Rational Agnostic
Well-Known Member
I get a lot of different reactions from theists when I bring up the omnipotence paradox. The omnipotence paradox is the paradox that arises from the question (or some variation thereof) "Can an omnipotent god create a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it?" No matter how the question is answered, the result is that an omnipotent being is logically incoherent and thus cannot exist. So, if God exists, he could not be omnipotent in the technical sense, since the concept of omnipotence produces a paradox. The next question is: What are God's limitations? C.S. Lewis and many other apologists claim that God cannot do the logically impossible. But this then means that God is subservient to the laws of logic, and thus the laws of logic are above God. Other apologists claim that logic is part of God's nature, and God cannot alter his nature. This begs another question, though. If God cannot alter his nature, then he is not in charge of or responsible for his own nature, which implies that some greater being gave him his nature. Any way you look at it, the concept of an omnipotent god is logically incoherent, and raises many problems with the concept of the god of classical theism.