The rock God can't lift.

[Mark 13:13]

Do you even lift?


With all due respect, Tibbs, I think this God constrained by logical possibility is an invention created to fix a broken concept. There are plenty of people currently and historically who believe in the concept without any awareness of these fixes, nor even positive knowledge that the concept itself needs fixing. This is a lot like the "Hell is separation from God" concept that is floating around in Christendom now; it's an attempt to redefine something in order to escape the problems with the original concept. And there, as well as with omnipotence, there are many current and past who didn't get the memo to revise their understanding. (And many who wouldn't revise their understanding of either even if the problem were pointed out to them.) So, your claim that some people have a more sophisticated concept of omnipotence does nothing to ameliorate the fact that most believers don't have such a nuanced concept. Moreover, your attempting to substitute the understanding of a few for the understanding of the many appears fallacious (though it's not clear what the specific fallacy is).

Beyond that, there are a few details specific to the question. First, if "God" is transcendental in the way Mark suggests, the logically possible is only a relevant limit if the logically possible is transcendant as well. If He stands outside time and existence, and logically possible only applies to time and existence, then the latter need not constrain the former. Plus, there are a couple of details. The ability to lift or not lift an object refers to one's ability to supply enough force to overcome gravity (I'm not going to relativize this). However if God possesses unlimited force, there can be no rock that he cannot lift (I think) because there is no place where there is infinite gravity. (Relativizing this to a black hole or a singularity takes me beyond what I can competently speak about.) Moreover, in order to lift a rock, there has to be a place to lift that rock toward. If God/god were to abolish the universe, and replace all of existence with a single rock, then he couldn't lift it as there would be no place to lift it to. This is not a limit upon his omnipotence in any way.

the fact that Christians can continue to gain more and greater refinement in there understanding of GOD over time seems very similar to how science moves from one theory to another but then we seem again to have some double standards here ?