.

Now the problem with the question is the ‘description’ of the thing we are asking Being 2 to do. We know * he is uninhibited by building infinitely large stones. But that is only what he is uninhibited to do. Whereas when we attach the description ‘larger than Being 1 can lift’ to the size of stone he is supposed to be able to cook up, when we say he cannot in fact make one so big that Being 1 cannot lift, we do not thereby mean to take away his power to make a rock as big as he’d like; that remains. What we are denying him is the power to do something that inhibits another uninhibited power- and that was not included in the description of his power to make a rock no matter how big.

Of course God is a being which has both powers of Being 1 and 2. The same reasoning applies. The power we ascribe to God to make a rock is a power whose description only applies to the size of the rock he can make (which we allow to be unlimited), not to any other special metaphysical features that could come a long with it, such as a forced limitation on some other power.

To say it another way, God’s lifting an infinitely big rock in no way impugns his building an infinitely big rock, whereas his building one “large enough” (where the quotes specify the conditions of the paradox- it is an abuse of language though) obviously impugns his ability to lift, and that contradicts our hypotheses, so we have to throw it out.

In philosophy it is extremely important to be clear about what exactly the assumptions are, and the consequences of the assumptions.*

 

[MarcusAndreas]

Nothing is impossible for God. A stone so heavy it cannot be lifted by God is a nothing, a logical impossibility. It’s impossible for God because God is not the author of nonsense.

 

[coolduude]

You could also say that God created logic, therefore He can break the laws too. But for a non-believer that argument wouldn’t go over so well

 

[blessedrosary]

It shouldn’t go well for a believer either. Look, God can’t just do anything (e.g. can God do non existence? or a more fluid way of putting it, can God not exist? or cease to exist? or however you want to say it). Omnipotence doesn’t, by virtue of being all about power, trump everything.

 

[coolduude]

It shouldn’t go well for a believer either. Look, God can’t just do anything (e.g. can God do non existence? or a more fluid way of putting it, can God not exist? or cease to exist? or however you want to say it). Omnipotence doesn’t, by virtue of being all about power, trump everything.

Good call good call.

 

[sidetrack]

@blessedrosary

Omnipotence doesn’t, by virtue of being all about power, trump everything.

Thanks for everyone’s responses and yours blessedrosary.If you dont mind could you please explain what I quoted.It sounds very interesting espeically how considering I’ve noticed that there are instances when a poor concept of God is presented due to people thinking of to much in terms of power.(I hope this does’nt throw the thread to far off topic).Thanks for your time everyone.

 

[StrawberryJam]

Just an FYI.

Most people won’t use this argument as a stand alone.

 

[blessedrosary]

Hi Sidetrack,

I am happy to explain, but first, a poor concept of God seems to be the only way to describe the concepts we have for him. In other words, what can the mind grasp of the reality of God?! Which leads some people to say, ‘Well, we can’t even tackle paradoxes’ I disagree with that, but I would agree with the spirit of it, which is that the importance of our faith does not consist in our ability to tackle the paradoxes. My belief is that God is the ultimate object of our love (like when Christ said ‘love God’, I say, the thing Christ told us to love is God) and that is something I can understand, because love and redemption are all human experiences. At the same time, I do not mean to deny the importance of doctrine, I just mean to say that our ability to get a philosophical grasp of doctrine is not the key to ‘getting doctrine’.

About power, I wanted to say that omnipotence means the following: There is a set of things that are possible to be done; e.g. creating rocks infinitely large, creating a universe, redeeming man by Incarnation and death, walking to the store, solving Fermat’s last theorem, eating a hamburger, knowing everything, etc. etc. I obviously do not know everything that is contained in that list, but some things clearly are not, like existing and not existing at the same time, or more making ‘a and not a’ true or any other plethora of things that directly contradict a logical law. Omnipotence is the ability to do anything that can be found in that list. (The list of things possible to be done). This obviously brings the problem to ‘possible to be done’. It raises the question, why is it limited to those things, and why are contradictions to the laws of logic not allowed?

To be honest, I don’t know the answer to that question, other than we get awkward consequences when we allow abuse of e.g. the law of non-contradiction.

For the record, not everybody agrees with this; Descartes believed that God could do away with the laws of logic. Which is why he was looking for “the” starting point for philosophy (because the law of non-contradiction just didn’t cut it for him). I am a bit skeptical, because even in his proof ‘that’ he exists, unless you assume the law of non-contradiction to immediately conclude that he doesn’t not-exist, Descartes failed to provide us with an account for why we shouldn’t believe that (namely that he doesn’t, along with his recently proven existence, not also not exist). Maybe it is intuition. Probably there are other philosophers who have a good answer to this.

