Omnipotent God Question

[Regenerated-Adult]

The absurdity of the question seems to me to lie in the anthropomorphic assumption of God therein, where God somehow looks like an old man with a big beard with huge arms and hands etc.  Jesus said that "God is a spirit", so in what sense could an infinite being have arms so powerful they could lift up a rock that was bigger than infinity itself?

Honestly, it's a dumb question not worth much of an attempt at an answer.

[enoob57]

The answer is found in God's limitless realm and to place limit is contradictory to reason ... we, as beings with a begin, have not the ability to reason in the infinite. Thus anything we can produce is with limits... the idea that lie is of substance created by God is error! So when we give place to lie, when no place was for it, until God created hell, we err to the reality of truth... 

Matt 25:41

41 "Then He will also say to those on the left hand, 'Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels:
NKJV
 

Eph 4:27

27 Neither give place to the devil.
KJV
All that satan has produced has no place in The Persons of God or place in His Creation! When lie was formed in the rebellious heart of Lucifer God then created place for that which has no place with Him, 'hell', and for us to reason with that as product of God is error... many say that a thing that is here must be from God ~ it is the error of begin to give place to a thing which lie has produced for it has no place with God or ever has... the necessity of truth existing for lie to even exist shows total reliability upon truth for lie to have a way to even be formed thus God 'Who 'IS' truth' is seen in the self evidence of the thing itself...  The idea of a rock with boundary placed in the infinite of God where no boundary exists is to take truth and place lie as point of reason to truth and this is what Lucifer did in order think himself able to be god... Thus in the error of lie no truth exists!
 

John 13:8

8 Peter saith unto him, Thou shalt never wash my feet. Jesus answered him, If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.
KJV

It is God Who has washed us from the lie so that we may have part with Him...

[Uber Genius]

2 hours ago, Regenerated-Adult said:

The absurdity of the question seems to me to lie in the anthropomorphic assumption of God therein, where God somehow looks like an old man with a big beard with huge arms and hands etc.  Jesus said that "God is a spirit", so in what sense could an infinite being have arms so powerful they could lift up a rock that was bigger than infinity itself?

Honestly, it's a dumb question not worth much of an attempt at an answer.

Christians want to show why the question doesn't make sense. The point is that the atheist misrepresents the nature of omnipotence.

God is immaterial but created a material world so minds have power and God's "lack of arms," does nothing to limit his power.

omnipotence is the quality of being able to do all things that are LOGICALLY possible to do.

God can't make married bachelors because that is a logical impossibility.

God can't make square circles or 2+2 = 5

But these are just rhetorical tricks.

I do agree that there is a lot of misrepresentation of God's nature or limits do to anthropomorphism, can you give us an example?

[Uber Genius]

2 hours ago, enoob57 said:

The answer is found in God's limitless realm and to place limit is contradictory to reason

Yes that is how the atheist trick works. But we escape the trick by pointing out that God's  all-powerful nature just means he can do all things that are logically possible to do. 

And we are done. Here I am generous, if there is a crowd. Although there question is not serious because they could have typed into their phone and found their mistake, I want to limit their embarrassment.

 

[Regenerated-Adult]

1 minute ago, Uber Genius said:

Christians want to show why the question doesn't make sense. The point is that the atheist misrepresents the nature of omnipotence.

God is immaterial but created a material world so minds have power and God's "lack of arms," does nothing to limit his power.

omnipotence is the quality of being able to do all things that are LOGICALLY possible to do.

God can't make married bachelors because that is a logical impossibility.

God can't make square circles or 2+2 = 5

But these are just rhetorical tricks.

I do agree that there is a lot of misrepresentation of God's nature or limits do to anthropomorphism, can you give us an example?

AS I understand it, the question is meant to not just refer to anthropomorphism, but even extends to the so called "metaphysical" realm with the assumption that if God cannot do something even though He is said to be all-powerful, it means that either a) the creator isn't even God and therefore, logically he doesn't exist, or b) He is not omnipotent.  There are several logical fallacies in this approach and most of them involve the laws of thermodynamics being misunderstood in an attempt to explain away intelligence and order in nature, probably for self-autonomous reasons and sin.

