“Can God make a stone so big He can’t lift it?”
(Christian sites just wouldn’t be complete without this question, now would they? *smile*)
A ‘stone too heavy for God to lift’ is a logical impossibility because it is impossible for God to be UNABLE to lift (or ‘cause to rise’) a stone simply by virtue of its being too big. Might as well ask if God can write sentences so long He cannot read.
This question presupposes an unqualified omnipotence, suggesting forms of power which transcend even logic. But God’s omnipotence cannot be discussed apart from, among other things, the rules He has set (logical as well as physical) for His creation.
A question presupposing the logically impossible has to be judged invalid.
Objection 1: But that which
is logically possible may CHANGE, no?
Perhaps in another world or time, God WILL be able to create rocks so
huge He has trouble lifting them?
We simply cannot KNOW OF such events which (possibly) transcend history and logic. To raise this objection, in fact, presupposes ‘this-worldly’ logic. In a word, we do not possess the epistemic tools to even conceive of how that which is ‘logically impossible’ can become ‘logically possible’ in another time/world.
A question appealing to (or ‘awaiting’?) the logically impossible is, also, invalid.
Objection 2: But aren’t the
events foretold in the Book of Revelations (especially in the later chapters)
‘beyond’ history and logic? The
New Jerusalem of chapters 21-22 can hardly be conceived – are we required to
think they are illogical too? And
what about the almost certainly inconceivable Creation?
Leaving aside the issue of how we interpret Revelations – really, what is the writer of Revelations expecting us to conceive of from his writings? A literal crystal waterway running in between celestial alleys? – I would state that some Biblical pictures go beyond reason, but none go against it.
· These are revealed promises of a Revealer FROM the ‘beyond’ - if He’s the Creator and He tells us there is a new creation, we can only give Him the benefit of whatever epistemic doubt we may possess…
· There is continuity between this world and the ‘next’ – nothing requires us to believe in ‘new’ logic completely at odds with what we have in our world. New possibilities certainly, but nothing we can label il-logical nor im-possible. In fact, there’s a good case that the Eschaton cannot be understood in isolation from our present condition.
As for Creation, we don’t know exactly how this world came about; but that it HAS come about we cannot doubt. Therefore, postulating that Someone ‘brought Nature into being’ becomes a logically plausible (even necessary) deduction from what we see in our world.
We need to distinguish between things we cannot understand and those we do not need to understand in order to reject as nonsensical. In the case of the former, we are normally given strong prior grounds for accepting their truth-value independently of our ability to explain them. However, nothing – least of all logic – gives us good reason to consider the latter worthy of further investigation.
AL