God cannot be all-loving, all-powerful, and all-knowing

[otseng]

It's getting kinda quiet from all the atheists, so I'm going to help it along.

Here's one argument I've heard from atheists on why God doesn't exist.

Christians acknowledge that God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving. But there exists many problems in the world today. And many quite serious problems. If God is all-knowing and sees all these problems and all-loving and doesn't want these problems to exist, then it's not all-powerful since it allows the problems to exist.

Or if it knows all these problems and is all-powerful, then it is not all-loving since the problems exist.

Therefore God cannot be all-loving, all-powerful, and all-knowing. Consequently, God cannot exist.

[agnostic_pilgrim]

I just thought this may interest you:

The Christian God is defined as a personal being who knows everything. According to Christians, personal beings have free will.
In order to have free will, you must have more than one option, each of which is avoidable. This means that before you make a choice, there must be a state of uncertainty during a period of potential: you cannot know the future. Even if you think you can predict your decision, if you claim to have free will, you must admit the potential (if not the desire) to change your mind before the decision is final.

A being who knows everything can have no "state of uncertainty." It knows its choices in advance. This means that it has no potential to avoid its choices, and therefore lacks free will. Since a being that lacks free will is not a personal being, a personal being who knows everything cannot exist.

Therefore, the Christian God does not exist.

Some people deny that humans have free will; but all Christians claim that God himself, "in three persons," is a free personal agent, so the argument holds.
Others will object that God, being all-powerful, can change his mind. But if he does, then he did not know the future in the first place. If he truly knows the future, then the future is fixed and not even God can change it. If he changes his mind anyway, then his knowledge was limited. You can't have it both ways: no being can be omniscient and omnipotent at the same time.

A more subtle objection is that God "knows" what he is going to do because he always acts in accordance with his nature, which does not diminish his free agency. God might claim, for example, that he will not tell a lie tomorrow--because he always tells the truth. God could choose outside of his nature, but he never does.

But what does "nature of God" mean? To have a nature is to have limits. The "nature" that restricts humans is our physical environment and our genetics; but the "nature" of a supernatural being must be something else. It is inappropriate to say that the "nature" of a being without limits bears the same relationship to the topic of free will that human nature does.

Free will requires having more than one option, a desire to choose, freedom to choose (lack of obstacles), power to accomplish the choice (strength and aptitude), and the potential to avoid the option. "Strength and aptitude" puts a limit on what any person is "free" to do. No human has the free will to run a one-minute mile, without mechanical aid. We are free to try, but we will fail. All of our choices, and our desires as well, are limited by our nature; yet we can still claim free will (those of us who do) because we don't know our future choices.

If God always acts in accordance with his nature (whatever that means), then he still must have more than one viable option that does not contradict his nature if he is to claim free will. Otherwise, he is a slave to his nature, like a robot, and not a free personal agent.

What would the word "option" mean to a being who created all options?

Some say that "free will" with God does not mean what it means with humans. But how are we to understand this? What conditions of free will would a Christian scrap in order to craft a "free agency" for God? Multiple options? Desire? Freedom? Power? Potential to avoid?

Perhaps desire could be jettisoned. Desire implies a lack, and a perfect being should lack nothing. But it would be a very strange "person" with no needs or desires. Desire is what prompts a choice in the first place. It also contributes to assessing whether the decision was reasonable. Without desire, choices are willy-nilly, and not true decisions at all. Besides, the biblical god expressed many desires.

No objection saves the Christian God: he does not exist. Perhaps a more modest deity can be imagined: one that is not both personal and all-knowing, both all-knowing and all-powerful, both perfect and free. But until a god is defined coherently, and then proven to exist with evidence and sound reasoning, it is sensible not to think that such a being exists.

- Dan Barker

[agnostic_pilgrim]

It's not that God does not want to associate with people. On the contrary, God desires and longs for an association with all his people, whether they love God or not.

The only reason that God cannot associate with people is because of sin. Prior to Adam sinning, there was a close association with God and his people (though there were only 2 people). And theoretically, if Adam never sinned and none of his descendents sinned, everyone would have a close association with God.