The Bible is full of anthropomorphic language with regard to God.  Chock full of it.  This isn't because God has been dumbed down; it is because humans generally are not capable of understanding God in a way that isn't personal in some sense, and so the Bible represents God in this way to enable us to comprehend or understand, howbeit ever so mistily, His nature as far as we can conceive it in our limited minds.

[Uber Genius]

15 minutes ago, Regenerated-Adult said:

The Bible is full of anthropomorphic language with regard to God.  Chock full of it.  This isn't because God has been dumbed down; it is because humans generally are not capable of understanding God in a way that isn't personal in some sense, and so the Bible represents God in this way to enable us to comprehend or understand, howbeit ever so mistily, His nature as far as we can conceive it in our limited minds

Yep, "Figures of Speech in The Bible," by E.W. Bullinger is one of my most helpful research works.

I would argue that the surrounding language of the culture of over 40 authors also had rich use of figurative language. Moses, for instance, had unparalleled access to Northern African and Mesopotamian writing. The Jews are consistently the most well-educated of their day with great exposure to writings from surrounding cultures, often they retask these narratives and correct them.

[Regenerated-Adult]

7 minutes ago, Uber Genius said:

Yep, "Figures of Speech in The Bible," by E.W. Bullinger is one of my most helpful research works.

I would argue that the surrounding language of the culture of over 40 authors also had rich use of figurative language. Moses, for instance, had unparalleled access to Northern African and Mesopotamian writing. The Jews are consistently the most well-educated of their day with great exposure to writings from surrounding cultures, often they retask these narratives and correct them.

That's very interesting and I confess I don't know much about the cultural and historical background of those things.  All I have ever come across really is that atheists bring up Gilgamesh and related things.  As you say, the Jews of ancient times tended (it seems) to recast or explain things in a more monotheistic way that almost every other ancient culture didn't have in the same way, except maybe for some sects of Hinduism which were monotheistic.  

Regarding Gilgamesh, what I do know is that atheists bring that up only because their main problem is with the Bible itself.  There doesn't seem to be any other reason behind why they would seek to undermine the Bible other than their bias against it.  Granted, sometimes God in the OT seems a bit too wrath like, but again, my understanding of this is that it was simply just the way the ancient peoples of that time were to understand all these things.  Sometimes it isn't easy for non-believers to understand how God could be "jealous" but I personally have no problem with understanding that, since jealousy there is actually a form of "love" and not how our modern understanding represents it.

[Riverwalker]

On 2/9/2021 at 9:04 AM, Uber Genius said:

Yep, "Figures of Speech in The Bible," by E.W. Bullinger is one of my most helpful research works.

I would argue that the surrounding language of the culture of over 40 authors also had rich use of figurative language. Moses, for instance, had unparalleled access to Northern African and Mesopotamian writing. The Jews are consistently the most well-educated of their day with great exposure to writings from surrounding cultures, often they retask these narratives and correct them.

God is the Author of the bible, those men were just the conduit that got it on papyrus

Holy Ghost writers if you will

[debrakay]

On 2/9/2021 at 5:52 AM, Regenerated-Adult said:

Honestly, it's a dumb question not worth much of an attempt at an answer.

Thank you!  My initial thought was, "Why would he?"

and then the child's questions, "Why is the sky blue?"  or "What came first, the chicken or the egg?" 

Instigators.  Gotta love 'em. (We are commanded and he loves them.)

[Hopefully]

My answer would be yes. I believe God is all powerful and all knowing, and would create a rock he cannot lift using foreknowledge to know it never needs to be lifted and has reasons for the rock being there. For example Jesus is a rock that cannot be lifted by God. 
 

“The ‘rock’ of our enemies is not strong like our Rock. Even our enemies know that.”
‭‭Deuteronomy‬ ‭32:31‬ ‭
 

“The Lord lives! I praise my Rock! How great is my God, the Rock who saves me!”
‭‭2 Samuel‬ ‭22:47‬ ‭

“Yes, I am sure that nothing can separate us from God’s love—not death, life, angels, or ruling spirits. I am sure that nothing now, nothing in the future, no powers, nothing above us or nothing below us—nothing in the whole created world—will ever be able to separate us from the love God has shown us in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
‭‭Romans‬ ‭8:38-39‬