It is unfortunate that many people have missed the
essence of the paradox of
omnipotence with appeals to the physical nature of the
question.
The question here is not one of physical possibilities, but rather logical ones. Take any sentence of the form "Can God {verb} an un{verb}able thing?" Insert whatever verb is the choice of the day. Lift, make, create, push, destroy... whatever... It makes no difference. All of these collapse to "P and not P" or rather "Can the omnipotent nature of God allow Him to do something that will create a contradiction?"
The argument (as stated elsewhere) is thus:
- If God is omnipotent, the He can do anything
- Therefore, God can create a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it.
- But if He cannot life it, then He is not omnipotent.
- Likewise, if He cannot create such a rock, he is not omnipotent.
- Therefore, God cannot be omnipotent.
In this argument, the second
premise in the argument is
flawed - it pits God's omnipotence of creation of rocks against His omnipotence of lifting it.
But lifting is a physical action. It can be solved
So what. Continuing to argue about the
physical nature of this
paradox completely misses the point and distracts the audience and the arguer from the nature of the paradox - the contradiction within the simple version of omnipotence.