Ah, thanks for the reminder. The issue always begs the question.....'what should we think?' (as opposed to just 'what we should not believe'). But OK.
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How an Omnipotent and All Loving God cannot exist.
- Thread starter Alitheia Aylso
- Start date
Alitheia Aylso
Philosopher
I do not think that other types of deities can be proven or refuted, however I find it interesting that the only type that can is the type most humans believe in.
Super Universe
Defender of God
The universe does not acknowledge a humans definition of things. Evil is knowing right from wrong and choosing to do wrong. God will not violate free will.
God is responsible for allowing evil to exist, yes, but only to a degree. Those who commit treason against the universe are given a chance to repent, if they do not accept it then they are destroyed. They cease to exist. God does not do the destroying, very powerful angels do it. To God, a human taking his anger out on other humans, is not evil.
You're trying to put the universe into logical terms. The universe is not logical.
Alitheia Aylso
Philosopher
If you say that God is the Universe than that would be Pantheism which I have already said once that it cannot be proven or refuted and I also mentioned that this thread is not for discussing pantheism.
Well, since nobody seems willing to address the OP and we're going the free will route...
OMNIMAX God could end evil human behavior without interfering with our illusion of free will. All S/HE has to do is give us the information we need to choose the right course of action.
Giving it to some prophet that most people don't have reason to accept is not the same thing at all. Give it to all of us the same way it is given to Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, or whoever. It won't interfere with my free will any more than it did with theirs.
Tom
HekaMa'atRa
Member
Are you saying God could make all the right decisions for us with the illusion that we were making the choice ourselves?
No, I'm saying God could give us the information needed to make the best choices for ourselves.
Humans don't have truly free will. We are only able to choose what seems best to us at the moment of decision. If there were a God who cared about what we choose all that would be necessary is the information to make the right choice.
But there is no such being, and that is a demonstrated fact. Scientific truth if you will.
Tom
HekaMa'atRa
Member
What information are we missing when making choices? We often do know the possible consequences when making these decisions. The problem is, we humans are influenced by our emotions, desires, and self interests. These attributes are just a part of what makes us human.
So I fail to see how it's impossible to have an omnipotent God and evil in the world when it's humanity that causes evil.
Super Universe
Defender of God
All mistakes can be put into two categories, the first is a decision made without all the necessary information. The second is when a person makes a selfish decision. Many times the lack of having all relevant information and selfishness overlap.
God provides personality to all beings. In order to rectify the above God would have to provide every being full access to what's called the Genetic Mind. If this would happen then there would be no mystery to the universe. There would be nothing for any being to fear, nothing to wonder about.
The whole purpose of the universe is so God can experience things that He could not otherwise experience. God in heaven cannot know fear, or jealousy, or anger. Only by sending out fragments of His Being (souls) and having those fragments join with intelligence capable biological forms can God have the full experience of personality.
What you're suggesting would make the universe useless.
All decisions are absolutely selfish. Humans are not capable of anything else. We are not free to choose against what we think is in our best interests, ever.
The difference between saints and criminals is that saints have a more enlightened and sophisticated understanding of what is in their best interests.
Tom
No.
It demonstrates that revealed religion is useless from a moral perspective.
Tom
Why not? Sentience, however that term is understood, is not a pre-requisite for something to be deified or worshiped. On the whole, people deify and worship things in accord with cultural traditions, which are in turn a reflection of cultural (or personal) values. Not all people put sentience on a value-pedestal as I presume you do. I don't; nearly all of the gods I actively worship are not what outsiders would call "sentient" by their understanding of that term.
Shad
Veteran Member
Is there a possible world with no evil? According to religions with an evil/good afterlife dynamic there is. Thus there is a possible world without evil. Now if following your argument we would have no free-will in this possible world which undermines free will and makes us robots in say heaven unless heaven contains no humans as evil is the product of humans or heaven is not a evil free zone.
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Jeremy Taylor
Active Member
This formulation is not Epicurean but Academic, coming out of the New Academy.
Anyway, there is no strict contradiction here, so it is certainly not a matter of cannot. What is known as the logical problem of evil in analytical philosophy of religion - or the idea that God and any evil cannot exist - is generally believed to fail, even by atheist analytical philosophers, precisely because there is no strict contradiction.
The debates are generally about what is known as the evidential problem of evil, or probabilistic (and therefore the word cannot would be out of place) arguments about the amount of suffering in the world and whether it is likely an all powerful, benevolent God would allow it. There are good theistic responses (Cf. a myriad of theistic thinkers from Plotinus and St. Augustine to Brian Davies).
Augustus
…
But if god is omnipotent, omniscient, eternal and infinite, then humans would have to be omnipotent, omniscient, eternal and infinite to understand him. But if humans were omnipotent, omniscient, eternal and infinite then god couldn't have created them.
The problem with logical 'proofs' regarding a monotheistic god, is that god must escape logic in order to be god.
HekaMa'atRa
Member
I don't think you can equate a physical world with a spiritual one. As I said before, our decisions are influenced by our emotions, desires, and self interests. According to most religions with a evil/good afterlife dynamic, "heaven" fulfils any desire or need we have. Nor are we bound to our physical needs like in a physical world.
Oh yes, there definitely is.
Oceans of ink have been spilt on logical fallacies. But the simple fact is that there is no logical way to reconcile an OMNIMAX God with the human situation.
The usual method is to separate the claims of omnipotence from those of benevolence. Talk about one, but not the other. That's a how Rabbi (Kuchner?) managed to sell a ton of books explaining "Why bad things happen to good people". He just redefined God to eliminate the allpowerful part that abrahamic religionists go right back to when that is more convenient.
Tom
idea
Question Everything
It's a work in progress - God is destroying evil.
Can God make a rock soooo large than even God cannot move it?
Can God microwave a burrito soooo hot that even God cannot eat it?
Can God make a circle that is shaped like a square?
"All powerful" only extends to the realm of "logically possible".
Love does not exist without free will.
Free will does not exist without both good and evil.
It is not "good" to take away someone's free will - hence present day evil.
(God would be "evil" if he forced everyone to be good)
The only way to create goodness is to allow all of us to eat from the tree of the "knowledge of good and evil", after which we will all eternally cling to what is good of our own free will and due to our own personal experience.
Shad
Veteran Member
This scenario need not be physical, it just has to possible. If a spiritual world is possible it fits this category of possible worlds. So God is culpable for our actions thus not benevolent since we were not placed in the evil free world.
Jeremy Taylor
Active Member
Well, it is certainly the case that many responses include the point that God cannot do certain things, but that is not necessarily to lessen his omnipotence any more than saying he cannot do what is logically impossible, like not be God. No respectable theologian would suggest God can do what is logically impossible (and, of course, the so called POE is only a problem if logic holds).
Anyway, you do not show where this contradiction is. Can you kindly draw up an argument in standard form that shows a strict contradiction between God's existence and the existence of any evil.
Anyway, you do not show where this contradiction is. Can you kindly draw up an argument in standard form that shows a strict contradiction between God's existence and the existence of any evil.