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Hmm, maybe. I am no paleogeologist so I can't say.

Speaking of what God is capable of doing, there is this paradoxical question: Can God create a rock that is so heavy even he couldn't lift it?

Rather than logic, I am keep thinking: Why would he do that? Is there any reason why he needs a rock like that?

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.

Well, even if He wouldn't, if He could we still have a problem, I think. Because then God would not be omnipotent, since He could not create that rock and then lift it.

I think that the issue here is simply one of language. As I see it, God could not create a triangle with four sides either: but that's not because God is less than all-powerful, but because the description "a triangle with four sides" is intrinsically meaningless — it simply describes nothing at all. And the same could be said about the description "a rock that an all-powerful being could not lift."

Note, here I am not saying that God is constrained by logic — as I understand it, logic is something that constrains language. A contradictory description is ultimately meaningless (assuming classical logic, and not one of the weird — but fun — systems which allow for "true contradictions", but I digress.)

Saying that God cannot create a triangle with four sides is, I think, a bit like saying that God cannot create arghle bargle barg — technically true, not because God is limited, but because "arghle bargle barg" does not really mean anything.

edited 6th Sep '12 8:31:12 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

@Pyrite: Ah yes, Young Earth Creationism. My personal take is that God created the world, and the exact method he used is ultimately irrelevant. It's kind of a muddy issue, as I'm pretty sure scientists on both sides of the issue fudge things a bit to make their point. At the moment I lean towards an older earth simply due to Occam's Razor; all the scientific theories explaining a young earth (at least that I've seen) tend to strike me as more of a stretch. They're possible, of course, because God isn't bound by the laws of nature, but it really just comes down to a question likelihood. I mean, God could have fashioned the earth out of a giant gumball if he wanted to. That and the fact that while he's in the process of creating, the laws of physics aren't quite set in stone yet anyway.

And you're totally right that the Bible isn't supposed to be a science textbook. Even if you believe in the infallibility of scripture, it doesn't at all necessarily mean that it ought to be read literally. The are a lot of stylistic influences from non-historical genres after all. Revelation is a good example; sure there are prophetic elements, but it's just as much political commentary on Rome as it is prophecy.

My take on that: God can indeed creates a rock so big he can't lift it. He then lifts it anyway because he's God and he can do that. True omnipotence isn't bound by logic. Of course, given that I think God has a logical and orderly nature, he would never have any reason to actually do that, so it doesn't really matter.

Although the four-sided triangle thing is a good explanation as well; a triangle is by definition four-sided. Although it could well be within God's ability to create meaning for that description that's somehow non-contradictory. Like if you asked God to create arghle bargle barg and he created a new meaning for that gibberish from scratch.

edited 6th Sep '12 8:32:57 AM by JapaneseTeeth

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Yes, but that would change the language, I think. God could as well decide that from now on, "A rock that even God cannot lift" means "a muffin", and then present me with a muffin

I think that logic, in a way, is a part of language — it's not some sort of set of laws underlying the structure of the universe, but an artificial creation (or, to be more precise, a family of artificial creations.) We set up our language such that a given statement is true in some situations and not in others; and we say that a statement B is a consequence of a statement A only if any situation in which A is true is also a situation in which B is true. Change the language, change the logical laws.

Now, the problem is that when it comes to puzzles like this one, our languages are just not defined in a precise enough way to make it clear what we are talking about, and different ways of clarifying the rules of the language lead to different conclusions.

For example, one could say that a problem with your solution is that you end up with a rock that God can and cannot lift. If one accepts the law of non-contradiction as an universal rule, this is obviously a difficulty; but if I understand you correctly, your very point is that the law of non-contradiction is not necessarily true — usually it holds, obviously, but God can create true contradictions if He wills so.

And as I understand it, the question whether true contradictions are or are not possible is actually not a question about the world at all — rather, it is a question about our language, not all that different from a question about the proper way to conjugate a verb.

edited 6th Sep '12 8:59:30 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Yeah, I guess I'm coming at the issue from a more practical rather than a lingual standpoint. What I mean is that just because language is incapable of expressing a situation doesn't mean that God couldn't create that situation. Like God could create a rock that he couldn't lift and then proceed to lift it without being a contradiction, it's just that our language isn't capable of expressing "lifting an unliftable rock" in non-contradictory terms.

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This. This so much. One day we'll end up in Heaven, and God's going to go, "You wasted so much time on that? Couldn't you just have waited for the answer?" (Nothing against critical thinking, of course. It has its place.)

edited 6th Sep '12 9:30:35 AM by Pyrite

Not a substitute for a formal medical consultation.

Sure, but which situation? If you describe it through language, we end up with the exact same problem once again, I think.

I don't have any idea of what "a rock that God could not lift" would be like. Suppose that an angel brings me a rock and tells me "here, that's the rock that God cannot lift". Now, how am I going to test for this property?

I could perhaps directly challenge God to lift that rock? But — assuming that God decided to humour me — going by what you said, God would then simply lift that rock, even if that were the rock that we are talking about...

