God and his damn rock

I am betting there already was a God and rock thread, but to reiterate the hypocracy and general lack of basis religion (namely monotheistic all powerful god based ones') in anything. If a god is all powerful can it create a rock that it can not lift? Well let us approach this from a logical standpoint. If it is all powerful nothing can be more powerful than it, but if it is more powerful it should be able to create something more powerful then itself hense a paradox is born; therefor a farce. If you would kindly look at many polytheistic cultures that never have this problem. Their gods are not "all powerful" never inducing this kind of problem, therefor not destroying the credibiltiy of them existing. Look at the Greeks; they were a very logical people and their gods were created to explain things that they could not explain (namely with math and known science of the day). They were not there to represent hope and all that ****.

-Cheers-

PS: I know I have fragmented thought patterns that are more or less loosely related, but maybe hard to understand so feel free to have me clarify and re-relate. ^_^

A "philosopher" who declares that god doesn't exist is
claiming to be more powerful than god, by virtue of the
fact that he claims to be competent to create or destroy god
as he pleases. Then why can't this "philosopher"
program his own VCR?
:cool:

God and religion alike are concepts, created by a person or people long ago. To either bring hope or explain why things happened, that type of thing. But the act of being a god is hypocritical and illogical if it is all powerful.

-Cheers-

Let me quote Richard Swinburne here, because he says it better than I could:

" ....the omnipotence of a person at a certain time includes the ability to make himself no longer omnipotent, an ability which he may or may not choose to exercise. A person may remain omnipotent forever because he never exercises his power to create stones too heavy to lift...."

It makes sense to me. ;)

Lol... If you say so

-Cheers-

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Originally posted here by PM8228
[B]If it is all powerful nothing can be more powerful than it, but if it is more powerful it should be able to create something more powerful then itself hense a paradox is born; therefor a farce.

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I am afraid that your decision is based on a false assumption. An all powerful being cannot create something more powerful than itself, because it is already all powerful. To put it another way, once the status of all powerful has been achieved any elevation to a higher status is not possible. However an all powerful being can create another all powerful being equal to itself. Now, for arguments sake I will assume that you are correct in your assumption, but that leads to a more interesting question of "Why would an all powerful being want to create something more powerful than itself or a rock that it cannot lift?" :)

This is an age-old "paradox", and here are some things to ponder.

God is not only omnipotent, he is also infinite (following from his omnipotence). If he'd have to make a rock bigger than himself (so big he can't lift it, would have to mean bigger than himself), then that rock wouldn't be a rock anymore (all rocks are finite, there are no infinite rocks). The person who made up the paradox, should have chosen something else than a rock.

God only acts within his nature, and making something bigger than himself is not in his nature. He could make an entity bigger than himself, but then he wouldn't be God anymore, and he would be contradictory. God isn't contradictory, therefore he would never make a rock bigger than himself.

The rock-"paradox" is the worst "proof" one can use to disprove God's existance. It's not a paradox, and it even sucks at not being a paradox. The paradox wants to prove that God is illogical, but the paradox itself is illogical. A paradox isn't used to disprove something (or shouldn't be), a paradox is used to seemingly disprove something.

Another nice example are Zeno's paradoxes.
Here's an exampe:
if you shoot an arrow at a target, the arrow will never reach the target because once it has been shot, it has to travel a distance of d. At one point during its flight, it will have to travel a distance of half the original distance (d/2). A little later, it will have to travel a distance of half d/2 ( = d/4). If you keep on going like this, the arrow will never reach the target, since it will have to keep on travelling distances of d/x where x is a power of 2.

This paradox can't be used to prove that an arrow will never reach its target, since it's obvious (and easy to prove) that the arrow will reach the target.

It's almost as ridiculous as Aquino's God-proof. Illogical arguments to prove that something is logical.
Or in the God & his rock case: illogical arguments to prove that something is illogical.

Humm..remember the "logical" greeks put men to death for not respceting the gods.

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Humm..remember the "logical" greeks put men to death for not respceting the gods.

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**** happens but more people have died in the name of God than any other diety, I can assure you of that.

-Cheers-

bballad,
So did nearly every major religion at one time or another.