Thursday, March 4, 2010

Self-contradiction

Peter Kreeft, in a lecture series about St. Thomas, acknowledges a common philosophical mistake about God:

"Another attack on the meaningfulness of Aquinas’s concept of God is this: Some say that the concept of omnipotence, or infinite power, is self-contradictory, and therefore meaningless. They ask whether God can make a rock bigger than He can lift, and if you say yes, then they say there can be something bigger than even God’s power can lift, so God is not infinitely powerful; but if you say no, then they say there is something God can’t do, so again His power is not infinite.

"But the linguistic confusion is in that question, not in the concept of God that the question questions; for “a rock bigger than infinite power can lift” is a self-contradictory concept, but “infinite power” is not itself a self-contradictory concept. So the simple answer to the question is: No, God can’t make a rock bigger than He can lift any more than He can make anything else that’s self-contradictory and therefore meaningless."

If you don't accept this answer, then you don't have a problem with God, you have a problem with the notion of self-contradiction.

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