Atheism

Paradox of the Stone

2005 August 01 - filed under Atheism.

One of the delightful ways atheists have of tormenting believers is through the logical puzzle known as the Paradox of the Stone.

Paraphrased, it goes something like this: If God exists, he is omnipotent. If God is omnipotent, he can create a stone he cannot lift. But if he cannot lift it, then he isn't omnipotent. And if he can't create it, he isn't omnipotent, either. Thus, God isn't omnipotent, and therefore doesn't exist.

Before vanishing in an Douglas Adams puff of logic, God could offer the Standard Solution to the paradox (see Mavrodes (1963) for one presentation), which has been widely accepted by theists for decades. It argues that since God is omnipotent, 'A stone he cannot lift' makes about as much sense as a 'square circle', a thing which is impossible.

This is not a valid rebuttal, since it starts by assuming that God is indeed omnipotent – the very point the paradox is trying to invalidate.

Enter Brown and Nagasawa (2005), who go about it differently. The standard solution says the paradox is fallacious because it contains a false premise; they argue that it is fallacious because it is question-begging. The details are in their paper, but they end with a delightful illustration:

Suppose that Lisa can hold her own child in her arms but that Nick cannot hold his child in his arms. In such circumstances, Lisa might claim: "Nick, I have an ability that you lack – that is, the ability to hold one's own child." On the face of it her claim is correct. However, if one examines it carefully by focusing on the word 'one', then one finds that Lisa is misleadingly comparing two different abilities. The one is Lisa's ability to hold, say, her one-year-old baby, and the other is Nick's ability to hold, say, his forty-seven-year-old son. It is misleading to compare those two different abilities as if they are the same.

References

Brown, C. & Nagasawa, Y. (2005) Anything you can do, God can do better. American Philosophical Quarterly, 42(3), 221-227.

Mavrodes, G.I. (1963) Some puzzles concerning omnipotence. Philosophical Review, 72, 221-233.

Reader comments

2006 August 13 by [ BD ]

I've read the rebuttal on your page by Brown & buddy.

I must be unusually dense today - their argument seems as coherent as Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Was it meant as a joke?

More seriously - the stony paradox can be rephrased "I bet you cannot do something that you cannot do." Heads I win, tails you loose. It's a classic dilemma tactic - compared many times to the horns of a bull. If the right don't get you then the left one will.

When I was about 15-ish I came up with something similar - which I sprung on my Religious Instruction teacher Fr Middlewick during class... Given that "God" is omniscient, he/she/they/it must have known the future outcome of every action from the beginning of the Universe to its end. Ergo there was either no reason to create the Universe except to torment its inhabitants, or God is irrational.

I was excused further attendance lest I spread my pagan rationality any further.

Of couse, dilemmas are generally constructed as word traps so that you get screwed whichever way you go. Lawyers do it for a living, which is why the rest of the world despises them. One of the ancient Greeks (Aristotle?) offered a way out of a dilemma - you can try to sing the bull to sleep.

Excretum tauri mens ingenium confuscere.

Keywords: Atheism, skeptic, critical thinking, secular humanism, agnostic

This website is licensed under an attribution-noncommercial 2.5 creative commons license and is © 2005-2007 Auke Slotegraaf.

Words of wisdom: "At Poltersberg, there is a lake similarly cursed. If you throw a stone into it, a dreadful storm immediately arises, and the whole neighboring district quakes to its centre. Tis the devils kept prisoner there." – Martin Luther, German leader of the Protestant Revolution.