I would just say there are some things you have to take as foundational, and most have accepted the laws of logic as a subset of those things. Why they apply even to God? Perhaps because of their manifest solidity and true-ness. I mean, we don’t empirically grasp God’s existence (we ‘believe’ it), but we know the laws of logic, so if we are going to accept God’s existence, it better match up with the things we first know. This may seem to put a damper on faith, but I don’t think that’s the case at all. We say, if we are going to believe something, it has to agree first with what we know. That just is a way to prevent us from falsely believing (and if you just look around at the number of false beliefs, such a caution is certainly reasonable). Though I suppose, coming up with the criteria for believing truly is another difficulty all on its own.

Obviously this is all very cursory, so for omitting details, I apologize. I hope it helps and sparks your curiosity for philosophy.

 

[Spock]

About power, I wanted to say that omnipotence means the following: There is a set of things that are possible to be done; e.g. creating rocks infinitely large, creating a universe, redeeming man by Incarnation and death, walking to the store, solving Fermat’s last theorem, eating a hamburger, knowing everything, etc. etc. I obviously do not know everything that is contained in that list, but some things clearly are not, like existing and not existing at the same time, or more making ‘a and not a’ true or any other plethora of things that directly contradict a logical law. Omnipotence is the ability to do anything that can be found in that list. (The list of things possible to be done). This obviously brings the problem to ‘possible to be done’. It raises the question, why is it limited to those things, and why are contradictions to the laws of logic not allowed?

To be honest, I don’t know the answer to that question, other than we get awkward consequences when we allow abuse of e.g. the law of non-contradiction.

Excellent composition! But a few remarks are in order.

Consider, that the Catholic “omnipotence” and the Protestant “omnipotence” are not the same. Protestants hold that God is able to lie or commit evils, but does not want to do them. Catholics say that God is unable to act contrary to his nature, and thus unable to commit evil - and yet they do not consider this limitation to “omni”-potence. Just another observation: it is usually held that God created the laws of nature, and thus he can violate them. Of course that is not true either. Can God create a minus one Kelvin cold? Heat is the Brownian motion of the molecules. At zero Kelvin the Brownian motion would stop. Therefore minus one Kelvin is a physical impossibility - yet impossible for God to achieve it.

From the Catholic version it follows that “omnipotence” is even more restricted than “able to do anything except logical contradictons”. Let’s face it, all the “omnimax” attributes are nonsense. Whoever came up with them, simply took the “valued” anthropomorphic attributes, like: knowledge, power, benevolence, etc… and maginified them until they became meaningless.

 

[Jonesboy]

A common variation of the omnipotence paradox goes like this."“Can God create a stone so heavy that even he cannot lift it?”.This seems to highlight a dilemma between omnipotence and the possiblity of exceeding omnipotence…

I answered this a few posts back.

The “idea of a weight that necessarily cannot be lifted” is not an idea. So there is no paradox.

 

[blessedrosary]

What do you mean by ‘it’s not an idea’? It is certainly an idea: namely the idea of a rock that no matter what cannot be lifted (even by God). Even if such an idea cannot have its realization in reality (for say hardcore metaphysical reasons), that does not say anything about its being a meaningful idea.

 

[danserr]

This is an outdated objection to the God of classical theism.
Omnipotence is not a matter of raw power. It is a matter of the ability to actualize potential states of affairs. The words “a stone so heavy a greatest conceivable being cannot lift it” do not describe a possible state of affairs. They are nonsense and, as CS Lewis says, nonsense remains nonsense even when we speak it of God.

 

[blessedrosary]

To say that it doesn’t describe a possible state of affairs only means that you are already assuming that which I said may not ‘in fact’ be realizable. But its not being able to be realized has to do with ‘fact’ not ‘conceivability’, in which case it is only inconceivable if we are able to epistemically penetrate the internal going-ons of God and possible rocks with the quality ‘unable to be lifted’. As it stands, we are not, and so the notion of rock with the quality ‘unable to be lifted’ still makes sense, even if God does exist and there is in reality no rock with the quality ‘unable to be lifted’.

 

[danserr]

To say that it doesn’t describe a possible state of affairs only means that you are already assuming that which I said may not ‘in fact’ be realizable. But its not being able to be realized has to do with ‘fact’ not ‘conceivability’, in which case it is only inconceivable if we are able to epistemically penetrate the internal going-ons of God and possible rocks with the quality ‘unable to be lifted’. As it stands, we are not, and so the notion of rock with the quality ‘unable to be lifted’ still makes sense, even if God does exist and there is in reality no rock with the quality ‘unable to be lifted’.

But we are not talking about a rock unable to be lifted. That is perfectly coherent. But it is irrelevant. We are talking about a rock so heavy that God cannot lift it. And this is inconceivable. If we imagine God and a rock so big God can’t lift it, then we are not really imagining God. Hence, the notion of a “rock so heavy God can’t lift it” is nonsense.

THis doesn’t require being about to penetrate the internal going on of God (whatever you mean by then), it only requires understanding that God is a greatest conceivable being. nothing more.

