Can God Create a Rock He Can’t Lift? NO!!!

The Category Error in the Rock Question

Hey guys, in this brief video, I'm gonna be answering the question, can God create a rock so big that he can't lift? This is a common philosophical puzzle and the purpose of it is to try and show that the idea of omnipotence, this idea that God is all powerful, the idea of omnipotence is logically incoherent, right?

So can God create a rock so big that he can't lift or so heavy that he can't lift? And so if you say he can create the rock or the stone so big that he can't lift, then that somehow demonstrates that God is not all powerful because there's this rock that he created that he's unable to lift.

Now, if you say God can create a rock so big that he is unable to lift, then God is not all powerful because he can't lift it. He's unable to do the thing that the question is kind of putting forth. Now, I think it's very important to understand the problem with the question itself, okay?

There are a couple of things, but let's go into first kind of the category error that this commits. First, I think the popular caricature of God is that he's kind of like this old guy sitting up in heaven and he's got like a body.

It's kind of a very Mormon picture of God. And so when we ask, can God create a rock so big that he can't lift? We tend to think of God in a sort of anthropomorphic sense. But if you think about it, what is required to lift something?

Well, you're gonna need hands, right? God doesn't have hands. God is a spirit, John 4, 24. And in the book of Psalms and other places, it talks about God is everywhere, okay? He's omnipresent. And so he's not limited by location of a physical body of some sort.

So I think it'd be inappropriate to ask the question, can God lift something or not, okay? So that's kind of a category kind of mistake where they're asking a question of a being that doesn't have the physical tools to actually perform that which the question is asking.

Omnipotence and the Limits of Logical Possibility

But let us take it from a logical perspective as well. I think the question itself fails to understand what the proper understanding of omnipotence is. When we say that God is all powerful, we're not saying that God can do literally anything.

Even in the biblical picture, the Bible says that God cannot lie, right?

Why?

Because, well, God is the foundation for truth, can't do anything that is contradictory to his nature. God cannot not be God. God can't just decide one day, eh, I'm not gonna be God. Or as a necessary being who cannot fail to exist, God cannot just decide one day to kind of snap the proverbial finger and go out of existence, right?

That's a logical, it's an illogical concept. Furthermore, when we say that God is omnipotent, we're not saying that that entails that God can do the logically impossible. For instance, just as it's logically impossible for a perfectly holy, righteous God who's the foundation of truth to tell a lie, that's logically impossible, it's also logically impossible for God to create something like a square circle or a married bachelor.

God can't do those things because they're illogical. Now, that's not an impingement upon his omnipotence because the idea of being all-powerful does not require God to be able to do the logically impossible, okay?

I'm gonna say that again, the idea of omnipotence does not entail that God can do the logically impossible, okay? Now, if the person bringing forth this objection, can God create a rock so big that he can't lift?

If you think the answer I just gave is kind of a cop-out and you think that omnipotence does entail the ability to do the logically impossible, well, okay, well, let's bite for a moment. Let's suppose that that's what omnipotence entails, that God can do the logically impossible.

So then I would say, can God create a rock so heavy or so big that he can't lift?

I'll say, sure.

But then the objector is gonna say, well, wait a minute, he can't lift it, so he's not all-powerful.

No, no, no.

God can create this rock that he can't lift and then lift it, to which the person who is bringing forth the objection will rightly point out, well, that's contradictory. But then I would respond, and I think rightfully so, that if you ask a contradictory question, you're gonna get a contradictory answer, okay?

And so if you think that omnipotence entails the ability to do the logically impossible, again, you're gonna run into some issues there. And so that's why this objection doesn't work. The idea of omnipotence is not an incoherent concept.

What is important is that we understand what we mean by omnipotence and understand what we don't mean by omnipotence. Namely, it doesn't entail that God can perform that which is logically impossible, okay?

God's Nature and the Meaning of Omnipotence

As I said before, the Bible clearly says there are certain things that God cannot do, given his nature. Namely, God cannot lie, okay? Well, I hope this brief video is helpful in regards to answering this question.

I know this is kind of a common question and I'm sure you could find resources somewhere else online, but this is in response to someone who asked me personally to do a video on this. And I think it was a good opportunity to kind of hash these things out in a brief video that might be helpful to someone, all right?

Well, that's all for today. Take care and God bless.

Bye-bye.