Proverbs 6:6 “Go to the ant, O sluggard, and consider her ways, and learn wisdom”
Who’s superior? 
(Sorry, getting theological again. But I do quote secular books too…)
Very good point! Does knowledge mean superiority? Or is it quality of life or is it something else? What makes superiority over different species and same species? At what point does one creature cease to be even comparable to another if ever? And when does power become so vast over another species that,the undominant species begins to be subserviant?
How do all of those questions and their answers, tie together and create Gods and worshipers?
That proverb on ants, how is it dissected or translated to be a part of these questions and answers?
Under what context was the omnipotence of God revealed and what was the original wording?
I see no reason why this couldn’t be an expediency issue.
Humans are limited by the physicality of the body. We know our limits, a physical body under fundamental physical priniciples of a physical Universe.
tentative already gave you the answer, omnipotence is an abstraction for what can never be: power without limit.
The question is invalid, therefore any attempt to answer is invalid. No matter how you stroke it, you come up empty on both ends.
It’s about logical paradox. When something is a paradox, it loses meaning.
God cannot make a rock so heavy He cannot lift it, because that is a meaningless statement.
God cannot defy logic. He is still, however, all-powerful.
I apologize to Bane for not answering this earlier (determinism thread, I think). I sincerely thought he was joking. Unless everyone in this thread is joking… ?
Oh well.
Icthus
The reason I created this thread was to point out that this is a meaningless statement, Icthus. If the point of the rock paradox is to show that omnipotence is incoherent, then you can’t presume omnipotence in your conclusion. There is nothing meaningless about “a rock so heavy God can’t lift it”, unless you presume omnipotence, which is the very thing under investigation. Here’s a better formulation of the stone paradox, from The Coherence of Theism, by Swinburne, which he quotes from Wade Savage:
See how under this formlation, omnipotence doesn’t enter into it until the end? Situations 2 and 3 are clearly not meaningless statements, and don’t require God to do the impossible, since clearly other beings can do the same thing- I can roll up a snowball that I cannot lift.
Trust me, I’m not joking. The answer you’ve given, which is the answer most commonly given, does not work.
My real name:
Yes.
Uccisore,
The following explanation works for both formulations of the argument:
– note: I do not endorse the entire site.
Our limits are unknown since we have yet to reach the end of humanity.
You can’t have an abstract while dealing with limits. Omnipotence may well not have limits but, we can’t know that.
If Omnipotence is abstract then that gives the user alot of leeway for its use.
I think Xunzian has a very valid point,
Might be best to address this.
In this case, neither you nor Xunzian have a point.
The body is physical, period, limited, period. That is the end of the line.
Omnipotence is an imagined state that cannot exist. God has never been “revealed”. I saw a cloud yesterday that I thought was a dolphin battling a shark, but it wasn’t, it was just water vapor that my mind abstracted into something understandable from a sensory perception.
I don’t know what planet your definition of omnipotence comes from, but here on Earth, omnipotence has one meaning, and it isn’t arguable: power without limit, with the type of power not being a matter of contention.
Did you read what I wrote about Identity?
If any “thing” were to POSSESS omnipotence along with whatever else defines it’s identity… then that “thing” could still not defy it’s own identity without becoming “nothing” for lack of a better word… If omnipotence means being without limit… then all things omnipotent would be without identity.
- A is omnipotent
- Anything omnipotent is without limit.
- A is therefor also B,C,D,E,F,G,… ect
- B,C,D,E,F,G,… ect are therefor also omnipotent
Making it utterly meaningless… everything would be omnipotent… You would be unable to seperate the omnipotent “thing” from all other things… since tere is no identity to speak of… but in fact… infinite indentities would be contained… and then some…
Now if u wish to argue that we humans are limited to logic but that an omnipotet being is not… and that the impossible seperation i’ve pointed out above is not impossible for the omnipotent entity… then I’m going to graciously bow out of this conversation… Without logic we cannot communicate nor comprihend and if you insist on retaining an idea that is irrational and that you yourself cannot make sense of… then you are more than welcome to do so…
Mad Man,
Yes of course. Anything omnipotent contains all. But the theist would argue that all IS god, right? That we could separate ourselves from omnipotence is illusory and pointless, which I thought was apparent. So too all attempts to define limits and conditions to the term. This whole thread is meaningless by concept.
