Jack asked:

I am serious about the following question: Can God make a rock bigger than he can lift? My answer is
yes. What do you think?

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God could make a stone heavier than he could lift, but if he ever did, he would be able to lift it. —
What you have stumbled upon is a kind of paradox in the whole notion of omnipotence.

We see that some people have more power than others. This leads us to believe, quite rightly, that
there is a scale of 'powerfulness'. We then infer that this scale has absolute limits, i.e. powerlessness
and omnipotence.

But omnipotence is not a coherent concept. This is so despite the genius of Aquinas and the other
theologians who have tried to show that it is. In the same way that Plato saw horses and concluded
that there must be something that is 'horseness', theologians have seen power being weilded and
have concluded that there must be omnipotence. Both rest on a confusion.

Reason is a powerful tool. But we should see to it that it does not blind us from the obvious.

'Power' can be explained by giving examples of things that have power. But there are no examples of
things that are omnipotent, except of course God. This might work if it weren't necessary to define
God by his omnipotence. Seeing as though it is, we are trapped in a vicious circle.

I was told by a Christian that arguing about the attributes of God (what God can and can't do), is like
blind men arguing about the colour of the sunset. Leaving aside the literary merit of this analogy, I
think her point was that we should either have faith, or leave it all alone. It is not the place of science
or logic to define what God can do and what He can't do. Faith must be blind. And where there is
faith, there can be no philosophy.

Will Greenwood

I don't believe that this question shows that omnipotence is an incoherent concept. Here's why.
Omnipotence implies the power to do everything that it is logically possible to do. It is not a threat to
God's omnipotence that He cannot make a perfectly round triangle, or a surface that is red and green
all over.

The condition, 'x can lift a stone that is too heavy for x to lift' is one that cannot logically be satisfied,
whatever one substitutes for x. In particular, the condition cannot logically be satisfied even x is God.
Therefore it is no limit to God's omnipotence that He cannot lift a stone that is too heavy for Him to lift.

But can God makea stone that He cannot lift? The two conditions (a) No stone is too heavy for x to
lift, and (b) x can make a stone that x cannot lift, cannot both logically be satisfied, whatever one
substitutes for x. So, by the same reasoning as before, the two conditions cannot logically be
satisfied, even if x is an omnipotent God.

Geoffrey Klempner