Can God create a stone he cannot lift?

Question

This is an old question. Either God cannot create the stone or he cannot lift it. Either way he is not omnipotent.

Answer 1

That question is for alter boys to irritate priests.

Somebody once told me that God can do anything truthful; only in the mathematical logic sense of the word truth.

Rock is a name of a loosly defined object. Is a meteor a rock or a moon? Is a comet a rock or a planet or a star? Is the moon a rock or a planet, or a moon? Is the earth a rock or a planet... (and then their was some trailing off)

Is lifting the act of moving a small object away from a larger object? Or is lifting defined by moving a relatively small object radially away from the center of mass of a spherical object large enough to have significant gravitational pull...

So if God starts to make a really big rock that stretches the limits of what we call a rock, it becomes a planet or a moon. And lifting begins to loose it's meaning when we say that God must now seperate two planets which we choose to call rock and planet.

The truth doesn't hold. Can you make a square a circle? Not make a square into a circle with physical forcing, but make it so people synonomously call squares circles and vise versa under all circumstances. No, I should think not.

Here is a much funner question for you to post. Is God perfect and all knowing, or can God make mistakes. If God is perfect and all knowing, then all things are forseen. If all things are forseen then every possible set of events for time from forever till forever are known for every possible way that God could have started the universe. Thus if God is perfect and all knowing then their is destiny! Which also means any mistake made by any living thing in the universe at any time in existence is God's fault because it was forseen, and any success of any living thing was of no credit to that entity because they are just the actor in God's play. SO!!! The true question for your favorite holy man is,
"is their destiny, or is God imperfect."

Don't go with destiny if you are ever asked ... If I was in the right mood and somebody picked destiny over an imperfect God, I would immediately and mercilesley punch them in the face. If they asked why I did it I would reply, "I dunno, must have been destiny."

Answer 2

Well if the god is omnipotent should not he be able to create logical contradictions as well?
So the God makes a stone that he cannot lift AND he can lift at the same time. And he makes that logical contradiction possible.
This is really weak argument against God's omnipotence.

Answer 3

God does things with purpose and meaning; therefore He would not create a stone too heavy to lift. God cannot do anything that would make Him imperfect. That is why He is God.

Ask yourself this: Can God lift a stone that is un-created?

Answer 4

Didn't Satan try to tempt Jesus? and didn't the Romans mock Him by saying "If you're the Son of God, you can get yourself off that cross"? (paraphrased of course) I think the "if you're Jesus, can you create a rock so large you can't lift it" is also along those same basic premises. I think the answer here is that "God/Jesus" doesn't HAVE to prove anything to ANYONE. IF you believe in Christianity and God, then you believe in "God" as being the SUPREME being. If you're the "top dog" then WHY do you have to answer to ANYONE? Because EVERYONE is going to be a part of YOU, and also, BENEATH you. That would be like if you were a boss, proving your worth to your employees. It's not necessary. You have the title, you earned the title, and therefore, that's just how it is.
However, people have, and will continue, to question authority. We like to be in control of ourselves and in control of the world around us that impacts our lives.
Who cares if Jesus/God can create a stone? I'm sure he could if he wanted to, but probably doesn't see the need. Just like he didn't see the need to work a miracle to get off the cross. Getting off the cross wasn't in his "divine plan" because it would have changed existence as we know it, and the concept of forgiveness of sin would have never been established. Maybe creating that stone wasn't in "His" plan either. I don't think "God" was about "hey, look what I can do!" but rather lived a humble life.

Answer 5

don't forget an omnipotent god can change the rules of physics and even make it lift itself. A better question might be can God create constraints that he cannot turn off.

Answer 6

I've seen this question many times. The first question to come up is, why would God, if he exists, need to waste his time on a rock he can't move? Do you see humans for the most part applying for jobs they won't make any money in ($0)? If the brain of the universe is spending his energy creating rocks he can't move instead of dealing with more pertinent activities like poverty, then maybe it's better he doesn't exist.

Answer 7

I have many answers for this question:
1. Yes, He can't.
2. No, He can.
3. Probably, but why?
4. He will remember what George Bernard Shaw said once ("A miracle is an impossible thing which, in spite of this, is possible.") and He will make a stone that He Himself cannot lift and, after that, He will lift it.
Enough for today.

Answer 8

well when i thought of this i didn't think of it as an immense rock i thought of it as a normal rock that god makes and then places it upon himself not to lift it as the stipulation states. but he can always get or make something else to lift it for him since the stipulation never stated that or he could some who get the rock air bone and just catch it, cutting out the lifting part altogether. so i wouldn't go so far as to state that he's not omnipotent because there are obvious ways to get around the problem that this mere mortal can see.

Answer 9

But then again if God can do anything perhaps he can both make a stone he cannot lift and lift it. Paradoxes are always baffling but ultimately reveal more about the limits of our thinking than anything else.

Answer 10

Technically if "God" existed, he could create a stone -- not even heavy, and make himself weak to show you that he could not lift it, then return himself to normal and make the stone disappear and then make you forget the thing. Anything is possible for him, if he existed...