The monotheistic all powerful one.
Mine is similar to yours in that it’s about the power of God. It’s called the Epicurean Trilemma:
- If a god is omniscient and omnipotent, then they have knowledge of all evil and have the power to put an end to it. But if they do not end it, they are not omnibenevolent.
- If a god is omnipotent and omnibenevolent, then they have the power to extinguish evil and want to extinguish it. But if they do not do it, their knowledge of evil is limited, so they are not omniscient.
- If a god is omniscient and omnibenevolent, then they know of all the evil that exists and wants to change it. But if they do not, which must be because they are not capable of changing it, so they are not omnipotent.
This proves fairly simply that God as commonly interpreted by modern Christians cannot exist. Early Christians and Jews had no problem here, because their god was simply not meant to be omnibenevolent. Go even further back in time and he was not omnipotent, and possibly not omniscient, either. “Thou shalt have no gods before me” comes from a time when proto-Jews were henotheists, people who believed in the existence of multiple deities while only worshipping a single one.
Just leaving God’s wife Ashera here. Yes, he was married once. Look it up.
He had a sister too, super evil but it’s ok because a human dude talked her out of destroying everything since God couldn’t stop her.
A simple way I’ve been touching on this for a while is what I call “The problem of existence”: why would god create a non-divine existence such as our selves?
Put aside evil. If God is all three omnis, why make something that is lesser? I figure that the answer is they themselves must also be lesser than the three omnis.
The Christian explanation for this is that god doesn’t do evil, people do.
And god created people with free will to do evil. If he made people stop doing evil deeds, they would be his puppets, not free-willed humans. So he has the power to end all evil but chooses not to.
Now as for why god allows natural disasters, diseases and other tragedies to befall his creation – again, that’s just the consequence of our actions, cause a woman gave an apple to her man in the past.
And god created people with free will
Frankly, I don’t buy this as an explanation even for human-created evil. It is still evidence that god cannot be tri-omni. Because it is still a situation in which god is able to remove evil and is aware of the evil, and yet he chooses to permit evil. Even evil done by one human against another, when the other is entirely innocent. And that cannot be omnibenevolent.
From how you phrased it I suspect you agree with me here, but the natural disasters argument is even more ludicrous. It doesn’t even come close to working as a refutation of the Epicurian Trilemma.
If your options are “do as I say” or “suffer for all eternity” you aren’t really capable of exercising free will.
The Christian explanation for this is that god doesn’t do evil, people do.
And god created people with free will to do evil. If he made people stop doing evil deeds, they would be his puppets, not free-willed humans.
I never understood this argument. If he’s all-powerful, he would have the ability to eliminate all evil without affecting free will.
The Christian god created every aspect of the universe and how it works. He therefore could have created a universe in which there was no such thing as evil or suffering, and given people in that universe free will. So even that doesn’t hold up.
I think that’s their point; they’re saying that’s what God did. He “created a universe in which there was no such thing as evil or suffering and [gave] people in that universe free will.”
And humans screwed it up.
I’m not saying that, mind you. I’m saying I think you just agreed with the person you’re debating as a proof that they were wrong.
