If God can do anything

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Not sure if you intended your post to be humorous or not, but it made me chuckle. I can just picture a bunch of wide eyed, all believing, Sunday school kids saying something like that.

I asked a Catholic buddy in highschool if "god can do anything can he build a rock so big he couldnt lift it?", and he pondered it, and then said "Yes, God (the father) could make a boulder so big that Christ (God, the son) couldnt lift it."

This video is my favorite response to this age-old question...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rfd_1UAjeIA[/youtube]

He cant hes worthless and doesn't exist.

How can something that doesn't exist be worthless? Furthermore, how can anyone have any opinion about something they don't believe exists?

Because ummm...HEY WHATS THAT? *points over the horizen and you look and runs away*

How can something that doesn't exist be necessarily not worthless?



Because they can. Don't you have opinions about fictional characters as well? In movies, TV shows, books, etc.?

How much would you be willing to pay me for an imaginary chocolate bar?

Doesn't everyone do that all the time?

I think the horns of unicorns are cool.
I think Voldemort was very evil.
I think Ganesh has an elephant's head.

I also don't think any of them exist.

My opinion of the One Ring is that is doesn't exist, just like my opinion of the album John Lennon recorded last year. Believing something doesn't exist is, in itself, an opinion!

No, God can't do any of those things. God's omnipotence (all-powerful things) doesn't mean He can do everything we can think of. For instance, Hebrews 6:18 says it's impossible for God to lie. The actions that you mention are logically inconsistent. They can't exist just like a square circle can't exist. So God can't make those things happen, not because of some limit on His part, but because those things are logically impossible.

Anyone who refers to "God's omnipotence" and then places restrictions on what "God" can do has no business discussing or defining logical inconsistency.

I guess if omnipotence has to mean that God can do absolutely everything, including logically incoherent things like make square circles then you'd be right. But that's not how Christian theologians understand omnipotence. God can do everything possible, but 2 and 2 equaling 5 and God making it rain and not rain at the same time are intrinsically impossible.

Christian theologians as a group are quite prone to misunderstanding things. Some biblical quotes:

Luke 1:37(KJV) "For with God nothing shall be impossible"
Matthew 19:26 "with God all things are possible"

In order to justify your position in a logically coherent manner you must either create entirely new definitions for the words 'everything', 'nothing' and 'omnipotent', or you must adopt the position that the bible is flawed and contains inaccuracies.

As omnipotence as a concept is fundamentally illogical, the only conclusion can be that holy books are fictitious in nature. A god with limitations is no god at all.

God cant do anything, he is an idiot he has the mind set of a child with an ant farm at a sand box with parents who lack giving him personal attention.

You just said God cannot lie, so it's not true that God can do anything that's possible.

God lying is impossible. God is all-powerful, but God is also perfect and unchanging. God doing something that is not consistent with His perfect, unchanging character is impossible. If He did, He would cease to be God.

Well, they're human and no field of inquiry is perfect.



If the Bible was meant to be taken super-literally, then yes, these verses would mean that God should be able to do even the logically impossible. But even the most hardcore, young-earth, fire-and brimstone fundamentalists know that the Bible does use literary techniques like metaphor, hyperbole, etc. and not everything has to be taken in a strict, literal sense. They also know that verses should be looked at in their context. In Luke 1:37, the angel Gabriel is responding to Mary's doubt that she can have a son since she is a virgin. Gabriel is saying that even unnatural things like that are possible with God, but not necessarily logically impossible concepts. The full verse of Matthew 19:26 is "But Jesus looked at them and said, 'For mortals this is impossible, but for God all things are possible.' " "This" in the verse is referring to people's salvation. I don't believe "all things" necessarily include logically impossible concepts that can't really be "things", it just includes all things that can logically happen, even if they're impossible for mortals to do. But if omnipotence absolutely must mean everything, including the logically impossible, is possible with God, then I'm okay with dropping the term. It's not found in the Bible, it was constructed by theologians afterward to describe God's power.