Concerning the second point, The Force is by its nature up for theological discussion. Since it is not a "mutation" in the Marvel comics sense of the word, nor is it magical by any means, but it is mystic in nature. So it depends on how you view a person can use the Force. I don't want to go through wookieepedia to confirm this because of lazieness, but there is a speculative view that Force sensitives are not only supersentient, but also control the very nature of events and time. So for example, since Palpatine is more powerful than Yoda, he can "dilute" Yodas ability to do things like toss mountains around.