I don’t believe my statements were irrational and I believe that I have made perfect sense of the concept. I’m not the one trying to twist the snake here…
To the ant we are omnipotent as God is omnipotent to us… We being an ant compared to a god would you really argue with it? If it truly exists and it wants us to perceive it as you alls omnipotent definition, By all the Gods in hell that sucker can have its definition. I am not going to argue with it. I learned in grade school there are just some things you don’t mess with.
If this God can create a rock so huge that even it can’t lift it, I really don’t want to think of the possible size it would have to be. Either way its beyond our capabilities and pretty darn awesome and pretty darn omnipotent compared to us. Lets don’t tick it off and make it throw a god sized boulder at us Okey Dokey? 
Now it does not mean that it does not have limits but, it does mean that compared to us, it has no limits. That my friends is the point. Our omnipotent Gods are omnipotent to us, not perhaps to others.
Arguing with something that can crush you with a thought ought to be done for a better reason than my daddy is stronger than your daddy type of argument.
If I was going to argue with Gods about power, then I would fight it over the injustice sending good caring souls to evil places just because the souls don’t believe. That I would argue with a god about, to not do so would be treasonous to the human species and against all good morals and ethics.
The problem Icthus, is that all of the bolded examples you give are impossible in themselves. I can’t make a square circle. I can’t make a 60 year old man. I can’t make a free creature unable to choose evil. But a rock so big I cannot lift it is not an impossible object at all. A rock so big God can’t lift it is an impossible object only if we presume God is omnipotent, which requires us to presume that omnipotence is logically coherent, which is the very thing under investigation, so it’s circular.
To put it another way, you say “A rock God can’t lift” is impossible, so He can’t create it. It’s “A rock God can’t create” just as impossible? Also, I think your argument relies on lifting the rock as a function of high weight. But it doesn’t have to be that way. There’s no reason God couldn’t create a rock with the property “unliftable” for reasons that have nothing to do with it’s size- there’s nothing logically impossible about doing so, and there’s no reason to suppose that God’s ability to make things unliftable exceeds His ability to lift them- to pick one of the other other is arbitrary.
I’m assuming that the only way P could be considered omnipotent is that P would choose never to design something that P couldn’t lift…and that P’s the only entity that has this choice.
Or that P would not be limited to logical possibility, because P is omnipotent. Therefore, the whole scenario (creating rock and rock too heavy) wouldn’t apply to P in the first place. It makes for a rather short answer, lol.
But from my viewpoint (one admittedly not popular with the God folk), this couldn’t work when it comes to God, because humans invented God and unless and until the human mind finds an alternative to thinking dualistically, humans cannot transcend logic. So God has to follow the rules of the human mind.
Ingenium,
Once one proposes a concept that transcends human thought, we’re done. Seems rather simple, doesn’t it? But twisting the snake is sooooo much fun! 
Ingenium
I'm impressed! That's actually the reason why the paradox isn't a paradox, yes. God could create such a rock, but it doesn't matter. His power isn't restricted [i]unless He does[/i]. If P can do anything at time [i]t[/i], and 'anything' includes the capability to restrict Himself, then even if He exercises that ability at [i]t+1[/i], He can still do anything at [i]t[/i].
So, even if that plays out- God can do anything, then He creates an object beyond His influence, and that places new restrictions on what He can do, at no point in that process has the concept of omnipotence been shown to be incoherent. So, the answer to the rock question is yes, He could.
??? Which is absolutely pointless…
Yes, an argument to show that something thought to be paradoxical in fact is not can be rather anti-climactic.
People who believe in an omnipotent being don’t concern themselves with how much God can lift. 
They’re too busy believing in their faith in telling others about how they feel about God.
This is nonsense. How does one know God’s limitations?