B-Movie Catechism: Answering The Age Old Question, “Could an omnipotent God create a stone so heavy that He couldn’t lift it?”

This isn't it.

But again, it’s Lansing as Scott who makes the movie. Like any good monster, he’s both sympathetic and frightening. You feel both his awkwardness and frustration in scenes like the one in which he comes upon his fiancé and brother sunbathing by a lake, and the pair immediately jump up and hurriedly begin putting clothes on over their bathing suits, almost as if Scott had stumbled upon them doing something else (which I’m pretty darn sure is just the association the movie wants you to make). But you also equally feel Scott’s creepy pent up lust and desire for control in scenes like the one in which he passes through the walls of Linda’s bedroom, gets mere inches from her face, and alternates between angry utterances and threats of a fatal kiss. Just the way he looks at Linda tells you he’s having major flashbacks to that experiment of thrusting a long wooden pencil into an iron block.

But it is from the post that leads to it and gives you a sample of his writing. Which I love.

B-Movie Catechism is one of my favorite blogs and I get pretty excited when I see that EegahInc has had the time to work on a longer piece (or perhaps it is that he is discussing a movie worthy of more discussion).

Anyway, he's clever, witty, and perceptive. Plus, I've gotta love someone whose tagline is: One man's desperate attempt to reconcile his love of his Catholic faith with his passion for cult cinema and really, really bad movies.

That's my kind of people.

In addition to discussing movies, he always sees a connection between these B-movies and the faith, usually through Sunday Mass readings.

Again, my kind of people.

So when he goes from a discussion of two brothers and a girl in a science fiction movie into this I was ready.

But ultimately, the only variation of the question to be of any real consequence is the one that’s come to be known as the omnipotence paradox, which basically asks, “Could an omnipotent God create a stone so heavy that He couldn’t lift it?” A number of atheists love this question because it would seem that either way you answer it, yes or no, you inevitably deny some aspect of God’s omnipotence. It’s a good enough question to have vexed a lot of people over the centuries, from Thomas Aquinas and Augustine, who both argued for certain understandings of omnipotence that differ from the one addressed by the question, to modern philosophers who speculate that there are different levels of omnipotence, to C. S. Lewis, who dismissed the asking of the question as utter nonsense to begin with. It’s all interesting, if sometimes convoluted, reading. And it may be a case of some people being too smart for their own good. Because, really, the simplest answer to the question might just be, “Yes, an omnipotent God could create a stone so heavy that He couldn’t lift it, because He already has.”

But then ... he tells how it works. I wasn't ready for that.

In a way that even I could grasp. Brilliantly.

Go read it for yourself at B-Movie Catechism.

(I've been meaning to tell y'all about this for a while ... enjoy yourself looking at some of his newer pieces while you're there ... I especially enjoyed The Crawling Hand just for the discussion of  how very bad that movie seems.