What God Can Do and Can’t Do

Socrates in the Athens School

Socrates in the Athens SchoolA pastor I follow online posted a quick rebuttal of a boilerplate criticism of theistic belief. In his blog is mainly concerned with theistic belief qua theistic belief, not as interpreted via Western modes of reasoning, though this post shows his strong grip on formal logic. To wit:

Smart-aleck atheist wannabe asks, “Do you believe your God can do anything?”

Christian kid says, “Yeah, sure.”

Smart-aleck: “Do you believe He can make a rock too big for Him to lift? Yes or no?”

We’ll make this quick and merciful. Three category errors, a false dichotomy and a charge of intellectual dishonesty.

My reply always went something like, “Yeah, He could maybe do it to prove that He could. But what makes you think He’d bother to prove it to begin with?”.

It reminds me of a C.S. Lewis’ line from Miracles: nonsense is still nonsense even when we talk it about God.

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