A few thoughts..
First,
Going by the definition that "omnipowerful" is "having
unlimited power", does the paradox of God not being able to
create a rock so heavy He can't lift it REALLY challenge the
attribution of God as being "omnipowerful?" That is, is
it WITHIN the functionality of POWER to create a rock that's so
heavy that's so heavy that said power cannot lift it? Is it
within the functionality of POWER to perform what is apparently a
logical paradox? If not, then God may be omnipowerful yet still
not be able to create a rock that's so heavy that He can't lift
it.
And is it really a paradox? It seems it takes more energy to
create an object of X mass than it does to lift an object of X
mass. I guess we're comparing two infinities pitted against
eachother, infinite power toward creating the mass vs. infinite
power toward lifting it. The first requires more power, so which
one wins? X power is required to create a rock that requires X/Y
power to lift it, where Y is some constant which depends on the
mass of the object that is pulling the rock down. I guess it
complicates matters that God would have to have created that
object as well.
Anyway, it seems to be like asking what happens when an immovable
object meets an irresistable force? Of course the answer is that
there are no immovable objects ore irresistable forces, nature
doesn't work that way, that's only our humanistic absolutist
thinking confusing us. The same goes for a supposed being with
infinite or unlimited power. And everything is natural.
Supernatural is an oxymoron. If by supernatural one means to
appeal to an area of nature that does not subscribe to natural
laws as we know them, but instead to humanistic absolutist
ideology, well, we can see where that goes. But I digress. (digress
from what? i don't know.)
Second, I wonder if the paradox of God being able to create a
rock so heavy you can't lift it is analogous to the prospect of,
say, creating a square circle. In that it is simply a logical
impossibility. Should God be expected to be able to pull off
impossible feats? Not by a strict definition of having unlimited
power, I would think. Power, scientifically speaking, functions
within certain accordances.. But people seem to be really
fancying that God has unlimited ABILITY. Should unlimited ability
imply an ability to defy our logical limitations? Absolutely, I
think. Why shouldn't an entity with unlimited ability BE ABLE to
transcend our logical constrictions and precepts to perform any
action whatsoever? Or is creating a square circrle a non-action,
as it cannot even be imagined and is a broken concept? Just word
games? It's no more of a silly word game than is the very notion
of an entity that's supposed to HAVE "unlimited ability."
Nature just does what it does by its own rules of self-consistency.
The very notion of ability brings into the question abstract
concepts or hypothesis of "events"/things that "could"
be done. That is, ability to do X means it causally brings forth
a reality that conforms to some string of semiotic symbols
constituting X. So unlimited ability should mean that it can
causally bring forth a reality conforming to ANY arbitrary string
of symbols, such as "square circle" or "rock that
God cannot lift". So what if some are 'logical' and some are
'illogical'? The truth is that ANYTHING that doesn't actually
happen, is illogical because such actuality would be self-contradictory--
nature is perfectly self-consistent. When we imagine something
'could' happen but it doesn't, the universe in which it ahppened
would actually have been self-inconsistent on an absolute level,
just beyond one's comprehesion (too complex to cogitate. chaos,
etc..). So the difference between any kind of divine intervention
and and making a square circle is not qualitative, just
quantitative- it is the scale on which one is able to see the
self-inconsistency. I have ignored the question of indeterminancy
of the future (QM) but even in that case there would be a large
subset of all conceivable divine actions thatt would actually be
self-inconsistent and thus illogical if we could see the big
picture.
Third, and this is the thought I originally wanted to post, not very analytical just some theosophical speculation...
I suppose God COULD make a rock that's so big He couldn't lift it, but only until which time that He decides that he no longer wants to not be able to lift it..
Unless He wanted to make a rock that's so big (heavy) that He couldn't lift it even if He WANTED to, in which case He could do that, but only until the time that He no longer wants to not be able to lift it even if He wants to.
He could conform himself to such recursive limitations to any level. But what if He went so deep in levels that He FORGOT his unlimited ability and that He could just want to be able to do something that He wants to be able to want to be able to want to be able to want to.. etc.?
I guess that would make Him........... Human?