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Omnipotence makes God evil.

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06/18/2009

This article in defense of god’s “omnipotence” was brought to my attention and I took note of how the author went through great lengths to stretch reason to the breaking point.  It was too irresistible to let it go unanswered from a skeptic, as the author deems it his mission to address the many flaws in “omnipotence” that skeptics have pointed out.

He shoots himself in the foot right from the start by admitting to assuming that a god exists and then assuming he knows the characteristics of said unproven being. But we will let him get away with it, or there would be no fun to be had.

The author goes on to set up a straw man argument against omnipotence by saying that skeptics say that god cannot be omnipotent because god is unable to create a scenario where he is unable to do something.  What he fails to address is some basic flaws in the definitions he offers of what his god is (both omnipotent and omniscient).

Omniscience is “all knowing” or “infinitely wise”. Omnipotence is “having unlimited power”.  “If God is omniscient, he must already know how he is going to intervene to change the course of history using his omnipotence. But that means he can’t change his mind about his intervention, which means he is not omnipotent.” – Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion)  The author of this article fails to address these irreconcilable characteristics of said god.
The author continues with an argument that the attributes of god are “simple” because he says “god is actual” and has an “unchanging nature”.  Basically he is stating that god is simple because he exists and does not change.  How we equate existence and static being to simplicity, is unclear.  What he means when he says “simple” is also unclear and the purpose in doing so is not explained.

Continuing on, he poses  another straw man argument by saying that skeptics point out that god cannot sin and therefore is not omnipotent because there is something he cannot do.  This guy suggests that god CAN sin, but he chooses not to do so.  Yet from there he goes on to state:

In fact, it is my belief that God’s omni-benevolence (God’s all-goodness) prevents him from sinning

He suggests here that god would probably sin if it were not for this omni- part of him that stops him from doing what might otherwise come naturally.  Which seems absurd to me.  Isn’t sin the act of offending god?  So wouldn’t it be impossible for god to sin against himself?  Self contracting reasoning here.

The author then poses this question when making his point about a god who chooses not to sin and then considers the alternative:

Could you imagine a “God” who stopped refraining from sinning and started raping, pillaging and destroying randomly? Certainly this is not the Christian God!

Well, I am glad you asked.  I don’t have to imagine that god.  People already worship him!  Let me introduce you to the Judeo-Christian god who in the Old Testament commands his followers to pillage, commit genocide, take more than one wife, and kill each other when Moses catches them dancing around the golden bull.  This god killed every first born child in Egypt and did not stop Jepthah from killing is only daughter as a sacrifice to god for his help in winning a genocide battle against a neighboring tribe.  The Christian god is a murderous, two faced mafia boss whose twisted ways are well documented in the bible.

And here I will let this author contradict himself again:

a skeptic might suggest that if the above definition is true then that still means that a human can steal candy from a baby but God cannot. Does this suggest that we have the power to do something that is impossible for God? Yes, in a sense this is true. We have one power that God does not: we can sin.

Next, the author tackles the problem of  evil.  He presents the skeptics’ argument:

P1. Evil exists in the world

P2. God is all-good and all-powerful and all-knowing

P3. An all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing God should only create a world of total goodness

C1. Yet P1 conflicts with P3 so we must conclude that an all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful God does not exist.

He suggests how to solve this logical argument by denying any one of the 3 premises.  He admits the difficulty in denying P1 and P2.  So he resorts to rejecting P3 with this justification:

God allows evil to exist so that the highest form of good can exist.

Essentially he is stating that the highest form of good is reliant upon the existence of evil.  Which logically makes evil more powerful than good.  Tell that to the child who was raped by his parish priest at the tender age of 9.  Tell that to the starving children in third world countries.  Tell that to the family of people murdered by the KKK.  Go ahead and tell them that this evil is good for them in the long haul.

Next, the author states:

evil is not a tangible thing; in a way evil is not a reality like goodness

He expounds on this fallacy by saying that evil is the absence of goodness and therefore goodness is a thing and evil is a non-thing.  This is a logical fallacy.  “Good” and “evil” are words humans use to describe events and behaviors.  Neither is a tangible thing and neither is the absense of the the other.   These terms can change what they describe as a society evolves and grows.  For example, slavery was a good thing in the bible and was condoned by god, but today we recognize slavery as an evil form of human repression.   These terms can also be applied to the same act with varying circumstances.  For example, the act of killing someone can be called both good or evil depending on the situation (aggression verses self defense).  Good and evil are not tangible things, rather they are words used to describe behavior and circumstances.

