If you have some expertise in the area of Christian Apologetics, we are looking for instructors to help us take I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist to students and churches around the country. Greg Koukl and Brett Kunkle of Stand to Reason, and Jason Reed of Southern Evangelical Seminary will join me, Frank Turek, in leading the CrossExamined Instructor Academy (CIA), August 13-15 in Charlotte, NC. Hank Hanegraaff, The Bible Answerman, will join us for a special Q and A on Wednesday night August 13. This is a great opportunity for you to make an impact through apologetics. But hurry– the application deadline is June 24. Click here for details.?
Can God do Anything? Can he create a stone so big that he cannot move it?
Part 1
In a response to one of our readers, I said that God cannot do anything. The reader responded?
“Then what about Miracles.”
In another post an atheist reader said:
“… God can suspend the law of gravity. God can make 2+2=5 if it suits his purpose …..”
But this seems to indicate a misunderstanding of the Christian God.
So let me see if I can clarify the Christian concept of God. I won’t try to speak for the god of any other religion or myth or a god of anyone’s personal creation. Why? Because that is only limited by your imagination.
In addition do understand that what I am about to present to you is Theology. That is, I maybe able to prove some of these concepts to you, but I can’t prove them all. However I do think that they are all rational, logical and self consistent. So take them as information to understand how Christian philosophers and how most of us on this site view God.
- God cannot do “anything.”
From the writings of the great Christian theologians, thinkers, scientists and philosophers, and from the Bible, we can derive the following of characteristics of the First Cause, uncaused Creator:
God cannot do anything which is not actually possible, for example contrary to the statement above, He cannot make 2+2=5,
He cannot stop being God,
He cannot make a round square in 2 dimensional space,
He cannot make black actually be white,
He cannot paint a door black with red paint bought from Home Depot and no added chemicals and no added activity on his part,
He cannot give someone freedom of choice in an area and then not let them choose in that area.
After all it would seem fallacious and irrational to try to argue that the source of all rationality could be irrational itself.
Here are some more:
He cannot sin,
He cannot cease to exist.
He cannot “not” be God.
He cannot make another God.
He cannot allow anything else to become God.
He cannot be irrational.
He cannot be evil.
He cannot be lonely.
He cannot be unhappy.
He cannot have unmet needs.
He cannot begin to exist.
He cannot forget.
He cannot learn anything new (at least as far as we understand).
The last few imply that He cannot change his mind (because that would mean he’d learned some new information or remembered something He’d forgotten, He can however have always planned to do something different at a certain point in time, or plan to respond to a certain event in a specific way).
And he certainly cannot create a stone so big that he cannot move it. But we’ll cover that in a second blog.
So if someone asks you if God can do anything. Say “No.”
- The Miracles in the Bible are not “actually” impossible
As indicated in my blog of April 28th, Biblical Miracles do not fall into this category because they are not actually “impossible.” They are not irrational. Why do we say that? Well because any miracle or supernatural event recorded in the Bible could have been made to take place if enough technology, equipment or knowledge was available or if an extra-dimensional being was able to manipulate molecules, electrons, quarks or leptons. Look carefully, there are no truly impossible or irrational miracles in the Bible including the creation of the Universe and if an atheist were to suggest that creating matter from nothing is impossible, we’d say “Really, then why do you think it happened accidentally”.
By the way the feasibility of most of the Biblical miracles (short of creation) through technology is quite an interesting observation when you think about it. I doubt I can claim credit for it though, because, as with most things I think I have discovered, I always end up finding out that some other philosopher or theologian had already written about it 1000-2000 years ago.
An entry on my personal webpage titled “Is the Supernatural Impossible? Goes in to more detail about miracles (click for the link).
Let’s look briefly at the the water into wine miracle. The water was changed into wine most probably at the molecular level. It wasn’t water that was also wine (and while it could have been hypnotism, the passage indicates it wasn’t and anyway hypnotism isn’t “impossible”). He changed the water molecules into actual wine molecules (and very good wine at that). Was it synthetic wine? It probably was. (I say probably because of course he could have also swapped the water for pre-made wine – OK OK using the equivalent of a transporter beam…I’m a geek at heart).
