The Paradox of the Burrito

On a recent episode of The Simpsons, a stoned Homer confronted his religiously minded neighbor Ned Flanders with a question that completely stumped the Bible-thumper. Homer asked, "Could Jesus himself microwave a burrito so hot that he himself could not eat it?" This paradox left not only Ned completely speechless and dumbfounded, but also several of the individuals that were watching the show along with me. Luckily, I had previously studied a question of the sort, namely the "Paradox of the Stone," and was more than happy to explain to my friends the solution after the show was over. The purpose of this paper is to describe the "Paradox of the Stone" and the issues that it raises in regards to the omnipotence of God. I also intend to present and critique responses from philosophers, which attempt to solve the paradox, and show the reasons for my accepting or denying their claims. In describing these arguments, I plan to trace my quest for the answer to the problematic question of the stone, and show how I reached a satisfied conclusion.

To begin, the paradox must be explained. Apparently, the paradox has been around for a number of years, dating back to at least the medieval times, and has appeared in several various formulations. Many individuals have used differing versions of the paradox in order to correspond with their specific argument, so there is not one official version of the paradox. My summary of the argument is as follows:

(1) Either God can create a rock so big that God cannot lift it or God cannot create a rock so big that God cannot lift it.

(2) If God can create a rock so big that God cannot lift it, then there is something that God cannot do, namely lift the rock that God has created.

(3) If God cannot create a rock so big that God cannot lift it, then there is something that God cannot do, namely create the rock that God cannot lift.

Therefore, following from (2) and (3), there is at least one thing that God cannot do, because either (2) or (3) must be true, and both contain proof that there is at least one thing that God cannot do.

This argument is a very straightforward, powerful attempt to undermine the assumed omnipotence of God, and if proven to be a valid argument, it can completely disrupt the theists� concept of a wholly perfect Deity. Some philosophers have even used a version of the argument in attempt to prove that God does not exist. These individuals start with the claim that God is by definition omnipotent. They then use the "Paradox of the Stone" to show that there is at least one thing that God cannot do, thus negating God�s omnipotence. Therefore, there is no God, since God is not omnipotent. My initial response to hearing the "Paradox of the Stone" was one of complete disbelief. The argument appeared valid upon first glance and for several days I was left flabbergasted at its conclusion. The ideas of God and omnipotence no longer seemed to be a working pair, so one of the two must give way in order for the other to remain somewhat intact, but choosing which one was a decision that I did not know how to make. My concept of God not only included omnipotence, but also omniscience, benevolence, eternality, and other qualities that I had merely assumed that a perfect being should have. If God is not omnipotent, the other qualities are challenged as well. My definition of omnipotence was one that I had simply held for the majority of my life, specifically that a being that is omnipotent is a being that can do absolutely anything. I decided that either my concept of God must change or my definition of omnipotence, and so, I began looking for theistic responses to the "Paradox of the Stone." In my search, I discovered that many had recently responded to the argument, but the majority fell under three main categories. The three distinctions are as follows:

(1) An omnipotent being can decide at a specific time, for instance time T, to not be omnipotent at another time, such as time M. Therefore, God could create a rock at time T, and decide at time M to be unable to lift it.

(2) An omnipotent being can create a rock so big that an omnipotent being cannot lift it, and after its creation, an omnipotent being can then lift the rock.

and

(3) An omnipotent being cannot perform actions that are contrary to the possibilities of logic, and the concept of a rock so big that an omnipotent being cannot lift it is not a logical possibility. This is not a limitation on omnipotence, but rather a better understanding of what it means for a being to be omnipotent.

Each of the three responses seeks to give omnipotence back to God, but in obviously different ways. Likewise, adhering to a particular response meant that I must modify my conception of God and omnipotence, and of course, some required that I adjust more than others. To discover which, if any, of the counter-arguments to the "Paradox of the Stone" truly did answer my dilemma, a closer examination and critique of the three became necessary.

The first response that I looked at in detail was one brought forth primarily by Richard Swinburne. In The Coherence of Theism, Swinburne argues that to solve the paradox, a temporal constraint must be utilized in addition to new thought of omnipotence. According to Swinburne, an omnipotent being could decide at a certain time to not be omnipotent at another time. Using this method, God could create a rock while being omnipotent, and later, after setting aside omnipotence, attempt to lift the rock and fail. Therefore, it is not an omnipotent being that is failing to lift the rock, but rather a formerly omnipotent being. Basically, this argument presents an explanation that sidesteps the failure of an omnipotent being to perform some certain action.

The first objection that came to mind regarding this argument was the claim that God is bound by time. My understanding of the Deity had held that God is not trapped in a linear mode of time, which humans obviously live in, but rather is "timeless" and in a state of constant presence. In Is There a God?, Swinburne stresses his claim of a temporal constraint for God, stating, "I prefer the understanding of God being eternal as his being everlasting rather than as his being timeless. He exists at each moment of unending time." However, a belief in a temporal Deity would lead to further issues regarding determinism and divine foreknowledge, bringing up issues of the possibility for human free will. Swinburne sees this problem, and questions whether or not God has the ability to know the outcome of free actions by humans, thus challenging God�s omniscience. From my perspective, these were problems that brought trouble to my belief in the validity of the argument, but were not enough to completely prove the falsity of the claim.

