Could God Create a Stone That Was
Too Heavy For God to Lift?
by Rycke Foreman
While most folks are inclined to answer “No” (denying God’s ability to use his creative power as opposed to his strength seems to gel better with most people--huh?--), applying a basic "knowledge" about God would lead one to believe otherwise.
Before we go any further, however, we should start by defining the parameters of the assumptions brought up by the question. First, that the god involved is the Christian God, YHWH, or Yahweh (Jehovah, Anglicized) and not Vishnu, Ra or Zeus (for whom I am less qualified to answer). Second, that God is the Ultimate Creator, responsible not only for the physical universe but also for the very fabric that makes up the universe. Next, that God's attributes are gathered from the Bible--the belief that God created everything (and other elements of His being, such as his reputed perfect perfectness, unlimited dynamic power and that he always tells the truth). Finally, the question assumes that Christians believe God can do anything: i.e., he can create as much matter out of “thin air” as he would need in order to assemble this unliftable stone.
In other words, if God is the cause of all things, then nothing he would wish to do should be unachievable. But, of course, the riddle--in rather mocking tones--points out that God either does not have the power to create a "simple" stone, or that there is, in fact, a limit to his assertion of unlimited power. In many ways, it seems to question God’s superiority, or whether God can even exist, because nothing is supposed to be impossible for the Supreme Intelligence, yet mere mortal man has found a way to foil His infallibility with a simple question.
So, could God pick up a rock that he created to be too heavy for him to lift, and thus substantiate his existence?
Yes, God could fabricate that stone. Much like the Earth he created (“God himself...established it, he created it not in vein, he formed it to be inhabited” - Isaiah 45:18, King James version), this boulder would have a purpose. In this case, to be unliftable by God.
Another way God might assemble an unliftable nugget is to make it the size of the entire universe, end to end--or endlessness to endlessness, as the case may be. For if, indeed, he could create the universe “into infinity,” then why couldn’t he create an infinite rock; even an empty space, like a stone, is composed of particles.
Of course, the catch to this answer is that the stone is not too heavy to lift, but rather that Jehovah could not displace it for a lack of space in which to lift it. Still, a paradox arises. (Along the same lines, even the tiniest grain of sand cannot actually be “lifted” in space. Much like “left” and “right” here on terra firma, up and down are merely relative to an individual’s position in the great big Out There.)
But--if God really possesses unlimited strength, how could the stone be too heavy? Let’s, for a moment, examine an inability that God himself admits to, and see what parallels can be drawn...
Hebrews 6:18 reads, “It is impossible for God to tell a lie.” [The Living Bible version] Right there, in black and white, God himself clearly admits to a lack of ability. But, if he is the God for which nothing is impossible, could he not actually tell a lie? Being a perfect Being, and being that he created such abstract ideals as Truth and Justice (as well as Perfection), it would stand to reason that God could perfectly adhere to his own standards. So even though it is a linguistic possibility for him to arrange a particular sequence of words into a fiction, God’s perfect application of his own standards simply does not allow him to lie, or to give in to the temptation to lie (if the temptation itself is even possible within him).
Could he create the stone? Yes. Would he give in to the temptation to release his unlimited dynamic energy to lift the stone? No. So, without that application of his power, the stone is now truly too heavy for God to lift.
(Of course, if the riddle is really a question of God’s existence, it suddenly becomes moot as he arrives to perform this little party trick.)
So possibility and impossibility coexist together, peacefully, even within God himself. To physically demonstrate an “impossible possibility,” take a ribbon of paper, and pick it up, holding it between your thumb and index finger. Conventional wisdom tells you that your finger is touching one side, and your thumb is touching the opposing side, and of course you are right.
Now, make a Mobius strip from this paper. (To do this, suppose that, as you hold this strip, both of your thumbs are facing up. Give the paper a half-twist, so that the thumb of one hand is still facing up, and the index finger of the other hand is now facing up. With the twist still in the ribbon, glue or tape the ends together, and, viola, you are holding a Mobius strip, or a loop of paper with one twist.) Take a pen or a pencil and place it on the paper, and begin to draw a line down the center length of the ribbon. In just a few moments, you will come back to the point where you first started the line, but without ever having lifted your writing tool. Look on the “other side” of the paper, and there you will see your line, too; this demonstrates that the Mobius strip has only one “side.”
This time, holding the paper between thumb and forefinger again, you begin to achieve what seemed, just moments ago, to be impossible. Even though your digits are simultaneously touching opposite sides (or “two sides” or “both sides” or "opposing sides") of the strip of paper, both finger and thumb are also simultaneously touching the same side (or “one side” or the “only side”) of the strip of paper--but from completely opposite directions, and with no separation of space, save the width of paper, between the fingers.
Ultimately, it would seem that the limits of human perception is generally the primary reason for most “impossibilities”--at least from an historical standpoint. Two thousand years ago, space travel was so impossible as to be inconceivable. Who knows--in another two thousand years, concepts thought to be paradoxical by today’s standards may be simple facts taught in schools to the youth of the future...
