Saturday 27 September 2014

Can God create a burrito so hot even he couldn't eat it?


This is the question which has been taxing me for a while. So the other day, I was pleasantly surprised when my dear ex-colleague Giovanni Fini provided the answer. Before I tell you what I think I should probably do that philosophical thing of analysing the question without bothering to answer it.

This question is an expression of the omnipotence paradox. To explain this paradox we have to start with another stupid question. I am sure that at some point someone has asked you what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. Normally you get some idiot saying that the universe implodes or something ridiculous like that, but of course the answer is that nothing happens as the question is illegitimate and meaningless. If there is an unstoppable force there is not an immovable object, else it should be moved and likewise if there is an immovable object there is not an unstoppable force as it would stop upon meeting the immovable object. To ask this question like this is a bit like asking whether maths tastes of raspberries.

There is only one way in which you could have both an unstoppable force and an immovable object, and that is if they are the same being. Here I imagine you muttering something about what a twat I am. How can a thing that is unstoppable, and thus is in motion, be immovable, and thus stationary? And there you have the paradox of omnipotence.

Lets say it again but this time in terms of perfection. An unstoppable force is what we might call perfect motion, nothing can detract from its motion by stopping it. Equally a being which is immovable is one which is perfectly stationary and nothing can be moved. Yet a stationary object need only have the quality of resistance to movement when a force is being exerted upon it, if there is no such force then then being stationary does not require resistance. Inversely, if there is nothing to resist movement a being will cease to stop by default. In essence what I am saying is that being can be unstoppable at one moment immovable at another.

What does this mean for burritos? Well it means that God can be both the chap who creates the burrito with the perfect, maximum hotness, God may alter his nature into a being who can consume just such a being. At the moment in which the burrito is created it is so hot that God cannot eat it, yet when it comes to eating it God transforms his nature (he is God after all) into a being that can.


So yes, no sort of is the answer to the question.