In a final hurrah, he attempts to dismiss all evil as originating from another mythological being called Satan.  So we have a “good creator” who is unproven who created Satan.  Satan (an unproven mythological scapegoat) choose to disobey the “good creator” and hence became powerful enough in his rejection to spark a whole bunch of other evils.

…the free choice of the devil to refuse submission to the divine will lead to a corruption and a dissolution of the natural powers of Satan’s will. In a metaphysical sense, the will of Satan was corrupted by his choice to disobey God. This was the beginning and origin of all evil: for the choice of Satan lead to a corruption within the very will of Satan.

He then goes into the mythology of angels and their ranks, powers and how they cannot be forgiven like humans, which is why the devil cannot repent and go back to heaven.  All unproven scapegoat ideas to excuse the problem of evil.  Make up some “evil force” character who takes the blame for all the stuff that we don’t want the “good force” taking credit for.

Finally, the author pulls out the big creation myth guns and says that all humanity must suffer the evils of this world because Adam and Eve sinned big time when the talking snake convinced them to eat forbidden fruit in god’s garden right after he created the world in 7 days.  Right.  So babies have to die horrible deaths from crippling diseases because some bloat 6,000 years ago couldn’t find another piece of fruit to snack on?

Either god is omnipotent or not. If he is, then the bad stuff that happens is part of his knowledge/plan. So the child who died last year at the hands of her religious mother because the parents wanted to pray away her diabedes instead of seek medical help was all part of god’s plan. And the starving children who die every day are part of the plan of the omnipotent god.

This author is essentially saying “God does the good stuff and nature (and Satan) does the bad stuff”. An omnipotent god controls EVERYTHING by definition, even the evil and suffering. So next time you hear of a priest raping a young child, make sure to thank god for it (because god has a “greater good” in store for that molested child and can justify letting a priest follow through with rape).

  • matt

    I like this article. You did a well at bringing out the poor arguments that some people make in favor of Christianity. Unfortunately, I think some of your arguments are based on false beliefs ABOUT Christianity. For the purpose of this argument, I figure it’s best to use the original Christian faith, now called Catholicism. As hard as it is to belief Catholicism, it sounds more bogus to believe revised and edited versions. So humor me.
    It seems that what both the author and yourself missed in the argument about why evil exists, is that the Catholic church (referring to official teachings, not hearsay) says that God did things this way because he wanted people to have free will, including the angels. My opinion is that free will is pretty awesome (pardon the teenage expression). So the Catholic church must think it’s pretty awesome as well, and so must God. But there’s some good sense there. Hypothetically, if you could force someone to love you and say/do nice things for you, would you really appreciate it? Anyway, the only other part I wanted to mention is where you bring up the whole creation stuff. Technically, the Catholic church has no standing on creation, other than God created stuff. That’s it. They don’t argue that God did everything in 7 days, or that the world is 6,000 years old, or that there ever was a garden of eden. In fact, they only say that a few verses in the entire bible need to be taken literally. Everything else can be interpreted in almost any way as long as it doesn’t contradict a few key things (that I don’t actually know).
    Lastly, try to argue with less pathos like you did at the end of the argument. Instead use almost entirely logos, as this is the highest form of reasoning.

  • http://liberatedmind.com LiberatedMind

    Free Will. Free Will is a perception, an observation of the physical universe around us as we move through the dimension of time. It is likely an illusion and some quantum physicists will argue that it IS an illusion.

    Here is another angle. What constitutes free will? If the act or ability to choose one thing over another or to select one outcome over another constitutes free will, that grants “free will” to anything able to make such a selection like rabbits or beetles or dogs.

    I understand that the Catholic church does today take a position on creation, however they do claim to know who “created” the big bang and all “his” characteristics, desires, wants, etc. It is just as illogical as saying the earth is flat or that the sun goes around the earth (which they have said in the past when the evidence for or against was unavailable). It follows the religious trend of jumping to conclusions when we don’t have the answers (faith). Science is a method used to discover the correct answer. Science is obsessed with the unknown because it poses a chance to learn and experiment to provide provable repeatable evidence in support of a theory. In the days of the Greeks and Romans, they were unable to explain lightening and assumed that Zeus must be throwing down lightening bolts. They shoved a god into a gap in their knowledge. This happened again in the creation story of the bible (and every other creation story in multitudes of cultures). Such nonsense was put to rest (or so we thought) by the theory of evolution which has been proven in every field of science from DNA biology to Geology. And now we have religions like the Catholic Church who shove god into the gap of our knowledge called the big bang. The cracks keep getting smaller and smaller, some of them squeezing out “god X” and “god Y” completely.