 

[blessedrosary]

This is a good point but if those are your stipulations then it is questionable how useful any discussion of the matter about rock lifting is (not that it wasn’t questionable before).

Your argument, as I understand it, is the following. God is a being with at least one special property: it can lift a rock no matter what. The rock that we are introducing has the property that it can’t be lifted. And when we ask whether God can lift it we are talking nonsense because we *made it to be * that God can lift anything, so either God can’t lift everything (which we don’t want to admit) or the stipulation that the rock can’t be lifted is meaningless, because there exists at least one situation in which it ‘can’ be lifted, namely when God is the lifter.

Tell me if this is an inaccurate picture of your argument.

My problem with it is that it solves the problem merely by definition, and thereby does not even address the original problem. The problem, as I see it, is a bit more subtle. It is not just that an unliftable rock is to be admitted into the picture; rather the way in which it is admitted into the picture is what is problematic (I mean, it’s already obvious that independent of who makes the rock, God can lift it). With the paradox, we are asking if God’s omnipotence in one respect is limited by it in another. And that seems to be a legitimate question that isn’t addressed by your solution.

 

[wynnejj]

God is Good and his every thought, word, and deed are so perfect that they are equal. God’s word is his truth. What God “cannot” do is what He “will not” do, that is reverse any thought, word and deed - which would be the reversal of what is Good. So the one thing He is incapable of doing is going back on His Word, even though He has the power.

 

[Spock]

With the paradox, we are asking if God’s omnipotence in one respect is limited by it in another. And that seems to be a legitimate question that isn’t addressed by your solution.

The best remark I have seen in a very long time. The fact is that “omnipotence” is nicely-sounding but totally incoherent, undefined category.

 

[danserr]

This is a good point but if those are your stipulations then it is questionable how useful any discussion of the matter about rock lifting is (not that it wasn’t questionable before).

Your argument, as I understand it, is the following. God is a being with at least one special property: it can lift a rock no matter what. The rock that we are introducing has the property that it can’t be lifted. And when we ask whether God can lift it we are talking nonsense because we *made it to be * that God can lift anything, so either God can’t lift everything (which we don’t want to admit) or the stipulation that the rock can’t be lifted is meaningless, because there exists at least one situation in which it ‘can’ be lifted, namely when God is the lifter.

Tell me if this is an inaccurate picture of your argument.

My problem with it is that it solves the problem merely by definition, and thereby does not even address the original problem. The problem, as I see it, is a bit more subtle. It is not just that an unliftable rock is to be admitted into the picture; rather the way in which it is admitted into the picture is what is problematic (I mean, it’s already obvious that independent of who makes the rock, God can lift it). With the paradox, we are asking if God’s omnipotence in one respect is limited by it in another. And that seems to be a legitimate question that isn’t addressed by your solution.

I’m not sure if it’s an accurate picture of my argument, since I think you may have phrased it a little more complicatedly than I would like. Let me try putting it this way.

We are asking if a coherent understanding of “omnipotence” is possible. Now you are concerned that I solve the problem only “by definition,” and this is completely true. But that is also the issue. Before this objection became outdated (few modern atheist philosophers take it seriously anymore), it was an attempt to raise a by problem “by definition,” that is, to say that no coherent understanding of omnipotence is even possible. What the theist wants to do then, is show that there is a coherent understanding of omnipotence possible after all.

Now the atheist who raises this question has typically made the mistake of defining God’s omnipotence in a way that causes him to be attacking something of a straw man. He sees God’s omnipotence as a matter of raw power, but theists have realized that this is an intellectually poor understanding of omnipotence.

Instead of seeing it in terms of raw power, God’s omnipotence should be seen in terms of actualizing potential or possible states of affairs. God’s omnupotence, then should be seen as his ability to actualize any logically possible state of affairs (there are a couple extra stipulations as well, but let’s go with this for now).
for instance, can God make a square circle? To the non-theist who insists on conceiving of God’s omnipotence in terms of raw power, this is a puzzle. But with our more sophisticated understanding of omnipotence being the ability to actualize states of affairs, we understand that the words “square circle” do not describe a logically possible state of affairs. They are nonsense. So God cannot make a square circle, but this is no limit to his omnipotence.

So the question is: do the words “a stone so heavy that God (or a “Greatest Conceivable Being”) cannot lift it” describe a potential state of affairs? The answer seems to be clearly no. Because if such a being could not lift such a stone, then he would not be a greatest conceivable being, because we could conceive of a greater being, one that could lift the stone, and that being would be God. Since the words “a stone so heavy God cannot lift it” do not describe an actual state of affairs, God cannot create such a thing, because there is no such thing. It is only nonsense and empty words.

So God’s omnipotence is not hindered by his inability to do the logically impossible, namely create a rock so big he cannot lift. His lifting power and his creative power and not at all contradictory then, as long as you see this, and that omnipotence is not a matter of raw power in one respect and raw power in another, but about ability to actualize possible states of affairs.