How do you answer the omnipotence paradox?

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Spock said:
I am nor going to repeat the arguments I already stated.
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I tried bringing up objections to your arguments that you didn’t address yet. Perhaps I failed.
Spock said:
The point is that “omnipotence” and the other atrributes must be defined without referring to each other, and without referring to God
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Once again, omnipotence can be defined as the ability to do anything (“thing” as defined as the Scholastics traditionally defined it, that is, as any being with intrinsic possibility … i.e. a being whose existence does not break the principle of non-contradiction).

That definition does not refer to God.
Spock said:
These are purely secular, philosophical concepts.
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The concept of God is often discussed in a purely philosophical context without reference to any particular religion. I would argue that the existence of God and the fact that God is omnipotent can be proved from natural reason (wow … yeah, controversial, eh?).
Spock said:
These are purely secular, philosophical concepts. What you suggested “that which has the most being” is completely meaningless.
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Is it meaningless because … well, why? What part of it is meaningless? Is it a particular word in it that you accuse of being meaningless?

I’m sorry if you might have addressed this already. I tried reading everything you wrote so far but maybe I missed something.
 
Spock said:
Sorry, I lost interest. I gave you a constructive method to arrive at two worlds which have nothing in common, thereby proving that there is no necessary existence. I pointed out that you use circular arguments to define God into existence. Enough of wasting my time. Bye.
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And I showed you several times why your argument was flawed and have repeatedly addressed your misguided claim that I am trying to “define” God into existence. Anytime you care to consider my arguments, I will be delighted to write further.
 
Interesting conversation! I’m a lurked mostly, but this conversation perked my ears. It seems to me a couple of items should be brought up, firstly God can make a stone! Who cares how big the fact he can male one is often overlooked in the paradox. In the natural sense he can’t make a stone he can’t move. But in a spiritual sense he has made stones that he cannot move and that is us! He has given us free will and he has no intention of violating that gift, nor has he ever. It is the same answer I like to give to another God omnipotence argument about evil in the world. The answer is simple it’s us! That is why there is sin in the world, because God gave us free will, and he won’t over ride that because of his love for us, and so that he can be truly loved, and obeyed.
 
[The serious part]

God creates a stone with infinite mass. Can God move it?
(“lift” doesn’t make sense because God is everywhere, so no reference point for “lift”)
Let’s consider 2 scenarios:
  1. Yes - no paradox here: “A stone so heavy that even God cannot move” is itself a concept that is impossible since God can move everything (in this case)
  2. No - also no paradox here. If “something with infinite mass” cannot be moved, then even an omnipotent agent cannot move it.
[The less-serious part]
I have some another variant that solves the so-called “paradox”:
God creates a stone so big that there is no space in the universe to move it, so although He is capable of moving it, it cannot move.

[Back being serious]
The so-called paradox is itself based on a presupposition: “A stone so heavy that [X cannot lift]”
Since [X cannot lift] presupposes that there is something that X cannot do, it cannot apply to the omnipotent agent.

My strategy is to create a concept “liftability” and turn that stone to be “unliftable”, then ask the challenger whether an unliftable stone should be liftable by an omnipotent agent.
 
Sorry, I didn’t read the whole thread. Posts started getting too long. :o

I saw this answer from someone on Yahoo Answers.

The problem is with your definition of “omnipotent.” It means “all powerful” - that is, “having power over all things.” It does NOT mean “can do anything.”
God cannot create a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it because if he did so the rock would have power (in one area) greater than God; that is, God would not have power over that rock and so could not be said to be omnipotent.
God is omnipotent; NOT omni-able. He has power over all things; he cannot make a thing that has power over himself.
 
How do you answer the omnipotence paradox?

You do not answer it since you do not answer self-referential paradoxes of which you can construct an arbitrary number. Standard examples:

There is a famous hairdresser in the Cretan mountain village of Agios Giorgios who shaves all the men in the village who do not shave themselves. Does the barber shave himself?”​

The Cretan says: “All Cretans are liers.”​

Socrates: “What Plato is about to say is false”
Plato: “Socrates has just spoken truly.”​

“This sentence is a lie”​

Let A be the set of all sets that are not members of themselves (Russell paradox)​

“Bertrand Russell demonstrated that the existence of such paradoxes strikes at the very heart of logic, and undermines any straightforward attempts to construct mathematics rigorously on a logical foundation” (Paul Davies, The Mind of God, Penguin Books 1992, p.101)

If this is no reason to dismiss mathematics as such, why should self-referential paradoxes be of concern to theologians?
 
sidetrack said:
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
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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.

I propose a simple answer to this: “He can if he wills it.” As we can see, divine will and omnipotence have a few links.
 
Maybe this was already mentioned, but the question “Can God make a stone that is so heavy he can not lift it?” is actually a nonsense question.

Here are more nonsense questions as examples:

Can God make a diamond that is a humming bird?

Can God make something so rough that it is smooth?

Can God make a car that is a lake?

Can God make an elephant made of a single atom?

There are more…

But I submit that these questions are in the same class as the question about the stone.

Trying to answer them does not get you closer to understanding the nature of God.
 