    Despite the official Catholic Church’s stance on the creation bed-time story of the bible, I still run into die-hard Catholics who are convinced the earth is 6,000 years old and that evolution is wrong because “humans can’t evolve from monkeys”. My own Catholic mother thinks that Darwin’s theory of evolution should be banned from schools because “humans can’t evolve from monkeys”. Trying to explain that monkeys, apes and humans all evolved over millions of years from a common ancestor now extinct is like talking to a brick wall. My homeschooling mother is convinced she has all the information she needs when it comes to evolution and will not take the time of day to educate herself on the topic.

    The evidence for evolution is so mountainous that being an anti-evolutionist today is modern equivalent of being a flat-earther or trying to convince others that the sun revolves around the earth.

  • matt

    I am glad that you mentioned free will right away, because I realized soon after submitting that I didn’t do anything to clarify what I think of the matter. I’ve only done a small amount of research in the area of ancient philosophy, but the definition of free will that I thought to be the most logical (if logic applies to this abstract term) is the ability to make a choice with the knowledge that such a choice is harmful to oneself or ones friends. Basically, only humans can do things with the intent to hurt themselves or their loved ones. I do agree that animals choose to do things. My dog chooses whether he wants to play, or if he wants to sleep. But I don’t think my dog is capable of choosing to hurt himself. The only situation of animal choices that confuses me, is the matters of dolphins and of chimpanzees. Both have been know to kill their own kind, even their own young, for reasons that humans can’t figure out. Is this some primitive form of free will, I can’t really say.

    As for your argument for evolution, I would have to clarify that I do believe in evolution, but that alone isn’t reason to disbelieve the existence of a god. In the case of Christianity, almost the whole bible can be looked at as a story rather than a textbook. The fact that there’s two stories of creation should be a clue (particularly towards anti-evolutionists) that it was meant to be an inspirational piece rather than cold hard facts. Or you can look at the flood. Obviously the whole world didn’t flood, because it would be impossible for all that water to both appear and disappear. But when the story is viewed in context, we can see that ancient cultures like the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians, the Hittites, etc. believed that the world was very small. A certain ruler of the Assyrians created a “map of the world” that barely extended across the Middle East. So when we look at the story of the flood with that in mind, coupled with the fact that multiple ancient civilizations have stories of world wide floods, suddenly it sounds a lot more reasonable. There’s even scientific explanations for the ten plagues, though I don’t know enough of them to explain it.

    It really boils down to what you think is immortal. Do you believe in the immortality of matter and energy, or of a deity? I myself choose to be in the middle. From this point I am able to rationally look at both sides, hopefully being able to one day come to a conclusion. And that is simply a personal choice, just like your choice is to believe in the immortality of matter and energy.

    Not to be a “grammar nazi,” but for clarification, you meant to use the word “doesn’t” instead of “does” in the third paragraph right?

  • http://liberatedmind.com LiberatedMind

    Yes, in the third paragraph i did mean to say “does not” instead of “does”, thank you for the correction :)

    First off, your criteria for free will (knowing that choices have consequences) does not apply only to humans. You contradict yourself in another post thread where you say that Dolphins kill for sport.

    Secondly, the possession of an ability that might be rare or unique in the animal kingdom does not make it supernatural or belonging to the supernatural. “Free will” is a term we use to describe our perception of choice.

    Moving on to Evolution. That is great that you don’t buy into the literal translation of an outdated bronze-age text. However, anyone who labels themselves Christian or even Catholic attaches themselves to others who go by those labels and think that the earth is 6,000 years old etc.

    I do not “believe in the immortality of matter and energy.” The universe is a bubble that we live in and what exists outside of that bubble (if anything at all) has the potential for endless possibilities and it is not for us to quantify or qualify what is or is not outside our known universe until we can provide evidence for any such claim.

    Immortality is a desire of mankind to exist in the powers of the mind beyond the capabilities of the body. This desire has been projected into mythical deities and gods throughout time.

    My best to you on your thoughtful quest! I appreciate the dialogue :)