God's nature is holy and requires complete freedom from sin to associate with him. So, God was stuck with a dilemma. He desires to associate with people, but the peoples' sin keeps God from associating with them. And the purpose of the Bible is to describe the dilemma and to show how he solved it.

Who made all this so-called laws and principles of sin and holiness in the first place? God cannot associate with us because of sin? Then why didn't he just made us perfect and amply knowledgeable of making the right choice as he is so that we won't sin? By doing so, as Corvus says "The choice is not being removed, but the doubts about which choice is correct."

God will make a set of rules which is insanely improbable for us to completely obey (Note: the Christian god demands PERFECTION) and he blames us for not being able to meet his expectations because we cannot obey it completely (not mentioning that god is the one responsible for giving us imperfect ability for us to perfectly obey his laws).

None of this makes sense.

[filiasan]

Dear Sage,

Here, I shall comment on this one line of yours that stuck to me. Deciding that I didn't want it to eat at my brain (and more importantly because I'm a nosy-little-chaotic-neutral-disrupter), I've decided to voice my opinion (btw, every religion is an opinion, not a fact, for there will always be someone else who will think differently):

God cares for me and has given me life....because He was lonely. He wanted us. I'm not saying that I'm suicidal or anything. But, you as a Christian should know this.
free-will...yes, but he also wants us to go against said will. That, in itself, is just torture. You may find this SHOCKING (note the sarcasm), but most of us find it quite difficult to go against who we are!!!
family...Oh YEAH! This here's one of my favorite. God just loves families. He wants us all to get married and push out babies, but what if you're a woman and don't want children. But at the same time won't be celibate. Women like me often think that maybe Mister All-Loving God is not so loving of the less-than-equal "feminine half" of the species (human).
freedom....in uneven amounts for different individuals. Some of you get it in tens and twenties. I get it in ones. Moving on...
beauty of nature...I have but only one regret here. Disease. But, hey, it's all part of the curse we brought upon ourselves, right? Especially us women. Bad women! Well, other than that, nature is great. I love it. Really. I'm not kidding this time.
friends...ah, well I don't have many friends, but I have one great friend that's better than you could even imagine. And she's my sister. Okay, I feel a little better
food...no complaints, here; I know how it is to starve (once upon a gloomy time...)
a good job...um, well, I don't have a job, but I do have SSI benefits (disabled, over here), but this was due to the power of the spirits, my friends...oh, but you don't believe in those, do you? (pst, anyone that does believe, reply, I'm so dreadfully lonely. The people I know are ignorant and I don't see them as being any more than my...acquaintances)
a good church...I don't have a church. Don't need one. After seeing what this place (aka The Bible Belt) has to offer, I have become bitter towards Christians (most of them don't care wether you're sick or dying anyways! I know! I'm one of those people who are forced to rely on the kindness of others. I've looked. There isn't any)
and the Internet...I would've thought that God disapproved of the Internet. I'm quite sure that the Internet was created out of evil. It's just too much fun to be Christian, except for the few annoying "churchy" sites (I'd might say religious, but being a CULTURED individual, I am quite aware of the other religions).
Thank you for your time and patience; and...hopefully you won't be seething with that so-called "Christian zeal" for what I've said.
Good day.

sincerely, the Status Disrupter

P.S. Nice name.

[Didymus]

I regret not having been around for the majority of this thread. The problem of evil is a matter of relative interest to me, because it is an area where I disagree with many other atheists.

As things stand, with the discussion as advanced as it is, there's little point in me mouthing off very much, so i'll give only a short rundown of my opinion.

The problem of evil as laid out in the opening post is called the Logical problem of evil. So called because it attempts to show that the attributes of god logically contradict one another and/or facts about the world (i.e. that evil exists). As is so often the case when black-and-white logical formulations are applied to complicated situations, the argument is a failure (though this is not acknowleged by many atheists). It is invalid because of the premise "if god is omnibenevolent, he would eradicate evil".

