God can lift the Stone

5 Comments

1. flan2784
   Posted February 3, 2012 at 11:29 am | Permalink

   I feel as though the solution you’re proposing is a loophole rather than a true solution for several reasons. The initial problem you are talking about is that if a being is all-powerful, that being can make a stone so impossibly large that even the all-powerful being may not lifted. But if the all-powerful being may not lift the stone, than the being is not truly all-powerful. This problem applies to any being deemed to be “all-powerful,” not only to the God of Christian religions. Therefore, the trinity solution works as a solution only for the Christian God.
   Next, even if we look at this just in terms of the Christian God, this solution still doesn’t quite work. I accept the premise that God, a divinity, can make a big stone which Jesus, a human, cannot lift. But by being a human, Jesus is automatically not an all-powerful being and is therefore not addressing the initial problem of creating a stone too large for an all-powerful being to lift. Even if you accept the trinity argument, what you’d then be saying is God in God-form can make a stone that God in human-form cannot lift. The puzzle requires that God in God form make a stone so large that God in God-form cannot lift it.
   I think however that there are three possible scenarios for this puzzle.
   The first scenario is that God is able to do both of those things successfully at the same time, and we as humans are simply not able to comprehend how it would work.
   The second, and in my opinion most boring scenario, is that God must not in fact be an all-powerful being.
   The final scenario I’d like to propose is that if this puzzle were ever actually physically attempted then God, as an all-powerful being, would essentially be stuck in an infinite loop where he must continually make the rock heavier and then readjust his strength to match. This would still mean however that he is not able to fulfill the creation aspect of the puzzle and the lifting aspect of the puzzle simultaneously. Which perhaps would be cause for some to say that he is therefore not all-powerful. But to be all powerful do you need to be able to do everything all of the time? Or do you merely need to be able to do anything whenever you wish it? It then becomes a question of individual definition of all-powerful.
   Thoughts?

2. stra7483
   Posted February 3, 2012 at 8:31 pm | Permalink

   To the person who commented above me:

   I think you hit the nail on the head. I was going to propose that God would be stuck in an infinite loop as well, however as far as argumentation goes I don’t see the issue with the infinite loop. If he is still in the process of fulfilling the proposed task, then he hasn’t technically failed to perform said task. Yes, he hasn’t completed said task yet, but he hasn’t failed either.

   If God was actually going to create the heaviest possible stone, he’d have to do it in time and space, correct? If we’ve in this infinite loop than his heaviest stone is going to take up all of the observable Universe potentially destroying mankind, alienkind, whatever-else-is-out-there-kind, everything, until he reached the edges of the universe. This is sort of a crazy and ridiculous idea but I’m using it to throw a twist into the infinite loop idea.

3. lanf4604
   Posted February 4, 2012 at 4:30 pm | Permalink

   The idea of an infinite loophole is quite baffling. I am tempted to say that if there exists a God omniscient, omnibenevolent, and omnipotent, He would not want partake in a task of such un-bounding nature. My question is: is it necessary for an all-powerful being to prove that it is all powerful to someone or something that is not nor will it ever be? As stra7483 mentioned earlier, for humans to witness an event, such as lifting the heaviest stone, the OOO God being would have to defy the laws of physics as we understand them, but maybe not as He understands them. What would be the point of exerting all that effort for a group of people that might not have the capacity to understand it? To prove to mankind that He is indeed omnipotent? If the definition of Omni benevolence is someone or something that is all-good, why would something all-good want to try to prove that He is all-powerful. Something about the event of proving an OOO nature seems contradictory. A wise man is often humble for a proud man is often just a man unaware of his faults. Socrates himself was considered a wise man because he appeared to know a lot more than the rest of his contemporaries; however, he understood that he knew a lot less than he did know. Granted Socrates was not an OOO being, still he was closer to being all knowing than most.
   What confuses me about arguing the nature of an OOO being is the fact that we ourselves are neither omniscient, omnipotent, not omnibenevolent. Taking that into consideration, who are we to judge whether or not a being possesses all of those qualities? In my mind that seems like the average Joe going up to the long gone Einstein and saying that his theory of relativity can’t be true because it doesn’t make sense. The average Joe cannot understand a theory so complex because he is unversed in the terminology of the theory and the principles that make it function. Granted even this example is flawed because the definition of a theory is so muddy, I believe it holds some merit because it is still demonstrating an idea that is more concrete. To me it seems as though the truth, which is what we are all ultimately searching for is something that we, as human with limitations will not be able to find. Please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that the entire point of any religion, not just Christianity is faith. The event of believing in something is holding something to have the potential of being true even when there is reason to doubt it. I think a greater question is to what extent does and OOO being need to prove its OOO powers in order for one to believe.

4. camp3513
   Posted February 4, 2012 at 5:01 pm | Permalink

   There is also another solution to this paradox that has not been addressed.

   As previously stated, according to the traditional view, an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent being would be able to do anything, such as lift any stone. But if he could create anything, then he could create a stone so heavy that he himself couldn’t lift it. Many see this as a problem, but I do not.

   C.S. Lewis brought up this thought. The statement “a stone so heavy that God cannot lift it” is nonsensical; it holds as much sense as the existence of a “square circle.” If we were to change the argument to “Could got create a square circle?” we would surely say no. There is no logical way in any possible world to create a single object that simultaneously exemplifies the characteristics of a square and a circle.

   Also, as a side note, I am a little puzzled with the second claim proposed in the comment above. Does God necessarily need to work in time and space? God could exist outside of time and space or exist in another possible world. I don’t see any problem with having this thought, but I don’t see any proof for God needing to be in time and space.

5. flan2784
   Posted February 5, 2012 at 11:38 am | Permalink

   “Yes, he hasn’t completed said task yet, but he hasn’t failed either. ” -Schroedinger’s Cat

   “If God was actually going to create the heaviest possible stone, he’d have to do it in time and space, correct? If we’ve in this infinite loop than his heaviest stone is going to take up all of the observable Universe potentially destroying mankind, alienkind, whatever-else-is-out-there-kind, everything, until he reached the edges of the universe”

   This is an interesting idea! I don’t think he has to create the heaviest possible stone to fufill the parameters of the puzzle however, merely one that he himself cannot lift. So he could either keep making the stone denser to make it heavier (without increasing it’s size), or he could make himself weaker in order to be unable to lift it.

   I agree with what was said about faith in religion but I don’t think this puzzle is about God having to “prove” his OOO status to us, rather it is a logic puzzle that’s fun to think about; a hypothetical musing rather than a demand that God prove he is all powerful by performing two actions that seem mutually exclusive to us.

   As far as the square circle goes, I’m of the mind that it is not a nonsensical statement when you consider two things:
   1) Just becasue I personally cannot picture a figure that is simultaneously a circle and a square does not mean that such a figure is impossible (I really can’t accurately picture infinity either. I can imagine a constantly expanding univers but to picture a universe that right now at this moment is infinite is beyond me. Becasue I only have experience with finite objects. How can I picture something I don’t know? Similarly, how can I picture such an improbable shape?)
   2) Our notions of what makes a “circle” and a “square” are based on human knowledge and human observation, and very often we humans get things wrong.

   I absolutely agree with the point that’s been made about God’s relationship to space and time; he surely doesn’t have to work within the constraints of either, which just makes either puzzle that much more probable.