Forces

“What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?”

A young priest fresh out of seminary once asked me, when he learned that I was a fan of philosophy and other arcane things. I remember the delight on his face, watching me struggle to come up with an answer. He did not give me one. This is a famous paradox also known as the omnipotence paradox.

Much later, I learned that the correct answer is- such a meeting is not possible, because, by definition, if there is an irresistible force, there cannot be an immovable object. This is a rule in logic.

Life doesn’t give a rats ass about the above rule.

You will face things that simply should not exist, but do. Good things and bad. Forces, events, emotions, people that cannot possibly be, but are. Life’s like that.

3 thoughts on “Forces

  1. i have faced the same question several times. Thanks for the answer bro. Next tym i wont look like an idiot wen askd the same questn… lolz

  2. While it is very true that if there is an irresistible force then an immovable object cannot exist, this kind of logical paradoxes have been use for millennia to confuse young minds. That is one reason why logic should be made a part of school education. The problem is that we do not have people with sufficient intelligence to explain why cut and put have different pronounciations, let alone people who can explain logical contradictions.

    Incidentally, one of the finest moments in my life was when during my post-college sojourn in Kerala, when books were not easy to come forth due to shortage of money, a textbooks of Logic “fell” into my hands. This was followed by meeting a man who knew the value to logic. Life was never the same again for me.

    Johnson C. Philip
    http://www.Physics4u.info

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