For a while now, I've been collecting if you will, ideas and questions that at face value seem sound, but after further inspection they collapse under their own weight. The reasons why I'm fascinated by them, is because some of the more popular ones, fly under the radar of most people beautifully.

Before I continue, I should mention that these problems are nothing new, and that philosophers and thinkers have been trying to come up with reasonable explanations for their existence. I tend to think of them as human shortcomings, because some of these ideas co-exist inside our brains in complete contradiction, as if someone decided to leave that part of our mental infrastructure in ruins.

All powerful

This paradox is probably my favorite one, because it's one that the majority of people believe to be reasonable. As a matter of fact, we have tons of fictional characters in comics and movies with the attribute, and you would never heard anyone complain about the way Thanos, for example, has been written.

To be all powerful is paradoxical because in order for power to be measured and exist, it must be contained by limitations. If that is still confusing, consider the following question:

Can an all powerful being create a stone that it cannot lift?

You see, the idea of all powerful collapses under the need for a defining limitation. It's either that the stone cannot be created, or that it can. But, the two conditions cannot be met because they stand in direct opposition of the initial preposition of all powerful.

Unstoppable Force, Unmovable Object

Also one of my favorite paradoxes, and one that has been labeled the hardest question in the world. Now, the first paradox, at least if you followed this post so far, should allow you to see the problem here quite easily.

What happens when an unstoppable force collides against an unmovable object?

The question itself assumes the existence of both, but if we think about it, there lies the big mistake. You see, one concept is the limiting factor of the other, and in order for one to exist, the other must not.

In other words, an unstoppable force can only exist, if there's no such thing as an unmovable object. And the unmovable object can only exist if there's no such thing as an unstoppable force.

Free will or Destiny?

This paradox is held by the vast majority of us sapiens, and I will confess I held it myself as a core concept in my head for years. But, they stand in direct opposition, and like my other two examples cannot co-exist.

If there is such thing as destiny, then it means that choice was just an illusion. No matter what you or I did, the path was set for us, and every single step we took was towards our destiny. That means that free will, the thing we love to talk about so much, does not exist at all.

On the other hand, if we are truly free to make choices, to make mistakes, to fail or to succeed, then destiny had nothing to do with it whatsoever.