Welcome to the anthill

Perhaps we're all mired in politics right now, which can be pretty shallow. So let's take a break and, as they say in football, go deep. In the "My Turn" column in this week's Newsweek, DePauw University philosophy professor Erik Wielenberg complains, "I think, therefore I am misunderstood." People are always asking him, "But what do you do?"

He also throws out this tidbit:

Telling someone that you spent the day trying to figure out whether God could make a stone that even he couldn't lift (a subject on which I've published) is simply not going to cut it. Most people find it ridiculous for a grown-up to spend his time doing this, and outrageous that he's paid for it.

So let's consider that question: Could God make a stone that even he couldn't lift? The question presupposes God's omnipotence, which is where the apparent conundrum comes in. If God can do anything, of course he could make such a stone. But then there would be a stone he couldn't lift, which would mean he isn't really omnipotent. But if he can't make the stone, then he isn't omnipotent, either.

Many people who spend their time talking about this try to duck the question. They either say something like "being able to do anything" isn't really the "historical understanding" of omnipotence or that what is being postulated is a "logical contradiction," which isn't possible. But if we're talking about an all-powerful supreme being, what puny, limited humans have "historically understood" would seem to be beside the point. And logic is a human construction to help us observe and communicate reality; it is likewise irrelevant. We must consider the question on the its own terms, confronting the obvious meaning of omnipotence it implies.

At first, it almost seems like a false dilemma of the kind we played with in school. (If no one's around when a tree falls in the forest, is there a sound? Of course not -- the answer is in the definition of sound, which is a wave that requires both a transmitter and a receiver. What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object? Only that we will find that our perception of one of them was faulty.) God does only what he wants when he wants. The only reason to try to do "the impossible" would be if he were challenged to do so. Who would challenge God, and why would he accept?

But it turns out to be a false dilemma of a different kind, that of trying to understand God on our terms instead of acknowledging the unfathomable. We are like ants in an anthill -- we think the anthill is all there is and, as a matter of fact, don't even know we are in an anthill. Assume that either one is true -- that God can't create such a stone or that, if he can, there is therefore a stone he can't lift, either one of which makes him less than omnipotent. The buried kernel is that the only limit to God's power is whether he might be able to limit his own power, if he so chose. Speaking as one ant to another, that is not much of a dent in his omnipotence.

Or maybe we could just take the easy way out voiced by some philosophers and say that God really isn't omnipotent, he's merely the "supreme" being who happens to be better than all the other beings, but that would lead us into the ontological proof for the existence of God, which would present a whole new set of dilemmas and logical contradictions. Besides, it would amount to dumbing omnipotence down, and we get enough of that sort of thing in politics.