A Stone Too Heavy for God to Lift ENGE ae : rhe Christin idea of an Ghanipatent God is logically contradictory "t If he can then there make a stone so. heavy he can’ ‘lift it? | z f ane the can't do (lift the stone), but iFhe cantt, then there's also something he can’t do (make the stone).” DEFENSE ae To accuse others of a logical contradiction, first you must Understand their dea correctly. Otherwise you commit the Straw man fallacy. This objection misunderstands omnipotence, ‘The term “omnipotent” means “all-powerful” (Latin, omnis, “all and potens, “powerful”). This is often said to mean that God can “do anything,” but this statement is ambiguous, and the ambiguity leads to the objection above. : s “What does it mean to say God can do anything? If“anything” means anything that you can say, then the idea would involve logical contra- dictions. You could, for example, say that God could make four-sided triangles, square circles, married bachelors, two-horned unicorns, and other entities whose definitions involve logical contradictions. This is not what Christian theologians mean by omnipotence. In- stead, they mean that God can do anything that is logically possible—that is, anything that does not involve a logical contradiction. This causes the objection to vanish, because if omnipotence éxclades logical con- tradictions, then, by definition, it does not involve them. It thus resolves the question of whether God can make a stone so heavy he can't lift it. By virtue of omnipotence, God has infinite, or unlimited, lifting power. There is no upper limit to what God can lift. Thus a stone too heavy for God to lift would have to have more than infinite weight, and the idea of “more than infinite” weight involves a logical contradiction. Stones too heavy for an omnipotent being to lift fall in the same category as four-sided triangles and married bachelors. They contain logical contradictions and thus represent jibberish rather than logically possible entities. 1? For more, see St. Thomas Aquinas, ST |:25:3-4.= wt VWtonn Too See- te bod ty | uke’ Sch WE teramitfos LUG: 5 “Mme “Die lotee ees atimachiigen Soren logacch BE be tel, wieAe ngr¢ct lect, Kan, ss | bo De in Gaxchafler, der ro aa eS Wt, dats O jhe Lith! héhen ann? Wann ya, dann OL eS CaS, War er nih? kann (dler [Kein eben), wena ti Agan gt eS ebenfalic ual was & pick kann (din Sean Bpchafpen) == ‘Du begehcl then Febser gles Sakmann Agumenrs- de _4uyssage versteht Al macht fap. = = = = Almach? bedubet, dass Goth alles — a ie Méglich jf ——__ S Apabhs SAUGET 20 logrtcls— = Li VLC FEC ee aes — = tan pu thw, um _jhp a anpldaeh = jnphiprect , mar brake? unaqndiths —— tall, wt! de Shan ypend tt— ~~——s——_— S| eh wee 2F ee 2" Mehe ale unenc{lich. wwe ie ~ logrsch UD WELD Ph