God created the Lake of Fire into which to throw those who don’t accept Him so they will have indescribable pain inflicted on them for all eternity. We all know that it is wrong to inflict pain on others, so presumably God is powerless to destroy the Lake of Fire and substitute a more humane punishment … such as simply being banished from Heaven. This means that God can create something he has no control over. The alternative belief is that God WANTS people to suffer … but that isn’t the act of a loving God.
 
sidetrack said:
A common variation of the omnipotence paradox goes like this."“Can God create a stone so heavy that even he cannot lift it?”.
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TheFreeDictionary defines the word “stone” as a “concreted earthy or mineral matter; rock.” And because a stone is not defined as a thing that is infinitely big, it is not possible logically to turn an object of finite size into object of infinite size, which is a size reserved for God alone.

Since an omnipotent being by definition has infinite power, the omnipotent power by definition cannot fail in doing what it undertakes doing. But the atheistic argument “Can God create a stone so heavy that even He cannot lift it?” implies that God can do anything, even fail. But this is like saying that God is both omnipotent and not omnipotent. And this is obviously a contradiction.

As Thomas Aquinas writes, “Whatever implies contradiction does not come within the scope of divine omnipotence, because it cannot have the aspect of possibility. Hence it is more appropriate to say that such things cannot be done, than that God cannot do them.”
 
the problem here is the same problem we have with math sets.

For instance. There are infinite rational numbers. There are infinity more irrational numbers than there are rational ones. There are more irrational numbers than rational.

These are call infinite sets. Even though both sets are limitless, the have qualities in relation to each other that cannot be ignored.

The arguments answer is that God can create infinite stones that are so big that he cannot lift, and then he lifts them infinite times.

This is not a linguistic issue, it is an issue of trying to rationalize something that exceeds the fundamentals of space and time. Something more than infinite.
 
BLYTHART said:
God created the Lake of Fire into which to throw those who don’t accept Him so they will have indescribable pain inflicted on them for all eternity.
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That sentence is loaded with assumptions.

But it brings to mind one more of those questions:

Can God lie.

According to scriptures, if he does, he must go to the lake of fire. According to logic, He can not lie – he is the truth.

Stephen
 
As apart of God’s omnipotence, and related to His being completely creative and without precedent, God can humble Himself and make something that He will not violate. Technically, He can do anything, but with His benevolence, He often chooses not to, as with our free will.
 
BLYTHART said:
God created the Lake of Fire into which to throw those who don’t accept Him so they will have indescribable pain inflicted on them for all eternity. We all know that it is wrong to inflict pain on others, so presumably God is powerless to destroy the Lake of Fire and substitute a more humane punishment … such as simply being banished from Heaven. This means that God can create something he has no control over. The alternative belief is that God WANTS people to suffer … but that isn’t the act of a loving God.
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Christians are not obligated to take scriptural imagery about hell literally any more than we take Jesus literally when he told his disciples that “you are the salt of the earth.”
 
bentcurve said:
the problem here is the same problem we have with math sets.

For instance. There are infinite rational numbers. There are infinity more irrational numbers than there are rational ones. There are more irrational numbers than rational.

These are call infinite sets. Even though both sets are limitless, the have qualities in relation to each other that cannot be ignored.

The arguments answer is that God can create infinite stones that are so big that he cannot lift, and then he lifts them infinite times.

This is not a linguistic issue, it is an issue of trying to rationalize something that exceeds the fundamentals of space and time. Something more than infinite.
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There’s no need to make the answer so complicated. It had already been suggested on this thread that God’s omnipotence should not be understood as a matter of infinite raw power, but in terms of his ability to actualize possible states of affairs. The words “a stone so heavy God cannot lift it” do not describe a possible state of affairs. So God cannot do such a thing, not because he is not omnipotent, but because such a thing is nonsense, mere empty words.
 
One argument is that it shows that it’s logically impossible for anything to be omnipotent. But logical problems don’t bother God. God isn’t subject to the laws of logic. He can even do the logically impossible.

However, there are things God can’t do. He can’t, for example, make a circle into a square. This is because if it is a square it is no longer a circle - the proposition has no meaning.

Another example is that God can’t make a genuine ten dollar bill. He could presumably make an atom-for-atom duplicate of a genuine ten dollar bill that would fool everyone - but it would be a counterfeit bill. Only bills produced by the government mint are genuine. God could, of course, make the mint produce a genuine bill, but he couldn’t make one directly.

He couldn’t make an oak tree either. Sure he could put the chemicals together that looked and behaved exactly like an oak tree - but real oak trees grow from acorns. They are, by definition, what come from other oak trees. So God, with infinite biochemical abilities couldn’t make an oak tree either.

God is omnipotent in that he created the universe out of nothing. But he set that universe up to behave in a certain way. If we start talking about heavy stones we are not reflecting the reality of our universe which God made.
 
It seems to me the reason for asking this paradox is to ask if there is something G-d can’t do. The answer to that is yes.
G-d cannot sin.
 
God by His very nature is logical. The universe which is His creation reflects a strictly logical structure which means that it is somehow in His image. This is the reason why Mathematicians, Scientists and Philosophers can do meaningful and fruitful work. If they stray from good logic they will surely head the wrong way.
Someone in this thread commented that God cannot go against His nature. I agree with that. We may call this his “limitation”.
When Jesus said that He is the Truth, He is saying that He is God.
 
God is to smart to create a rock so big that He can’t move it. He’s not stupid! 😉
 
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