What about dead men walking as in the case of those who came to life, again healing of tissue and reanimation of life (God created life to begin with – a merging of some multi-dimensional elements back to their original 4D ones) are all “possible” rational things. They are just not natural or common.
So we see none of these miracles are actually impossible.
Now it’s worth nothing that impossibility is usually seen best in philosophical or conceptual issues. E.g. making the square root of (-1) = 1. Or making the cube of 5, 124. All of which are rationally impossible.
You see making 1+1 = 3 or 2+2= 5 is not a matter of manipulating molecules. It is dealing with things at a much basic and in a sense a higher level. It’s dealing with things at the point of rationality. Mess with that and everything stops being cohesive, the universe starts to unravel, and you start to violate the very nature of God.
What about changing the laws of Gravity in the example. I would argue that God cannot change or suspend the laws of Gravity without having to then simultaneously attend to all the other effects of there being no Gravity. That’s not to say that he couldn’t also stop every individual thing from flinging out in to space using some other power, but the point is He would have to attend to it.
It’s of value to note that the original comment about Gravity by the atheist at the opening of this blog was said in the context of God being unable to be studied by science because he could change the laws of Gravity and we would not know about it. However, the nature of God being what it is and from the examples in the Biblical miracles, I tend to think that if God did do a miracle he would allow the side effects of the miracle to be apparent such that we could indeed measure it and see that an external agent had acted upon things. I also think that while God could indeed do things that cannot be studied by science, He could just as well do certain things that COULD be studied by science and point to him. So we cannot apriori assume that God did not do so. Maybe God has chosen to be able to be detected by Science. In which case would not science be the best way to detect him?
You cannot merely say that Science cannot prove God. If God wanted to, Science could indeed prove God. And contrary to what some believe, most Christians Theologians and Philosophers think that God HAS indeed chosen to leave his Fingerprint for us to detect. The question we are asking ourselves is “Why is he not more obvious about it?”, for that discussion you’ll have to wait for a future post titled “Why doesn’t God just show himself?” So for now know that the miracles in the Bible at not rationally or logically impossible.
- But I thought God was Omnipotent
(this section was updated with the definition of Pantocrator on 5/11/08 – I would like t
o express my appreciation to “db0” who allowed me to bounce these arguments off him and prompted this further expansion, I’m adding this back into the blog to allow people to see most of the argument in one place. )
God IS omnipotent (all powerful) but he is not omni-able (i.e. able to do “any”thing at least not anything irrational). The definition of power should not be confused with capability when it comes to the Christian God. There’s a clear distinction between the two. Christian theologians have long taught that God is all-powerful, not all capable when it comes to irrationality. And if you think about this, we see this as being tied into His character, His personality, His being. If God were to become irrational, it would violate his nature and he would cease to be God. God is a slave to his character (but then so are you).
But you say doesn’t the Bible say that God can do anything? Actually no, it does not. The word used in the Bible for Omni-Potent comes from the Greek word Pantocrator (Pantokrator). Pantocrator means all ruling. Almighty not all-capable. Let me explain.
When the Vulgate Manuscript was created as a translation from the Greek Septuagint (the Old Testament) into Latin, the Greek word Pantocrator was translated into the Latin “omnipotens”, which means having all the power (again note this is still technically correct as it means having power and strength not capability). The word is tied to rulers and ruling not to being all “capable.”
Over the recent years many Christians just started assuming that Omnipotence meant all capable and modern language uses it that way. But the original Greek and Hebrew do not support this. (BTW that’s what we think is infallible, the original Greek and Hebrew autographs written by the apostles and prophets. We don’t think the translations are or the copies are infallible.)
The KJV New Testament Greek Lexicon explains Pantocrator as:
Strong’s Number: 3841
pantokravtwr from (3956) and (2904)?
Transliterated Word TDNT Entry:?Pantokrator
Noun: Masculine?
Definition: he who holds sway over all things, the ruler of all, almighty: God
As you can see Pantocrator does not mean all capable even of irrational things. It just means powerful, mighty and ruler of all.
Hope this helps clarify where we stand.
