True, but what then was the point of your original response to this discussion? You said:
This seems to imply you think the topic of The Paradox of the Stone cannot be approached analytically.
I’d say I approached it pretty analytically in my quadrant analysis. My first and second quadrants probably fail your criteria, which is fine. I also take the LNC as so fundamental that even I think quadrant 1 and 2 are meaningless at a certain level.
But quadrant 3 and 4 are an entirely analytical investigation into this. You see, even if no synthetic statements can be made regarding the unliftable liftable rock, there is still something to be said regarding the topic. You see, this contradiction’s mere expressibility raises questions as to how we are to define God’s omnipotence. I delve into that in quadrant 3 and 4, and if you look at that, then I think you’ll see why your original response was incorrectly dismissive.
Yeah, the unliftable liftable rock is nothing. But just that actually has consequences for what God is. We deal with paradoxes in formal logic too, and although they refer to nothing, they still move mountains, because we painstakingly shape our formal systems to avoid them. The fact that meaninglessness can emerge from the combination of meaningful components has immense consequences for those components and the systems with which we use to combine them.
My view on the stone paradox is that the initial question, “Can God make a stone so heavy he cannot lift it?”, is a logically incoherent one, for to say that God could either be able to make the stone, or to fail to lift the stone, would be two attributes of God that fall under omnipotence. If God could do one of these different things, but fail to do the other, would be to say that aspects of God’s omnipotence are measurably greater than the other one, which would be incoherent. I analogize it this way: When a man makes a boat, then the reason why he could either succeed in being able to lift it and put it in the water, or make it too big to lift by himself, would be to say, measurably, that the man’s physical strength is either superior to his ability to make boats, or else his ability to make boats is superior to his physical strength, or so to say, one specific aspect of the man’s abilities are better than the other. But if God is all powerful, then whatever abilities he has must be infinitely great, or so to say, immeasurably great. But if God’s abilities are immeasurably great, then the different abilities which God has, such as lifting power and creating power, cannot be measurablybetter than each other, or else this implies variations of addition and subtraction between either of God’s abilities, and therefore, God’s Omnipotence would not be true Omnipotence. Therefore, the initial question of the stone paradox fails to understand the logic of infinity and the properties constituting power, and so is not a real question, but incoherent.
If God is omnipotent then She can do anything and everything, But how do we define these words? Does everything mean that God can create a 4 sided triangle?
If the answer to this question is “no”, then we are (in some sense) re-defining these words. No matter what explanation you come up with there are limits to God’s power.
But if we answer yes, then there must be some “higher” form of logic that us mere humans cannot possibly comprehend in which God can create a 4 sided triangle.
I haven’t even the foggiest notion of how this would work.
That said, I do have one vague somewhat incoherent notion. The fact that we human beings can construct these logical contradictions is somehow - even if just metaphorically - a reflection of how our human minds work.
It is highly likely that there are folks out there much smarter than me (like real philosophers and scientists) who are much more knowledgeable about this. Any further speculation about these notions is way above my pay scale.
Greetings, I hope you are well. For me personally I don’t understand the reason to use this word god? Why does something “ god” everything in the context which you’re speaking “a “ it’s called the universe. I know the universe exists, I don’t know that a God exist. Nor is it relevant to me personally. I respect everyone’s right to believe as they wish as long as it causes no one suffer suffering. I personally was raised and educated as a Christian, I converted to Buddhism decades ago. Because for me it works, it’s Home. When the Buddha was asked many times was there a God, he simply always said the same thing it’s irrelevant. He was as constantly if he was a god his constant answer was no when he was asked what he was. He said I’m just a man who is awake. Just personally for me I don’t see why there has to be a different monicker than the one it has, the universe.please be well and happy.
“omnipotence is the capacity for unlimited, infinite power.”
However, omnipotence doesn’t mean you can do the impossible; it just means you have infinite power. Even with all the energy in the universe, you cannot make a square into a circle. That isn’t a lack of power—it’s just definitively wrong
