I think that in order to preserve the integrity of our existence, God must act with all accordance to the laws and logic present in our world.
God must exist outside of our existence, if at all, and the rules are obviously quite different outside of our human perceptions.
Still, any action performed within our perception must follow the rules of that perception, to do other than that, would signify the end of our present perceptions and thus the world in which we live.

What is it to do something illogical? Some of my friends are often illogical, but somehow, I don't think that is what you have in mind. So what do you have in mind when you talk about doing what is illogical?

An omnipotent being can, unlike you and me, do whatever it is possible to do. But an omnipotent being is not required to do what it is impossible to do, because, doing what is impossible is not doing something. I think you had better show how doing something that is impossible ("illogical"?) is something that it makes sense to do before you ask whether an omnipotent being can do it. And if you try to show that, and you cannot, then, maybe you will not feel the need to ask the question whether an omnipotent being can do what it make no sense to do.

If God is capable of anything, then that would seem to implicitly define him to be illogical.
It is a valid question, but the definitions need to be clarified, which may be difficult.

Why would that be so?

I am not sure where to go with this, but why stop at a rock? Why not create another "higher" deity over yourself (for the sake of demonstration)? If he could do that, then he would not be "God" anymore. I guess the issue lies with: how big can we make big?

Then on the flipside, what prevents us from being, or eventually reaching our current definition of "God." If God needed to prevent, maybe...

This is a fun question. Is it logically possible that God created our human sense of logic in such a way that we only think he is bound by it? How do we know that our human logic applies beyond human experience?

I'm not saying this is my belief. I'm just playing with ideas. What is logic? Is it just the structure of human thought? It seems that we can half-imagine a God who utterly transcends our logic, but this is almost the same as imaging a round square. We can name it, but can we think it?

Like the Chinese food of legend, one hour after one reads this kind of post one is hungry (for serious analysis) again. No wonder if fortune cookies make up your entire meal.

No, but that's not a limitation of omnipotent beings. That's a limitation of sentences. A sentence has a subject and a predicate, which modifies the subject. For example, take the sentence, "The cat is on the mat." The subject is "cat" and the predicate, "is on the mat". The predicate tells us something about the subject, in this case, where the cat is, on the mat.

So, for a sentence to make sense, it needs a valid subject and a valid predicate. What I mean by valid is, they have to refer to something. A sentence like "The cat is prep gwarlek." has a predicate, "is prep gwarlek" but unlike the previous predicate "is on the mat", this new one, "is prep gwarlek", fails to refer to anything. Another way in which a string of words can fail to refer to anything is by saying something absurd like "four-sided triangle".

The way in which "four-sided triangle" fails to refer to anything is a little different from how "prep gwarlek" fails. The non-referring phrase "prep gwarlek" is built out of meaningful letters but the individual words fail to refer, which of course causes the phrase as a whole to fail to refer. However, the non-referring phrase "four-sided triangle" is built out of both meaningful letters and meaningful words but the phrase as whole fails to refer. The reason why is as follows.

When we build up phrases like "brown three-legged male dogs" we are referring to the members that are common in all of these three sets, "brown dogs", "three-legged dogs" and "male dogs". We want to refer only to members that are in all three sets instead of just one or two. That's called an intersection of sets.

In the same way, "four-sided triangles" refers to the intersection of the set of "four-sided things" and "three-sided things". But since these sets are disjoint, having no members in common between them, the intersection refers to nothing at all.

So, the problem with asserting that four-sided triangles can't exist is that you aren't referring to anything. Also, the problem with saying that God can do something that's both logical and illogical is that you aren't referring to anything. The set of logical things and the set of illogical things are disjoint. They have no members in common. Referring to their intersection is referring to nothing at all.

The question itself about "god lift rock" is illogically, doesn't really have a sound meaning to it.

Why would he get his hands dirty, when he has loads of angels to do the dirty work? What about machinery, we humans has machines to life things many times greater than what we canlift with our hands.

But yes, per se ..he could just put endless matter some place creating a rock, thus not be able to lift it. BUT lift implyes move it from some object, and this rock is affected by gravity, thus this gravity object has to be greater than the rock itself.

Hi all,

Pliny teaches us that "Not even for God are all things possible - for He Cannot, even if He wishes, commit suicide...nor bestow eternity on mortals, or recall the deceased, nor cause a man who has lived to have not lived...He has no power over what is past, save to forget it, and... He cannot cause twice ten not to be twenty or do many things on similar lines: which facts undoubtedly demonstrate the power of Nature.

My opinion:
In order for God to have power over all things - He has to be all things, in order to progress the thoughts or/and processes thereof. But that would entail Omnipresence???

Thank you , and think amazingly.

Mark...

The problem with this question starts with something said in its original post:


How can something be logical and illogical? This is an impossibility, not a limit, but a twisted convoluted definition that makes as much sense as, "can something be black and white at the same time?" or "can 2+2=5 and 4 at the same time?"

Logic is not a restraint of the deity or anyone else. Logic is descriptive not proscriptive. It does not stop anything, it simply defines. Take the old 2+2=4. Can God make it mean 5? Since a pair of objects is defined as two and a pair of pairs is defined as 2+2 and at the same time as four then to make 2+2=5 would be impossible without a redefinition of terms. The symbol we know as the numeral 5 could be redefined to stand for a pair of twos or what is now know by the symbol 4. (For example the Hindi number for five looks similar to the English numeral 3) This has not changed logic or violated logic but has redefined terms. 2+2 still would equal four, all we have done is change the symbols. The new numeral 5 has the old meaning four so 2+2 still equals four. If one were to say that God made 2+2=5 this person would be speaking gibberish and be unintelligable. This does not limit God, but restricts us to speaking in a way that is sensible.

"The rock too big question" is an excercise in fallacy. To say God could not make a stone too big for him to move is not to limit divinity or reduce him from omnipotence. It is to mix terms: capable of making, but incapable of certain interactions with what was made. One who has the power to create has the power to destroy or re-order. Either answer in the question requires a redefinition of omnipotence:

If God is to be omnipotent then he must be able to create something too big for him to move, but if He is unable to move it then He is not omnipotent. This is fallacious because both contraditory actions are being equated with the same result. This is like saying if I have 6 and take 4 I will have 2, so if I have 6 and take 4 I have 10. This is possible only if I redefine take. In the first take is to remove from my collection and in the second take could be to remove from the source pile and add to my collection.

An omnipotent God can move the rock ≡ An omnipotent God can not move the rock.

OR
An omnipotent God can create the rock ≡ An omnipotent God cannot create the rock.

To make this possible one would have to redefine omnipotent from one side to the other.

Once again this is not a limit of God or a limit on anyone else. It is simply using language in a way that makes sense.