The Paradox of Omnipotence Revisited

Canadian Journal of Philosophy 3 (3):435-445 (1974)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

A. Either God can create a stone which He cannot lift, or He cannot create a stone which He cannot lift. If God can create a stone which He cannot lift, then He is not omnipotent. If God cannot create a stone which He cannot lift, then He is not omnipotent. Therefore, God is not omnipotent.In a paper published in Analysis I tried to show that any attempt to find something wrong with all arguments of the general form of A above, any attempt to resolve the “paradox,” must fail, that the reason these attempts must fail is that at least some arguments of this form are essentially sound, and that the only thing which makes these arguments seem paradoxical, their conclusion to the effect that God is not omnipotent, is, like at least some versions of the arguments to this conclusion, quite correct.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive

    This entry is not archived by us. If you are the author and have permission from the publisher, we recommend that you archive it. Many publishers automatically grant permission to authors to archive pre-prints. By uploading a copy of your work, you will enable us to better index it, making it easier to find.

    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 102,785

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

God and the Problem of Logic.Andrew Dennis Bassford - 2023 - Cambridge University Press.
The Omnipotence Paradox.Douglas Walton - 1975 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 4 (4):705-715.
The Unmakable-Because-Unliftable Stone.Murdith McLean - 1975 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 4 (4):717-721.
Omnipotence and the Vicious Circle Principle.Majid Amini - 2009 - Forum Philosophicum: International Journal for Philosophy 14 (2):247-258.
Currying Omnipotence: A Reply to Beall and Cotnoir.Andrew Tedder & Guillermo Badia - 2018 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 7 (2):119-121.
Plantinga and Leibniz’s the Best World.Chansoo Park - 2008 - Proceedings of the Xxii World Congress of Philosophy 45:261-264.

Analytics

Added to PP
2011-06-12

Downloads
129 (#173,024)

6 months
17 (#163,498)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

Impossibility Arguments.Patrick Grim - 2006 - In Michael Martin, The Cambridge Companion to Atheism. Cambridge University Press. pp. 199--214.
On the number of gods.Eric Steinhart - 2012 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 72 (2):75-83.
The Omnipotence Paradox.Douglas Walton - 1975 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 4 (4):705-715.
The omnipotence paradox, modality, and time.Gary Rosenkrantz & Joshua Hoffman - 1980 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 18 (4):473-479.
The Unmakable-Because-Unliftable Stone.Murdith McLean - 1975 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 4 (4):717-721.

View all 6 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

The Paradox of Omnipotence.J. L. Cowan - 1965 - Analysis 25 (Suppl-3):102-108.
Omnipotence.Julian Wolfe - 1971 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 1 (2):245-247.

Add more references