(January 5, 2013 at 3:31 pm)Tiberius Wrote: "Can God make a rock so heavy he cannot lift it?" is a loaded question, and a logical fallacy.
At the very most, it only denies an absolutist version of omnipotence that almost nobody believes in in the first place. The question could really be asked this way: "Can God make square circles?". Most theists I've talked to believe in a version of omnipotence in which God can perform every action that is logically possible.
By definition, omnipotence has to be absolute, doesn't it? If God has limits, then 'omnipotent' is the wrong term to describe him. If God is forced to conform to logical rules, who made those rules, and what force compels even God to act within them? If you believe that our universe must have had a creator (because 'random chance' couldn't have done it), you logically have to believe that an even higher being made the rules God has to follow. This, of course, leads either to infinite regress, or to an assertion that God made rules even he cannot break, which is the ultimate expression of the "rock God can't lift".
Perhaps the simplest and most vital reason to believe in God is that there is no higher, more powerful, being to worship. The problem is, if God is subject to any limits he cannot overcome, including the limit of 'logically possible', then he cannot be the most powerful thing in existence. Logic must be more powerful than God. And, we are left to wonder where logic comes from? Is God subject to the same dumb natural forces a secularist already believes are responsible for the universe, or is there a being even higher than God?
In either case, there's no justification for worshiping Yahweh. Either he doesn't exist, or he's merely the next step up from us in a virtually infinite hierarchy (all of which themselves would suffer from the infinite regress argument; why worship any of them, either?).
