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One of the leading criticisms of the Christian conceptualization of God is that he is omnipotent. Without omnipotence, Christians would have to admit to a much less powerful God than what they suppose exists. There have been various arguments for the impossibility of omnipotence.

Most of them boil down to this: Can God create a rock that is too heavy for God to lift?

That seems on its face to completely disprove omnipotence. The answer to the question has to be yes or no. If it’s yes, then God would not be able to lift the rock and would therefore not be omnipotent. If it is no, he would not be able to create the rock and would therefore not be omnipotent. Airtight argument right? However, I’m actually going to disprove that argument.

The first thing I need to do is address the point of logical impossibility. For example, can God create a round square? The answer to this question clearly seems to have to be no. This, however, unlike the above argument, is not very compelling evidence at all against God’s omnipotence. Despite the fact that the two look very similar on the face, they are, in fact, very different.

Our first argument (about the rock) talks about something that is a contingent truth. God’s ability to lift a rock is contingent (unless you accept St. Anselm’s argument which brings with it baggage you probably don’t want). A square not being round is a necessary truth. It is defined in the definition of the square that it is not round (in Euclidean geometry).

Therefore, when you ask the first question, you are referring to a possibility which really exists, the possibility that someone or something (God) could lift someone or something else (a rock). When you ask the second question, you are just speaking gibberish. The term “round square” doesn’t actually refer to anything. It is akin to asking “Can God create a guettedoojazzle?” The answer to that question, therefore, is not “no,” but rather “what the hell are you talking about?”

God cannot create logically impossible things because logically impossible things are not really things at all but merely silly combinations of words.

The question I really came here to talk about though was that as to whether God can create a rock that he can’t lift. I contend that he could create such a rock, and that his ability to do so does not disprove his omnipotence.

Omnipotence is the ability to do anything. However, it is not by definition a permanent ability. Someone could conceivably have omnipotence at one point and then cease to have it. That means that God, if omnipotent right now, could create the rock that he can’t lift. After creating it, however, he would cease to be omnipotent as there would be one thing that he could not do.

Now, I know what some of you Christians are thinking. You’re thinking that you don’t believe in a God that could, at some point, cease to be omnipotent. You believe in a God that is, and always will be, omnipotent. Well, this is not that difficult of a problem to solve, actually.

If God does not want to stop being omnipotent, he will never stop being omnipotent. That’s because his omnipotence, will allow him the ability to stop anything from happening that would take away his omnipotence. If this were true, there could be only one being in the world that was omnipotent. Multiple omnipotent beings would screw it up because what if one of them wanted to take away the omnipotence of the other and the other didn’t want that… But the good news is that, if you’re Christian, you probably already believe that God is the only omnipotent being, so we don’t have a problem.

In order to accept this explanation, you would also have to believe that God is fundamentally the type of guy who wants to be omnipotent forever. This doesn’t seem that incompatible with Christian beliefs, either, so it shouldn’t cause too much problem. It might make him seem a little bit like a megalomaniac, but he kind of is anyway what with creating an entire world full of people who’s sole purpose is to worship him.  He would also have to be omniscient as well so that he doesn’t accidentally take away his omnipotence, but Christians also already believe this so, once again, not a problem.

So, there you have it, folks. It is entirely possible for God to be omnipotent (if there were a God).

Tags: God, logic, omnipotence

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 10:04 am and is filed under Philosophy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.