Back when I was messing around with time travel, I had already answered the cheap paradox: Can God create a stone so heavy He cannot lift it?—with ease. If anyone wants to trap us believers by inventing a paradox, they should proceed logically, as I demonstrate here.
If the answer turns out to be undefined, it’s a draw. But if you get zero, then I’ll have to reevaluate a few things.
Personally, I wouldn’t ask whether God can create a stone He can’t lift. I’d ask: Can He annihilate Himself?
In other words, is there an operation that can turn infinity into zero?
We’re looking for the "a" in the equation ∞ × a = 0—or put differently, a function f such that lim f(∞) = 0.
But in the trials, we must ensure the denominator doesn’t become zero, because results that tend toward infinity are still theologically acceptable.
So, a = ∞ / 0. The denominator is zero, but the expression is undefined. In symbolic terms, it’s the edge of our number system. If ∞ is divine fullness and 0 is absolute void, then ∞/0 is an attempt to force infinite power through nonexistence — and the system crashes. That’s when I find myself going back, trying to recall L’Hôpital’s Rule—yet even taking derivatives won’t save us from this undefined state.
Confusing inconsistencies like “0/0, ∞/∞, ∞ − ∞, 0·∞, 1^∞, 0^0, ∞^0” should be resolved in a way that yields zero—by thinking of ∞ as God’s infinity and zero as nonexistence. That should be the goal for the unbelievers.
L’Hôpital suggests resolving these by transforming them into the forms 0/0 or ∞/∞.
Let f and g be differentiable on the interval (a, b).
Given that g'(x) ≠ 0 for every x ∈ (a, b), and c ∈ (a, b),
if
lim (x → c) f(x) = lim (x → c) g(x) = 0,
then
lim (x → c) f'(x) / g'(x) = L implies lim (x → c) f(x) / g(x) = L.
If
lim (x → c) f'(x) / g'(x) = 0/0 or ∞/∞,
then the rule above can be applied again.
While pondering these, one should also consider what entities numbers like −1, −∞, and i might correspond to in theological literature.
Is the devil one of them, or merely a function of them?
(I lean toward the latter—but let’s leave that for another post.)