Why is creating out of nothing a reality but creating a rock too heavy for God to lift an absurdity?

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Just listening to the ca live podcast and a caller asked about if God could create a rock so heavy God couldn’t lift it (as a limitation on his attributes) and the host explained how that’s a non reality, impossibility and absurdity. But it would seem to me that the notion of one being able to create out of nothing would also be an impossibility and absurdity…no different than 2 + 3 never = 12. Yet here we stand as proof of its reality.
 
Well, one is logically impossible. God cannot make a rock to difficult for himself to lift because he is all powerful, there is no such thing as something to difficult for God to lift.

Creating something out of nothing is impossible due to the laws of physics. God is not bound by those; we are.

Aquinas discusses that there must have been an initial cause for the universe, as nothing within our physical reality can happen without something initiating a chain of events to cause that something. So, something outside of our universe, more powerful than anything in the universe and hence not bound by the laws of the universe, must have done it.
 
The rock example violates the law of non-contradiction. There’s actually some dispute on that, but one class of Catholic philosophers, following Thomas Aquinas, hold that God creating that type of contradiction is just an absurdity and not possible simply because such a thing could not exist. Same thing with whether God could create something that was truly a square circle. It just can’t be. If it’s a square, it’s not a circle, and vice versa.
 
God is infinite.

Infinity. Eternal.

Nothing can surpass God.
 
All of the answers above are right on.

I would add that something coming from nothing can’t be an absurdity–it actually happened. And Science attests to that fact. The universe began to exist about 14 billion years ago.

So we always had Something. And it’s that Something which created the universe.

That Something is simply that which exists outside of space, time, matter and energy.

However, “Can God make a rock so big you can’t lift it” is just nonsense.

And, as CS Lewis said, said, paraphrasing, “Putting ‘Can God’ in front on nonsense doesn’t cease to make it nonsense”.
 
ShrodingersCat said:
Well, one is logically impossible. God cannot make a rock to difficult for himself to lift because he is all powerful, there is no such thing as something to difficult for God to lift.

Creating something out of nothing is impossible due to the laws of physics. God is not bound by those; we are.

Aquinas discusses that there must have been an initial cause for the universe, as nothing within our physical reality can happen without something initiating a chain of events to cause that something. So, something outside of our universe, more powerful than anything in the universe and hence not bound by the laws of the universe, must have done it.
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I knew that was a great question from the OP and I wanted to read a great answer. This one is great in my book… 🙂
 
St Thomas Aquinas tackled the issue of creation.

As for the classic conundrum of God creating a rock heavier than He can lift, this should suffice.

God has infinite power so a rock heavier than He could lift would have to have an infinite weight. However, rocks are finite objects and therefore limited. So asking, “Can God create a rock heaver than he can lift?” is akin to asking, “Can God create a rock that is simultaneously not a rock?” Basically it is asking if God can create a meaningless contradiction.
 
starshiptrooper said:
St Thomas Aquinas tackled the issue of creation.

As for the classic conundrum of God creating a rock heavier than He can lift, this should suffice.

God has infinite power so a rock heavier than He could lift would have to have an infinite weight. However, rocks are finite objects and therefore limited. So asking, “Can God create a rock heaver than he can lift?” is akin to asking, “Can God create a rock that is simultaneously not a rock?” Basically it is asking if God can create a meaningless contradiction.
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👍 I love this type of conversation though I’m not a logical person!
 
I know I’ll be in the minority here. But the usual answer people give to this seems very hand-wavy. The answer usually comes down to “because that’s the way we say things are.”
 
I’m frequently amazed (and a little disturbed) that Aquinas, a man who died in 1274 and could have had no knowledge of science in the modern sense, is still regarded as an authority on the origins of the universe.
 
Rhubarb said:
I know I’ll be in the minority here. But the usual answer people give to this seems very hand-wavy. The answer usually comes down to “because that’s the way we say things are.”
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As the rock gets more massive, it becomes a planet, then a star, then a black hole. Doesn’t make sense to talk about lifting a black hole, it generates gravity. The big bang is possibly a creation event, but the guy who devised the theory, a Catholic priest, determined that there may instead have been something before, and the extreme singularity wiped out all evidence.