That's just my two cents, of course — I like these kinds of puzzles, but I think that ultimately they are not terribly relevant to our religion...

edited 6th Sep '12 9:32:39 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

The paradox goes away in a puff of logic, if you see that the premises require two contradictory assumptions: "If God can do anything" presupposes that there are no limits, physical or otherwise on what God can do. "Cannot lift it" presupposes a physical limit to what he can do. So it's really not a paradox at all. It's a semantic quibble.

edited 6th Sep '12 9:34:09 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

I think what they're trying to argue is the point at which the argument breaks down: Carc is arguing that the paradox is irrelevant because the omnipotence of God excludes the possibility of such a paradoxical solution, while JTeeth suggests that the omnipotence of God can extend beyond logic, to the point of being able to support the existence of such a paradox.

Personally, God would chuck the rock at my head and tell me to go do something useful with my life.

Not a substitute for a formal medical consultation.

Now we see the violence inherent to the system! HELP! HELP! I'm being repressed!

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

And I'm saying there's not really a paradox at all, only a word game.

If God is utterly free from any contraint or limitation (That's a logically equivalent statement to "If God can do anything"), can he be effectively constrained by a physical limitation? (That's logically equivalent to "Can he make a rock so big he can't lift it?")

It's a nonsense question.

edited 6th Sep '12 9:49:56 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

As far as I can tell (never been one for logic myself), that's precisely what they're arguing: that it is one big word game, and the trouble is figuring out if we have the right words or concepts for the scenario described.

edited 6th Sep '12 10:05:40 AM by Pyrite

Not a substitute for a formal medical consultation.

@Pyrite: Yeah, that's pretty much it. There isn't a real answer because there's no way of articulating the question due to the inherent limits of language. It's basically a transcendence issue; we're trying to pose a question that we can't fully put into words. Maddie's right that it's a word game; the question we're basically poking at is "is the situation just inherently illogical or is there a legit question here that comes out as nonsense when you try to put it in words?" I think it pretty much boils down to "Can God allow a paradox?" of which "Can God do something logically impossible while still remaining logical and not create a contradiction?" is the paradox in question. My personal theory is that God can resolve the paraodox, it's just we can't due to the limits in out intelligence and language. "God is constrained, yet can simultaneously ignore those constraints" might be nonsense to us, but for an omniscient and omnipotent being it might be possible to resolve it. It's all conjecture, of course, but it's interesting to think about.

Also,

This is how I feel about like half the stuff the church tends to fight over. I always have this mental image of God FacePalming and saying "Seriously, you wasted years arguing about what type of music to have in the service when you could have been doing something useful?"

edited 6th Sep '12 10:28:17 AM by JapaneseTeeth

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My mum, who teaches Sunday School, speculates that theology textbooks are Heaven's most favoured genre of comic literature.

Makes one wonder if afterlife Internet forums have a "Dumb things you used to believe as a mortal" thread...

edited 6th Sep '12 10:47:05 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

I'd reverse this:

The question that humans seem to have the problem with is "If God cannot be contrained, how can he voluntarily accept limitations?"

To most humans, the idea of voluntarily choosing to self-impose limits what you can to to much less than you are able to do , and then to willingly adhere to those limits is difficult to deal with as anything but an intellectual exercise. "Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely." We accept as a given that the more power you have, the less willing you will be to accede to any limits on it.

You see it creep over into the 'omniscient' side, as well: "If God knows everything, how can we have Free Will — He knows what we're going to do before we do it!" Take that apart to its component parts and you'll find a conflation between 'knowing what's going to happen' and 'causing it to happen'.

edited 6th Sep '12 10:57:40 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Well, if one assumes that God is perfectly good, there isn't a need for him to impose limits on himself. The question is largely hypothetical anyway.

As for the Free Will thing...that's always a frustrating issue. I think it helps a bit to think of God as being outside of Time altogether in the sense that he might not necessarily see someone's actions linearly. I think CS Lewis said something like "God doesn't see what things you've done, or what you're going to do, he just sees you doing things". All time is the present for him.

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How about we change the topic to "how many devils can dance on a head of a pin"?

"Atheism is the religion whose followers are easiest to troll"

None. Angels dance on the head of a pin.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Yeah, they wouldn't take it very kindly to devils trying to crash their party.

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Who wants to dance on the head of a pin? Sounds painful.

Do you highlight everything looking for secret messages?

Okay, tell me if I am understanding the discussion.

This whole question is just a linguistically baffling semantic quibble. God would just facepalm at the question, like at those other things that churches argue about, and just tell us to wait for the answer and in the meanwhile go do something useful.

Right?

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.

I should hope so. That or troll us for asking about if he can make three sided squares.

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

I dunno. I think that God approves of people playing around with language puzzles.

I mean, He created humans.

More in general, I think that trying to understand the exact nature of life, afterlife, the universe and everything is a good thing, even though a full knowledge of these matters probably far surpasses our capabilities. On one hand, doing so might at times give us some useful insights about what we can and/or should do right now; and on the other, it is an useful exercise for human minds.

As long as we don't slaughter each other over this sort of stuff, I think that theological speculation has its place.

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Yeah, I suppose this whole puzzles and paradoxes can be considered useful.

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.

I'm just annoyed at running into atheists who use this as some "God can't be a thing that he says he is" argument of doom. Refusing any and all answers to the contrary or different positions. The question has, in my experience, amounted in only pain. Useless, unsexy pain.

AND THAT JUST ISN'T DHAMMA, CARC.

If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah