I came across an intruiging statement the other day. I'd like to hear everyone elses thoughts on it.

Can god do anything? If yes can he make a rock in which even he couldn't lift? If he can or cannot lift the rock that is something he cannot do.

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I suppose my answer to this would have to be that the phrase "God can do anything" is invalid. It should instead be in my opinion "God can do anything but create a task in which he cannot accomplish".

Well I'm just going to state the obvious and point out that this is called a paradox. Paradoxes are pretty cool to me I've always liked the puzzle that there is no real answer to.

Here's a good paradox.

The unexpected hanging paradox

A judge tells a condemned prisoner that he will be hanged at noon on one weekday in the following week, but that the execution will be a surprise to the prisoner. He will not know the day of the hanging until the executioner knocks on his cell door at noon that day. Having reflected on his sentence, the prisoner draws the conclusion that he will escape from the hanging. His reasoning is in several parts. He begins by concluding that the “surprise hanging” can’t be on a Friday, as if he hasn’t been hanged by Thursday, there is only one day left – and so it won’t be a surprise if he’s hanged on a Friday. Since the judge’s sentence stipulated that the hanging would be a surprise to him, he concludes it cannot occur on Friday. He then reasons that the surprise hanging cannot be on Thursday either, because Friday has already been eliminated and if he hasn’t been hanged by Wednesday night, the hanging must occur on Thursday, making a Thursday hanging not a surprise either. By similar reasoning he concludes that the hanging can also not occur on Wednesday, Tuesday or Monday. Joyfully he retires to his cell confident that the hanging will not occur at all. The next week, the executioner knocks on the prisoner’s door at noon on Wednesday — which, despite all the above, will still be an utter surprise to him. Everything the judge said has come true.

source: http://listverse.com/2010/05/28/11-brain-twisting-paradoxes/

This how I look at the Christian God. 

"All things are possible."
"God loves us."

Then why the heck am I in the crap situation I am in now?

As far as I am concerned, God does not exist, let alone create a rock [he] can not lift. 

thing1 : Because God is not limited to your definition of love. God never promises life will be easy (if life was easy, why were/are Christians being brutally murdered across the world for their faith?). He promises a happy ending for those who accept it.

You seem to think that you can define what God could and/or should be. Yet, assuming God is real and He's, ya know, God, why would He be limited to what you expect of Him? If God is real, what have you done to deserve His favor? What have you done, expect spit in His face? You may have gone to church, but going to church without being a Christian and expecting something from it is about as hypocritical as going to a medieval fair and expecting flying cars. You don't define God, He defines you.

mrfe : Let me put it to you like this... If your God wants me to have faith in him, then he needs to show me that he is real. As far as I am concerned, anybody can write a book. I'll leave it at that. 

thing1 : I wasn't convinced except though personal revelation. I don't blame you. Just make sure you aren't purposefully ignoring any signs of Him. If you say He needs to reveal Himself to you, then be open to that possibility.

Blubcreator :

Free Will.

It's kinda like the whole, "Can God know everything, and still have free willed beings?"

My answer is yes. .. in a weird way.

God, in creating free will, breached one of His other powers. . . sorta.

Or, God know's everything that could happen.

It doesn't matter how you go about the question though, either way you end up with a God that can't make a certain kind of rock, or a God that can't lift a certain kind of rock.

A great question:

Can God limit Himself?

Can God make something that he cannot understand?

The minute you say "No", you believe in a God that CAN'T DO SOMETHING.

Hence, my argument for free will and a future in motion.

God cannot do anything. God cannot be not-God or act ungodly. He cannot make a rock that he himself cannot lift. He cannot create an uncreated creature.

God, too, operates reasonably.

This is how I look at it. God can create the unliftable rock and make it unliftable for everyone, including Himself. If He then decides he wants to lift said rock, he can. The reason he can is because He will simply make the rock liftable again. So the rock is indeed unliftable even to Him, but he can lift is by making it liftable. Make sense?

Hmm I believe He can create the rock He can't lift, but if He wills to lift it, He would lift up the platform on which rock is, or alter space-time in a way that rock moves up, or make everything else go down while rock is in it's place or subject the rock to move according to His Will(so the rock moves up by itself) and others way I may not know..

God can do anything that does not contradict His own law...... and He's also capable of doing anything. It's difficult to explain. Perhaps another way to put it might be this:  God -won't- do anything that contradicts His own law.

thing1 :

"This how I look at the Christian God.
"All things are possible."
"God loves us."
Then why the heck am I in the crap situation I am in now?"

This is how some children view their parents.

A paradox where a person can't just yell "GOD" and think they've solved it?

If god created us to worship him, isn't that pride?  Colossians 1:16: For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth,
visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or
authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.

This kind of statement shows an incorrect understanding that omnipotence means that God can do anything, when that is not the case. I't not even a paradox, it's just simply inaccurate. When we as humans talk about omnipotence, it is always talking about things that are reasonable for God to do and in accordance of His will, not ours.

Believe it or not, there are plenty of things that God cannot do.......and it makes sense that he doesn't.

-God cannot create another god that is equal to Him, because 1) a created being no longer is a god and 2) making something equal to Him will make him no longer to be God.
-If God is eternal, then He cannot die, or He will no longer be eternal
-If God is holy, He cannot sin, or He will no longer be holy.
-And to answer your question, no, God cannot create something that He cannot lift, because the moment you say that He creates something that He cannot lift, you also say that something is physically too hard for Him to do, and that is contradictory to His nature as the Creator.
-And the list goes on and on, there are even Christians who hope to clear things up for people about this anywhere online.

And then there are people who go to the other extreme and say "God can do anything that is possible, so miracles cannot exist", which is also unreasonable, because that limits "possible" to things that possible in our limited mind. Even for what us people can do, time and time again, history has shown how we keep breaking barriers as to what is considered possible, even when there were so many obstacles that exist in front of us. If even in ourselves we have a limited understanding as to what is possible, how much more are we limited to the understanding of what is possible to God? There are even scripture that talks about how even though it is something that is considered "impossible" for Man, it is possible for God.

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are my ways higher than your ways

and my thoughts than your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:8-9)

tgags123 :
faisal.97 : You guys still made the rock to be liftable...

thing1 : It is rather limiting when you make a conclusion based on only 2 statements that are out of context to begin with, and then apply them to a situation that isn't a higher priority in God's view. You are right that your god doesn't exist, because God is not a vending machine or a butler that gives you a physically happy life like He owes you or that you earned it, especially when the world itself is fallen in sin, doesn't deserve any of that, and going against God. When you firmly hold a wrong view of God and not really think about it, rejecting the correct view of God becomes easy, no matter how hard God reveals to you, which He does. Sometimes selfcenterness blinds people from the higher priorities in life.

play4fun : I was just using those 2 as an example. Those were the 2 that came to be right off the top of my head. I sense that you have some questions for me regarding my statement, so just come out and say them. 

But for the most part, when I was a believer, I needed things, but "GOD" never provided, so they way I see it is this: " Why should I believe in a divine being that is almost the exact opposite what his law say says and that has never done any one thing for me when I have needed it the most ? "

play4fun : lol yeah now that I think of it, I really made it liftable. I thought of editing out the post, but that would take out the fun of discussing something like this Hmm, I believe in what you have told, and it convinced me and removed the burden of doubt i had been bearing for weeks about "something is wrong with my answer" or "what i said isn't enough". Thanks man

So... I didn't really know what omnipotence truly is.. I thought omnipotence is ability to do anything. I didn't realise what God meant as he said that he does what he wills... It simply is our mistake then to ascribe something as inaccurate as omnipotence, while he has implied that he doesn't do whatever he doesn't will.

play4fun : "God cannot create something that He cannot lift, because the moment you say that He creates something that He cannot lift, you also say that something is physically too hard for Him to do, and that is contradictory to His nature as the Creator." But if god can't create the object, then there is something god cannot do. Regardless of the contradictory nature of making a rocky creation of which god cannot lift, there is something that this god is unable to do. 

"God cannot create another god that is equal to Him, because 1) a created being no longer is a god and 2) making something equal to Him will make him no longer to be God." This does not make sense to me. Simply having an equal does not disqualify one from being a god/goddess. There would simply be multiple gods/goddesses of immense power. I.E. Polytheism. Minor gods/goddesses are another plausible option seeing as they have partial powers of one such major god/goddess. This would easily make it for there to be multiple gods/goddesses, albeit gods/goddesses with unequal power. 

That kind of paradox is forbidden by nature. God doing that would end up having to write in a loophole prophecy kind of thing. Even He couldn't lift it, but someone else could. Greek mythology is full of that stuff. 

But yeah, paradoxes are possible in theory, but not in practice. Nature rebels against them. I think it's like dividing by zero, you'd create a black hole or something and destroy reality.

Don't destroy reality, get Direct TV.

That's not brainwashing at all.

If it is to be believed that God can do anything, then there is no task that he cannot accomplish. But that statement defies itself because it implies that there is something that he cannot do, which is the act of creating a task that is impossible to accomplish.

The question has no answer because it cannot be answered until we have more concrete knowledge. We would have to know more factors in the equation, including whether or not there is an actual limit to God's power, and whether or not the rock would actually be unliftable by any given being of power in the entire universe, be it the God of Christianity, any other gods, or any other being, divine or otherwise. Also, this assumes that factors in the equation such as deities and unliftable rocks even exist. These are factors that we cannot know, so for now the question has no answer.

play4fun: To quote your post...
"-God cannot create another god that is equal to Him, because 1) a created being no longer is a god and 2) making something equal to Him will make him no longer to be God."

So, if I am understanding you correctly, you're saying that for the God of Christianity to create another god would make the God of Christianity no longer the "one true god"? This sounds less like something that he can't do, and more like something that he won't do. If you were the "one true god", you certainly wouldn't want to forfeit that position. But the bible mentions the existence of other gods. Psalm 82 reads: God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment: "How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked?" This implies that there are "lesser" gods and that the God of Christianity is their "leader", so to speak. Perhaps, then, these lesser gods are not equal to the God of Christianity, but the bible mentions them as gods nonetheless. 

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