The question of whether or not God could create a rock too heavy for him to lift is a bit more interesting. Is omnipotence necessarily a permanent condition? I don't think so. I think God could relieve himself of his powers, if we wanted. Or he could simply create one obstacle that he could not overcome, as in the rock example, and he would still be nearly omnipotent, but not quite.
Wow, there is actually an intelligent person in here! That is a rare find! Anyhow, onto the question. If God were to render himself not omnipotent, he would be rendering himself not God. So, I think that ultimately, the question of could God create a rock that was too heavy for God to lift can only be answered as none of the above. I don't think the question is answerable. Because in either a yes or a no answer, you run up against God not being omnipotent, and that is not possible. Either God is omnipotent, or God is not God.
Now granted, in some religious traditions, some forms of deity are limited in power in some form or other. For example, Jesus as God does not have unlimited physical power. He cannot lift a very heavy rock. In fact, he is limited to the strengths and weaknesses of a human being.
Obviously, I am not a Christian, so I do not believe that last paragraph, or the following that I am about to write. But go with me a bit on this.
Jesus is God incarnate. He is subject to all the limitations of a human. He presumably gets hot and cold the way we do. He presumably eats and drinks, and gets hungry and thirsty (in fact, the NT talks of him being hungry and thirsty) the way we do. I assume he has body functions (ie, he goes to the potty) the way we do.
And yet, he is God. Limited, and yet God. Now, in God's form as the Trinity, as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, he is Omnipotent, Omnibenevolent, and Omniscient.
Obviously, I think this is all hooey, but that is the way the Christians explain it. So it is that God can be perceived in some forms to be limited as well as limitless.
But taking the Jewish God as he has always been understood, there is no way to answer the question because he could never surrender any part of his omnipotence without also surrendering his very Godhood itself.
The question of whether or not God could create a rock too heavy for him to lift is a bit more interesting. Is omnipotence necessarily a permanent condition? I don't think so. I think God could relieve himself of his powers, if we wanted. Or he could simply create one obstacle that he could not overcome, as in the rock example, and he would still be nearly omnipotent, but not quite.
What if God did indeed create a rock too large for him to control, but the rock was actually the universe which explains why he seems mostly absent from it?
*keanu reeves*
That is certainly an interesting question. And far more relevant that the idiocies I have mostly been dealing with today. But I think the answer remains the same. If God were to create a rock (whether it were the universe or any other thing) that were too large for God to control, then that would render God not omnipotent, and therefore not God.
I think the reason you perceive God to be mostly absent from the universe is because as you understand it, God should be working miracles the way the Bible records him doing in olden times. But, lets look at that fairly. The prophecy went out of Israel after Malachi died. Why? Well, I don't have a firm answer for you, but I suspect that it was no longer necessary. We were ready to live on our own by then.
That having been said, do bad things happen, and do we often wonder why God permits such? Sure. The answer is much simpler than people realise. We live in a fallen world. Ever since our first parents sinned against God (however you choose to interpret the Genesis story, whether literally or figuratively), and discovered their loss of innocence, the world has been a pretty hard place in which to live. In toil shalt thou live, and with the sweat of thy brow shalt thou bring forth bread from the earth. It takes work to live, and the world was no longer our friend. Mother nature turned on us. The world turned on us. God himself knew that we could no longer merit innocence. We had our freedom that we had taken from the tree of good and evil (again, however you wish to interpret that). Now we must learn to live with it. Evil entered to world and would henceforth be with us. There was nothing we were going to do at that point to stop it.
The Greeks have a similar story about Pandora's Box that they tell about how evil enters the world. The point of both stories is that evil enters the world through disobedience. However you choose to interpret either story (literally or metaphorically) is your business. As a Jew I would find the Greek tale metaphorical. The Genesis story, well, that's more debatable, but to be honest, I don't know. And as far as this discussion goes, it doesn't matter. What matters is that God did not create evil as such. Evil simply is.
In fact, if you go with an Augustinian definition of Evil, then Evil is not existent. It is non-existence, namely, the non-existence of Good. So to exist is a greater good than to not exist. This is the basis for the Argument from Ontology of Anselm.
1. I can conceive of a being a greater than which cannot possibly be conceived.
2. Existence is better than non-existence.
3. Ergo, God exists.
So, because of mankind's rebellion against an all powerful God, an all Good God, we live with evil in our midst. It isn't because God is absent. It is because Good is less present in our world than it should be, through our own actions which have made this so. Could God make this otherwise? I suppose he could. But that would be to eliminate our free will. Why would he do that, and make us robots? So, there you are.