Talk:Omnipotence paradox

Can God Create a Stone that He Cannot Lift?

This question is more than 800 years old. In asking this question, the questioner had already assumed the existence of gravity because of the word “lift” in the question. What is “lift”? My definition for “lift” is: Moving an object to the opposite direction of gravity. By definition, God created everything. Hence, God created gravity. Since God can create gravity, he can certainly make it disappear. So God can “lift” any stone. Put another way, this question could become: if God were to have an arm wrestling match between his left arm （gravity）and right arm (to “lift” the stone), which one would win? Both arms belong to God. This is not a contest; there is no winning or losing. Therefore this is a stupid question.

(Response: you can easily see that the above is false by substituting "yourself" for "God". I am right handed, so my right arm would win against my left arm. The fact that both hands belong to me does not mean there is no contest. Obviously therefore, this is not a proof that the question is stupid).

If God is omnipotent, God must be everything, everything must be God.

(Response: you are conflating "omnipotence" with "omnipresence". There are two words because there are two concepts. If you're going to claim that one implies the other, you need an argument to show that, not merely the bald statement without evidence or reasoning which you supplied.)

Since "Outside everything" is an oxymoron, therefore “Outside God” is an oxymoron: if there is God, then there will be no “outside”; if there is an “outside”, then there will be no God. There is no gravity “outside” God. God doesn’t live in a gravitational field. For an omnipotent God, there is no such concept as “lift”. “Lift” only exists in human experience. Gravity, like everything else, exists inside God. For an omnipotent God, there is no such concept as “stand” either, because there is no ground “outside” God. By the same token，for an omnipotent God, there are no such concepts as “breathe”，“eat”，“drink”，“excrete”, “wear clothes”, “walk”，“sit”, “lie down”. God doesn't have a body. All bodies have skin, skin is the boundary of the body. God doesn't have boundary. Therefore, God doesn't have a face，nor shape. An ant looks at you while you are talking, it could see your lips and tongue moving. The ant asks you: “How do you lift your lips and tongue?” You reply: “It’s a stupid question.” A man sees that the Moon is moving, he asks God: “How do you lift the Moon?” God says: “It’s a stupid question.” —Teng Wang, Social Phenomena

Technically Wikipedia isn't a forum. However, I think that what you wrote is a great reason for the changes I'm about to make for the article. The essence of the omnipotence paradox has nothing to do with gravity, and any explanation of the paradox that invokes properties specific to gravity - such as how it does not exist when there is no mass - is missing the point. Admittedly the changes I'm about to make are unsourced, but this is I think for the good of the article. Banedon (talk) 02:33, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Article needs cleaning up

At the moment it reads like a mishmash of individual sentences inserted by different editors. For example, I would have expected a discussion of the physics aspects of the question "can God create a rock so heavy he can't lift it" in the Overview, with associated statements that avoid physics entirely, e.g. "can God create a prison so secure he can't escape from it", and then the article to focus on the thrust of the question, not secondary aspects like the physics (since I'm sure everyone would agree that answering the too-heavy phrasing with "but heavy is meaningless since far from any gravitating body weight has no meaning" is avoiding the question).

I don't have time to edit the article myself, but I'm going to tag it. Banedon (talk) 02:59, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

@Banedon: - Yeah. It does badly need clean up. The problem I think is that a number of random individuals have been perplexed by the paradox, and thought it worthwhile to drop-by wikipedia to contribute their two cents on the topic.

I think there could be a pretty good argument to just going back and reverting to some old version of this article, before it got messed up. NickCT (talk) 03:42, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Human heart

One answer to the paradox of the stone that I think should be included in this article somehow is: "Yes, and God has done so: he created the human heart." While this answer is a wisecrack of sorts, it does contain an interesting reflection on the human condition, and is reasonably often quoted. I'm not quite sure how to include it in the article, though, especially because I cannot find any decent sources. It tends to be attributed to "a wise Jew" or "a nun". – gpvos (talk) 09:44, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Gibberish

What on earth does this mean: "question is inherently required by the concept". Does this mean that if someone has some concept, then it is somehow impossible for someone not to ask some question? Why would that be so? Why would it even matter if that were the case? Can't I easily refute this by introducing a hypothetical madman who can have the concept but cannot ask the question? Maybe this was intended to say something else? But I can't imagine what. Bits of this article read like total gibberish. I'm sorely tempted to add the 'clarification needed' tag to all of them. Actually, maybe I will; someone can easily revert those changes if they don't like them.

And this too: "concept of omnipotence that requires it is a paradox". Now we're saying that some concept is a paradox. But a paradox is a valid (or seemingly valid) argument leading to a contradiction. Arguments can be paradoxes, but concepts cannot be paradoxes. I think whoever wrote this had a coherent idea in mind but used the wrong words. But I can't figure out the concept so I can fix it.

Ok this just seems to be a distraction onto an irrelevant tangent:

"the central omnipotence paradox issue is whether the concept of 'logically possible' is different for a world in which omnipotence exists than in a world in which omnipotence does not exist"

No it isn't! The central issue is: given a world containing an omnipotent creature (eg God), can we recover an acceptable logic (eg, a clear answer to the question whether God can or cannot perform a certain action). The paradox has nothing to do with some many-worlds theory, comparing different worlds with and without omnipotency.

I'm about to delete the gibberish and this distraction into some sort of many-worlds theory. They really detract from the parts later in the article, which are quite good. It looks like all of this crap was added by the same writer.

Removal of original research from resolutions

In this edit, I have removed the text from Proposed resolutions that violated WP:NPOV, WP:V and WP:OR. Sadly, much of the arguments describing the Christian POV on the omnipotence paradox contained within this section were entirely original syntheses, which were misattributed (without sources) to authors who presented quite different arguments to those given. At some point this needs to be looked into, and useful content written with proper sources and attribution, since the Christian religious POV on the omnipotence paradox does have its place — but presented in a WP:NPOV way. I did however keep what I could from the section that was verifiable and reasonably written and added a few {{cn}} tags where appropriate. --Tristessa (talk) 23:29, 24 March 2016 (UTC)