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

Revealed Apologetics

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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?

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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.

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The idea of omnipotence is is Logically incoherent, right? So can God create a rock so so big that he can't lift or so heavy that he can't lift

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And so if you say he can create the the rock or the stone so big that he can't lift then that somehow

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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

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God can't create a rock so big that he is unable to lift then God is not all -powerful because He can't lift it.

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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

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Okay, there are a couple of things but let's 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

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And you know, he's got like a body It's kind of kind of very Mormon picture of God. And so when we ask can

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God create a rock so big that he can't lift We tend to think of God in the sort of anthropomorphic sense.

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But if you think about it, what is required to lift something? Well You're gonna need hands, right?

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God doesn't have hands God is a spirit John 4 24 and in the book of Psalms and other places

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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 It's I think it'd be inappropriate to ask the question.

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Can God or 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

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Physical tools to actually perform that which the question is asking but let us take from a logical perspective as well

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I think the question itself fails to understand what the proper understanding of Omnipotence is when we say that God is all -powerful.

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We're not saying that God can do literally anything Even in the biblical picture the

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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

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God cannot not be God God can't just you know decide one day and I'm not gonna be

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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?

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That's a logical It's an illogical concept furthermore

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When we say that God is omnipotent We are not saying that that entails that God can do the logically impossible

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For instance just as it's logically impossible for a perfectly holy righteous God who's the foundation of truth to tell a lie

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That's logically impossible It's also logically impossible for God to create something like a square circle or a married bachelor

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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

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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

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Impossible. Okay. Now if if the person bringing forth this objection

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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.

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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

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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.

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He can't lift it. So he's not all -powerful No, God can create this rock that he can't lift and then lift it to which the person who is bringing forth

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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

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Okay, and so if 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

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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.

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Namely. It doesn't entail that God can perform that which is logically Impossible. Okay, as I said before the

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Bible clearly says there are certain things that God cannot do given his nature namely God cannot lie.

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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

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But this is in response to someone who asked me personally to do a video on this and I think it's a it was

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A good opportunity to kind of hash these things out in a brief video. That might be helpful to someone All right.