Oftentimes paradoxes are more about the shortcomings of language than they are about anything else. Here’s a few of the common ones…

“Can God create a rock so heavy that even He could not lift it?”

The assumption made here is that God is omnipotent and omniscient… otherwise there wouldn’t really be any point in asking. If those are the assumed characteristics of God, then the above can be re-phrased as ”Can something that is capable of doing all things do something which it is not capable of doing?” It is essentially nonsense — if God is capable of doing all things then there is no thing which God is incapable of doing. In any case, I think it would be much more intriguing to ask not what God is capable of doing, but instead what God will choose to do. “There is a rock; will God lift it and why?”

“What happened before the Big Bang / what created God?”

Two sides of the same coin and the same problem of assumption as above. The assumption concerning the ‘Big Bang’ is that it represents the very first event to have ever occurred. The assumption concerning God is that God exists of His own volition, eternal and uncreated. The above can be rephrased as “What happened before the first thing that ever happened / what created that which was not created?” Basically it’s more nonsense. Still, it’s worth mentioning that there are theories which posit a ‘Big Crunch’ occurring before the ‘Big Bang’, so IF there is no assumption about the ‘Big Bang’ being the first event ever then it’s actually a valid question.

“If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

The failure of language regarding the definition of ‘sound’ is the problem with this one. Normally when a person thinks of ‘sound’, they are thinking about the perception of sound and not the actual phenomena of sound itself. What is perceived by the ears and sent as a signal to the brain is our perception, but the phenomena itself is simply defined as the mechanical disturbance of matter. If we are talking strictly about the perception of sound then the answer is ‘no’ because a perception is contingent upon a perceiver. If we are talking about the true phenomena of sound then the answer is ‘yes’ because every physical object that moves produces sound whether it is perceived by a conscious entity or not.

 ”What is the sound of one hand clapping?”

Here, the definition for ‘clap’ is where language fails. If a clap is defined as the act of bringing two hands together palm-to-palm as per applause, then by definition one hand is incapable of clapping. On the other hand (no pun intended), if the term ‘clap’ is not strictly used within the context of applause then one could say that a ‘clap’ is not actually contingent on two palms being involved. If that’s the case, then the sound of one hand clapping is basically what you would hear when slapping the shit out of someone or something. :P

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 Ehh that’s all for now.