The next question that arose dealt with God�s ability to give up certain characteristics that I had always believed to be aspects that made God truly God. After all, if God can give up omnipotence, even for a time, then it is not unreasonable to assume that God can give up other qualities as well. This ability to forego essential aspects could have catastrophic effects on both God and man. If we assume that God can set aside omniscience, it would seem possible that God could very well forget how to gain it back again. Likewise, God could just say "Enough Mr. Nice Guy," toss away benevolence, and proceed to torture innocent human beings for a good laugh. God could speed up the rotation of the earth until every human being got sick or create a giant Godzilla to run rampant on Tokyo. I could not help but chuckle when I imagined a different conclusion to the book of Job. Rather than an awesome and powerful God showing Job how insignificant and miniscule he is, God instead simply shrugs his shoulders and says to Job, "I gave up being wholly good for a while, so I cannot be held responsible for whatever I did."

Similar to my first objection, this new critique did not knock down Swinburne�s response to the paradox. The two problems did make accepting the argument very difficult, however. If Swinburne�s response is valid, then a further examination of the qualities of God must be undertaken. God would necessarily have to be a being in temporal reality as well as a being that can change for the better or worse. These consequences open up further issues and problems about the Deity that can and have exhausted several papers and books. So, while Swinburne�s argument was not completely proven to be false in my eyes, it was also not completely shown to be successful. I completed my critique of this response with the hopes that other arguments would work better than Swinburne�s.

The second attempt at solving the paradox that I studied was an argument explained by Harry Frankfurt. This claim states that it is in fact possible for God to create a rock so big that God cannot lift it, but rather than follow this statement with the conclusion that therefore there is at least one thing God cannot do, Frankfurt argues that after the creation of the rock, God can then lift the rock. This response to the paradox gives full power to the omnipotence of God, claiming that God can perform one impossible act and then follow it by performing an equally impossible act.

Even with my definition that omnipotence is the ability to do absolutely anything, something about this argument seemed flawed. If God were to create a rock that is so big that God could not lift it, the rock�s defining feature would be that God could not lift it, and if God could lift it, then it would not truly be a rock that God could not lift. So, the entire idea that God could create such a rock and then lift it is completely incoherent.

I quickly noticed that my definition of omnipotence needed to be changed. After realizing the chaotic nature of a claim like Frankfurt�s, I began pondering on other possible incoherent statements and items. For instance, if I held that God can do anything, then it must be possible for God to create a being that is greater than God. However, my concept of God described God as the absolute best possible being, so there could be no being greater than God. With my aforementioned claim of omnipotence, this limitation of God not being able to create a greater being would mean that God was not omnipotent. Another problem was the question of whether God could both exist and not exist. If God has unlimited abilities, it must be possible. Also, a being with the ability to do anything must be able to create illogical things such as squared circles and unmarried bachelors and other contradictory items that are by definition a certain way and cannot be altered and still be considered an item of the certain type. In my thinking about God, I believed God to be a Deity of order and coherence, not of chaos and contradiction.

I continued looking for a better solution to the paradox, as well as a suitable definition of omnipotence, and to my surprise, I found just about everything that I was searching for in a response to the paradox by George Mavrodes. Mavrodes argues that God�s omnipotence only reaches as far as being able to enact those things that are logical possibilities, and states, "On the assumption that God is omnipotent, the phrase �a stone too heavy for God to lift� becomes self-contradictory. For it becomes �a stone which cannot be lifted by Him whose power is sufficient for lifting anything.�" An omnipotent being would be able to lift rocks of any size, so there could not possibly be a rock that an omnipotent being could not lift. God�s inability to create such a rock is not a limitation of God�s power, but rather an example of an action that is logically impossible for God to do. This shows that things that are illogical are not possible and therefore considered to be nothing. A being that is omnipotent can still do everything, for actions that are not logically possible are not anything at all. This view of omnipotence changed my definition of the term from "the ability to do anything" to "the ability to do anything that is logically possible."

In trying to understand how a rock so big that God cannot lift it is not a logical possibility, I developed several illustrations and analogies that proved the point. Many critiques of this solution to the paradox argue against the impossibility of such a rock, so a greater analysis and detailing becomes necessary. The following few paragraphs may seem redundant and overstated, but my intention is to prove beyond all doubt that the rock is not a logical possibility.

