"Can God make a rock so big He can't lift it?"
This question, often posed to theists, is meant to show that God can't really be all-powerful. If God can't make the rock, then He's not all-powerful, but if He can make the rock, then He can't lift it, so He's still not all-powerful. How does the theist answer this question? Yes or no? Or maybe it's a mystery that we can't understand?
The answer is no. God cannot make a rock so big He can't lift it; in fact, this rock can never, ever, ever, ever, ever exist. The phrase "a rock so big God can't lift it" does not correspond to anything that either potentially or actually exists; it's a contradiction, a nothing. There's no possible rock that an omnipotent being can't lift. While we can think of words to describe it, they don't really mean anything. To explain this concept more clearly, I will use another contradiction, a four-sided triangle.
Picture a square in your head. Now picture a pentagon. Now picture a triangle. Now picture a four-sided triangle. You can't. Why can't you picture a four-sided triangle? Because it doesn't correspond to anything. Now, one may object that we can't picture it because we don't know what it would look like. We can't picture atoms in our heads, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. Here's the difference.
Picture a triangle. You can see it? Good. Picture the color blue (just a spot of blue, not necessarily on anything). See it? Excellent. Now picture any four-sided figure. Got it? Good. Now, let's try to put some of them together. Picture a blue triangle. Easy enough, right? Now picture a blue four-sided figure. Peace of cake! Now picture a four-sided triangle. Still can't do it, can you? That's because "four-sided" is not a possible characteristic of a triangle. It can be blue, but it can't be four-sided; there's just no such thing.
If you say, "Can God make a four-sided triangle," you might as well say, "Can God make an oogly boogly?" What exactly is an oogly boogly? There's no such thing; it doesn't mean anything. However, you can still say, "An omnipotent being can't make an oogly boogly," and be consistent. The term "oogly boogly," like a four-sided triangle, doesn't mean anything, so if God were to try to make it, there would be nothing to make. Now, you might object that while "oogly boogly" is a bunch of gibberish, "four-sided triangle" is a phrase made up of actual words that have actual meanings. Even though these words have meanings, when you put them together, they don't have any meaning because it's a contradiction. Just because you can think of words to describe something doesn't mean it means anything. For example, if I were to say, "The dirt read air," it wouldn't mean anything. I can think of words to describe it, but it doesn't mean anything.
As we can see, a contradiction can't exist, and a rock so big that an all-powerful being can't lift it is a contradiction. Therefore, it can't exist, so saying that God can't make it doesn't limit His omnipotence.