Sorry if treating them as a posteriori questions tramples on the philosophical thingamajob 😊.
 
sonofbarry said:
I’m frequently amazed (and a little disturbed) that Aquinas, a man who died in 1274 and could have had no knowledge of science in the modern sense, is still regarded as an authority on the origins of the universe.
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Only by Christians who still, 750 years later, have no better arguments!
 
sonofbarry said:
I’m frequently amazed (and a little disturbed) that Aquinas, a man who died in 1274 and could have had no knowledge of science in the modern sense, is still regarded as an authority on the origins of the universe.
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He spoke of origins in terms of philosophy and theology, not science.

A counter-example for you: Thomas Bradwardine lived in the 1300s, and so – by your standards – “could have had no knowledge of science in the modern sense.” Yet, he developed the ‘mean speed theorem’ – which, as it turns out, describes gravitational motion. You’d agree (I hope), that it’s still pretty reasonable (and not at all amazing or disturbing) to regard this as authoritative… wouldn’t you? 😉
 
sonofbarry said:
I’m frequently amazed (and a little disturbed) that Aquinas, a man who died in 1274 and could have had no knowledge of science in the modern sense, is still regarded as an authority on the origins of the universe.
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The arguments are not based on any specific scientific theory or cosmology, but on the principles by which all science is possible.
 
sonofbarry said:
I’m frequently amazed (and a little disturbed) that Aquinas, a man who died in 1274 and could have had no knowledge of science in the modern sense, is still regarded as an authority on the origins of the universe.
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I don’t think anyone has quoted Aquinas as being a scientific “authority on the origins of the universe”.
 
sonofbarry said:
I’m frequently amazed (and a little disturbed) that Aquinas, a man who died in 1274 and could have had no knowledge of science in the modern sense, is still regarded as an authority on the origins of the universe.
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You might be even more amazed to learn that Aquinas was working from the book of Genesis.

Book of Genesis, 1000 B.C. : “Let there be light.”

Carl Sagan in Cosmos, 1980 A.D.

“Ten or twenty billion years ago, something happened – the Big Bang, the event that began our universe…. In that titanic cosmic explosion, the universe began an expansion which has never ceased…. As space stretched, the matter and energy in the universe expanded with it and rapidly cooled. The radiation of the cosmic fireball, which, then as now, filled the universe, moved through the spectrum – from gamma rays to X-rays to ultraviolet light; through the rainbow colors of the visible spectrum; into the infrared and radio regions. The remnants of that fireball, the cosmic background radiation, emanating from all parts of the sky can be detected by radio telescopes today. In the early universe, space was brilliantly illuminated.”
 
ProdigiousN00b said:
Just listening to the ca live podcast and a caller asked about if God could create a rock so heavy God couldn’t lift it (as a limitation on his attributes) and the host explained how that’s a non reality, impossibility and absurdity. But it would seem to me that the notion of one being able to create out of nothing would also be an impossibility and absurdity…no different than 2 + 3 never = 12. Yet here we stand as proof of its reality.
Click to expand...
To bring something that didn’t exist, and couldn’t exist on it’s own is a reality. To create a rock, give it existence, make it too heavy to lift is impossible because the effect of a creative act can never be greater than it’s cause or beyond it’s creative power. It is an inherent contradiction.
 
inocente said:
As the rock gets more massive, it becomes a planet, then a star, then a black hole. Doesn’t make sense to talk about lifting a black hole, it generates gravity. The big bang is possibly a creation event, but the guy who devised the theory, a Catholic priest, determined that there may instead have been something before, and the extreme singularity wiped out all evidence.

Sorry if treating them as a posteriori questions tramples on the philosophical thingamajob 😊.
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No, no. I get the First Cause argument. It has more teeth than the answer to why creating a rock so heavy God can’t lift it.
 
ProdigiousN00b said:
Just listening to the ca live podcast and a caller asked about if God could create a rock so heavy God couldn’t lift it (as a limitation on his attributes) and the host explained how that’s a non reality, impossibility and absurdity. But it would seem to me that the notion of one being able to create out of nothing would also be an impossibility and absurdity…no different than 2 + 3 never = 12. Yet here we stand as proof of its reality.
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I have actually come to agree–that in creating out of nothing, God did in fact “create a rock too heavy for him to lift.” That is to say, God created something that, by definition, he could not completely control. I don’t think this compromises omnipotence, since God’s ability to create something out of nothing is the most fundamental kind of omnipotence imaginable.

Edwin
 
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