Let us assume that God is omniscient, which for our purposes will be defined that God knows everything that is possible to be known. With this knowledge, God would be able to answer every single question that one could possibly think of, so there would be no such thing as a question that God does not know the answer to. Now, if we attempt to challenge God�s omniscience by asking, "Can God think of a question that God does not know the answer to?" following the logic of the "Paradox of the Stone," we would have to claim that there is at least one thing that God does not know, namely a question that God does not know the answer to. This is seen to be absurd, for an all-knowing being knows the answer to all questions, so the inability to ask such a question is only further proof of the omniscience of the being. Even if a human knew everything there is to know about a specific topic, such as computers, to say that this computer genius does not know all about computers because he or she cannot think of a question about computers that he or she does not know the answer to, is absolutely ridiculous. The fact that there is in reality no question about computers that the individual does not know the answer to shows that the question is a logical impossibility, and the failure to ask such a question does not show a limitation on their knowledge, just as the failure of an omnipotent being to create the rock is not a limitation on omnipotence.

In thinking about the paradox, I realized that switching the words "create" and "lift," caused God�s ability to lift to be challenged, as opposed to God�s creative power, and reading the paradox this way helped me to see the logical problems for the existence of such a rock. To ask, "Can God lift a rock that is so big that God cannot create it?" appears much more illogical than the original paradox, but the challenge to God�s omnipotence is basically identical. To then say, "God either can or cannot lift a rock that is so big that God cannot create it, and this proves that there is something that God cannot do," is absurd. If God is omnipotent, then the power to lift and create are both equally almighty, and thus, the rock is a logical impossibility.

Finally, I attempted to picture a scene in which God�s creative power and God�s lifting power were in a winner-take-all competition. A giant arena is full of spectators, millions are watching via satellite, and the two combatant forces are ready to put on a show. Right out of the starting blocks, God creates a rock bigger than anyone has ever seen before. The crowd goes crazy, thinking this will be a short battle, but while lost in their emotions, God walks over and lifts the gigantic rock. An eerie calm falls over the audience, until God suddenly creates a new rock, twice as big as the last one. Undaunted, God flexes his lifting muscles and picks up the rock, never breaking a sweat. The competition lasts for days, with neither side showing signs of fatigue, while the rocks keep getting bigger and bigger. Eventually, the crowd gets bored, and as the last remaining spectator leaves the arena and the last viewer turns off the television, God looks around and realizes that the point has been made. With omnipotence, God can create rocks of any size and God can lift rocks of any size, so there is no such thing as a rock that God cannot create just as there is no such thing as a rock that God cannot lift. If the competition had continued, there never would have been a winner, for both powers are equally absolute.

In further research, I noticed that some philosophers have questioned and disputed Mavrodes� methods for stating why the rock is a logical impossibility, but these philosophers still find the claim under differing arguments. One such philosopher is C. Wade Savage, who presents an alternate version of the paradox that replaces the word "God" with an arbitrary term standing for any being and attempts to prove that the arbitrary being was not omnipotent. Savage claims that Mavrodes� solution does not work for this version of the paradox, and in its place, Savage provides what he considers to be a better argument. He looks at the statement "x cannot create a stone which x cannot lift" and shows that it could possible mean "If x can create a stone, then x can lift it" which proves that the former statement does not imply "There is a task which x cannot perform." Basically, if an omnipotent being can create and lift rocks of any size, then the being cannot create a rock that it cannot lift, but this is not due to a limitation of power. So, Savage finds the exact same answer as Mavrodes, only with a different method.

I believed that I had been successful in finding a solution to the paradox that did not bring about a drastic change in my concept of God or my definition of omnipotence. Without knowing it, I actually realized that my definition of omnipotence had in actuality always been that an omnipotent being is a being that can do anything within the realms of logic. My claim about the being having the ability to do anything at all was just a pointless statement that had never been disputed. I set aside my books and notes, confident at the answer that I had found and reassured that a strong challenge to long-held beliefs could only bring about good.

In conclusion, the "Paradox of the Stone" appeared at first to be a legitimate proof that there could be no omnipotent being. After researching three common responses to the paradox, I found that the first two failed to meet my demands for a successful answer, but the last one successfully solved the paradox and instituted a new understanding in my mind on the meaning of omnipotence. Even though new formulations of the paradox have arisen, changing aspects of my version in attempt to maintain the impossibility of omnipotence, the solution remains the same. Whenever specifically dealing with an omnipotent power, and not just with a flawed being, a rock or other item that the being cannot create or lift is not a logical possibility. Now, as for Homer�s question, the "Paradox of the Burrito," if Jesus was omnipotent and if his human body could handle heat of any temperature, then there is no such thing as a burrito so hot that Jesus could not eat it. You can rest easy Flanders. There is a solution to your dilemma.

Bibliography

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Frankfurt, Harry G., �The Logic of Omnipotence�. In The Power of God: Readings on Omnipotence and Evil. Edited by Linwood Urban and Douglas N. Walton. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.

Mavrodes, George I., �Some Puzzles Concerning Omnipotence�. In The Power of God: Readings on Omnipotence and Evil. Edited by Linwood Urban and Douglas N. Walton. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.

Savage, Wade C., �The Paradox of the Stone�. In Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings. Edited by William L. Rowe and William J. Wainwright. New York/ Chicago/ San Francisco/ Atlanta: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1973.

Swinburne, Richard. The Coherence of Theism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.

-----. Is There a God?. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.