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Does Omnipotence Include The Ability to make Contradictions True?

A common rejoinder to the famous “stone paradox” is to claim that omnipotence does not include the ability to make contradictions true, or violate any other law of logic. This counter is a complete non-starter; because as far as metaphysics is concerned, to be is to be necessary. So if God’s omnipotence does not stretch to the ability to make a stone so heavy that even he cannot lift it, it also must not stretch to the ability to make any miracles occur. A miracle does not just mean something that is super unlikely, or super challenging; it means making entities act outside of their nature. If God is supposed to be able to turn water into wine, or walk across water without falling into it, then he is able to violate the law of causality—this means that he is making contradictions true.

If the Christian then attempts to turn “miracle” into a concept that does not mean a violation of causality then he must also abandon his indeterminism and at that point basically his entire philosophy is gone. If free will is supposed to be some magical exception to the immutable laws of the universe, then why stop there? The choice is clear: either accept that omnipotence allows God to make contradictions true and retreat into negative theology, or reject that omnipotence allows this and abandon basically the entire Christian doctrine. If the law of identity is to be kept in tact there can be no more revelation (such mystic insights require gaining knowledge without the means of gaining knowledge), no more magical resurrection of Christ (dead people don’t get up after two days, this is said to happen because God is magical), and no more immortal soul (consciousness is not an entity, it cannot persist after you are dead).

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