Today’s featured article on Wikipedia is the Omnipotence Paradox. In short, it’s this: can an omnipotent being (say, the Christian god) create a rock so heavy that he himself can’t lift it?
The argument goes like this: if he can, then he isn’t really omnipotent. If he can’t, then he isn’t really omnipotent.
Of course, it isn’t so simple, and that’s why this has been discussed for centuries - and I’m guessing that some people through history have been burned for heresy for asking this question.
Read the article, it’s very detailed and includes many different “answers” to the paradox.
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What about “Q” on ST…?
I assume you mean Star Trek, right?
Q is a different case - not only is he often used for comedy (due, in part, to John DeLancie’s charisma), but he isn’t really “omnipotent”, just very powerful. Omnipotence, by definition, has no limits, no degrees, you can’t be “more omnipotent” or “less omnipotent”.
Which, again, leads us to a paradox: what if there are TWO omnipotent beings? If one is more powerful than the other, then the lesser one isn’t really omnipotent; if both are all-powerful, what if they oppose each other?
“…if both are all-powerful, what if they oppose each other?”
For one of them will be the end of “Glory Days” I guess…
Now seriously, I do understand what is the question, I almost ran
crazy when I tried t understand “the limits of the Universe”… it’s
truly impossible because besides mathematic concept of infinite, I
couldn’t realize what would happen if I just go straight all the time
were would it end… and if it happen to end, what would exist “after”
the end…? Madness! I don’t wanna play with it!
Maybe it’s a case of mastery.
If both are omnipotent, that doesn’t automatically make them omniscient. They’d have to learn to wield such massive power, if that power didn’t wield them. But then, this is assuming that what happened was an ascension to a higher plane.
Like mankind has, I could go on dissecting every single point, idea, concept or even thesis through millenia… but since I lack both the time and patience required to do such, I will not adhere to that course of action
I go with Descartes on this one, in that a being that is truly omnipotent in the sense you require has power over all limitations, including logic. So when the paradox reaches the point of reductio ad absurdum, the being simply changes whatever needs changing. If necessary, P & ~P is true.
However, is omnipotence necessarily a state which has no limits or degrees? After all, there are greater and lesser infinities…maybe there are greater and lesser supreme beings.
I personally think popular challenges against Classical Theism from questions such as “Can God create a round square” or “Can God create a rock so heavy that not even God can lift it” do not succeed. At least not without some additional work. Here, I attempt to explain why in succession:
Can God Create a Round Square?
I’d be willing to bet the person posing the question isn’t quite sure of what it is he’s asking for in the first place — in fact, he can’t even conceive what his own challenge is. Precisely, what is a “round square”? It’s nothing more than a combination of contradictory words which fail to describe any possible state of affairs. It is the question that is incoherent, so in a sense, the person posing the challenge hasn’t said or asked anything at all. How then, can it be conceived to be an effective argument against God’s Omnipotence if it fails to be a coherent question of God? Or take the challenge posed in its second form:
Can God create a rock so heavy that not even God can lift it?
Again, the challenge takes into consideration a classical atttibutes of God, which include the Essential property of being “All-Powerful” (or “Maximally powerful”).
A property’s “being essential” means that the property is part of what makes God who God is. It is another way of saying, “A being could not logically be God if that being were not omnipotent.”
Another essential property of God is his Necessity… which is to say that if Classical Theism is true, then it is not logically possible that God could not have existed.
Combined, this means God must be Necessarily Omnipotent. If God is to exist, it logically cannot be any other way.
A person posing the “rock” challenge accepts such definitions on one hand, but asks if God could bring about a state of affairs which contradict those definitions on the other. Again, the person posing this challenge is simply putting together a contradictory set of terms into a meaningless challenge.