Neil Mammen
By the way: Any errors in examples or theology are my errors and not those of the owners of this site.
Coming soon:
Part II. The correct response to: Can God create a stone so big that he cannot move it?
If you read the threads of several of the blog entries on this site, you will see both atheists and Christians charging one another with committing “logical fallacies.” The assumption both sides are making is that there is this objective realm of reason out there that: 1) we all have access to; 2) tells us the truth about the real world, and 3) is something we ought to use correctly if we want to know the truth. I think those are good assumptions. My question for the atheists is, how do you justify these assumptions if there is no God?
If atheistic materialism is true, it seems to me that reason itself is impossible. For if mental processes are nothing but chemical reactions in the brain, then there is no reason to believe that anything is true (including the theory of materialism). Chemicals can’t evaluate whether or not a theory is true. Chemicals don’t reason, they react.
This is ironic because atheists– who often claim to be champions of truth and reason– have made truth and reason impossible by their theory of materialism. So even when atheists are right about something, their worldview gives us no reason to believe them because reason itself is impossible in a world governed only by chemical and physical forces.
Not only is reason impossible in an atheistic world, but the typical atheist assertion that we should rely on reason alone cannot be justified. Why not? Because reason actually requires faith. As J. Budziszewski points out in his book What We Can’t Not Know, “The motto ‘Reason Alone!’ is nonsense anyway. Reason itself presupposes faith. Why? Because a defense of reason by reason is circular, therefore worthless. Our only guarantee that human reason works is God who made it.”
Let’s unpack Budziszewski’s point by considering the source of reason. Our ability to reason can come from one of only two sources: either our ability to reason arose from preexisting intelligence, or it did not, in which case it arose from mindless matter. The atheists/Darwinists/materialists believe, by faith, that our minds arose from mindless matter without intelligent intervention. I say “by faith” because it contradicts all scientific observations, which demonstrates that an effect cannot be greater than its cause. You can’t give what you haven’t got, yet atheists believe that dead, unintelligent matter has produced itself into intelligent life. This is like believing that the Library of Congress resulted from an explosion in a printing shop.
I think it makes much more sense to believe that the human mind is made in the image of the Great Mind– God. In other words, our minds can apprehend truth and can reason about reality because they were built by the Architect of truth, reality, and reason itself.
So I have two questions for atheists: 1) What is the source of this immaterial reality known as reason that we are all presupposing, utilizing in our discussions, and accusing one other of violating on occasion? And 2) If there is no God and we are nothing but chemicals, why should we trust anything we think, including the thought that there is no God?
Dr. Frank Turek (D.Min.) is an award-winning author and frequent college speaker who hosts a weekly TV show on DirectTV and a radio program that airs on 186 stations around the nation. His books include I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist and Stealing from God: Why atheists need God to make their case.
People on both sides of the abortion debate are frustrated with Rudy Giuliani (Giuliani vexes audiences with abortion views). On one hand, he says he thinks abortion is wrong, but on the other hand, he thinks it should remain legal. On still a third hand, he’d like to appoint the kind of judges that would likely overturn Roe vs. Wade. (Why can’t we find– as Harry Truman once said– a one-handed politician?)
Let’s CrossExamine Giuliani’s position(s):
- Saying that you are “personally opposed” to abortion but think a woman has a “right to choose” tries to carve out a third alternative that does not and can not exist. Either the unborn child is a human being or it is not. There is no third alternative. (BTW, this is a fundamental law of logic called the law of the excluded middle.)
- Mr. Giuliani is essentially saying that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare,” as President Clinton once said. But that’s like saying that slavery should be “safe, legal and rare.” If abortion takes the life of an innocent human being, then why should it be legal? And if it doesn’t take the life of an innocent human being, then why should it be rare?
- Giuliani’s position is a logical mess because relativism is false– personal beliefs don’t change the nature of the baby. A women’s choice (or anyone’s choice for that matter) does not change the status of an unborn child. Unborn children are human beings regardless of what some people think of them, just like Jews are human beings regardless of what Hitler thought about them (for the scientific evidence regarding the humanity of the unborn see our book Legislating Morality Chapter 10).