As osteng and others have already pointed out, this is not neccessarily true. It is possible that benevolence requires the allowance of some evil. The free will defence makes use of this flaw by asserting that if god wants us to be good, as a benevolent being may well desire of its creation, it is neccessary to allow said creation free will, or else it is by definition incapable of choosing to do good. If this is the case, the creation, though only posessed of limited free will (i.e. it may not choose to fly), must be allowed to choose evil, be it simply failing to do good or choosing to do evil things actively. Though this may at first seem to contradict omnipotence, in fact it only contradicts a form of omnipotence wich says god is capable of doing things that are logically impossible, like creating a square circle, or a rock he cannot lift. This is an idea of omnipotence that it both rejected by most christians and is by definition impossible.

It can be concluded, therefore, that the logical problem of evil is refuted by the free will defence.

On the flipside, the nontheist argument rejoins the battle with a modified, much subtler version of the problem of evil, often called the probabilistic problem of evil. In academic circles even atheists concede the logical version to the free will defence.

The probabilistic argument focuses on the amount or the degree of the evil present in the world. Formally, it assigns a probaility value for any given instance of evil that it will exceed the amount of evil that can be justified by free will, and extrapolates from the number and severity of evils that this p figure is very high. To argue this, one is no longer dealing in metaphysics but must actually investigate the world to settle the argument. The PPoE proponent (such as, in this case, myself) could point to instances of evil that are not caused by humans flaunting their free will, and indeed could not have been influenced by any person. Things like natural disasters, loathsome diseases, horrific accidents and apparently evil things caused by other organisms. The rules of the game have changed: the theist is confronted with a great deal of evil which can NOT self evidently be explained by free will, or by humans at all.

[mrmufin]

Therefore God cannot be all-loving, all-powerful, and all-knowing. Consequently, God cannot exist.

Or, at least an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving god is somewhat inconsistent with the observed and experential data.

However, this inconsistency does not rule all concepts of god out of the realm of possibility. A god defined with any combination of two or less of the properties {all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving} may still survive logical consistency.

1. The concept of an all-powerful, all-knowing god who may be entirely indifferent to human affairs may still be consistent with observed data. In this model, the god may be more concerned with snail darters, methane based lifeforms on Titan, or simply overburdened by the Universal Expansion Project. Indifferent or not, a god defined by the properties of all-knowing and all-powerful is also all-responsible.

2. The concept of an all-knowing, all-loving god who lacks the capacity to prevent human suffering may still be consistent with observed data. In this model, the god may simply be a low-level functionary in an heirarchy of deities who is precluded from intervention by the Policies of Upper Management. Consistent with this model is the hypothesis that a previously omnipotent being donated and instantiated his omnipotence in John Prine on October 10, 1946. Unfortunately (or perhaps even fortunately), Mr. Prine has not yet realized his awesome power.

3. The concept of an all-powerful, all-loving god who is unaware of human suffering may still be consistent with observed data. In this model, the proposed god may be away from his desk, on vacation, experiencing intermittent data reception or taking a nap.

< ... Lather, Rinse, Repeat ... >

x. The concept of an all-powerful god who is unaware of human suffering and wouldn't give a rat's wrinkled rectum about it anyway may still be consistent with observed data. A god of this type may be busy developing more robust viral strains, creating turbulent weather patterns, burning out stars and inspiring terrorists.

y. The concept of an impotent, unaware, indifferent god may still be consistent with observed data. However, in this model the god is entirely useless but may be propped up by religious followers who ascribe properties to their god which are impossible to evaluate objectively due to the camera shy nature of the god.

z. Since the unobserveable can be difficult to distinguish from the non existent, the possibility that no gods exist remains consistent with the observed data.

Attempting to evaluate the nature of anything in the absence of observational data can get pretty tricky.

The logical inconsistency of an all-knowing, all-powerful and all-loving god is further muddled by any consequences imposed by disbelief. An all-knowing god should certainly be aware of my disbelief of its reality as well as what would be required to convince me. An all-powerful god should certainly have the capacity to convince me of its reality. An all-loving god would certainly not impose harsh consequences for not acting on its knowledge and convincing me of its reality.

Regards,
mrmufin

[mrmufin]

Are you implying that God is causing these things to happen to people? Or even implying that God is not causing these for some? I don't believe that is true in either case.

Yes. Omnibenevolent or not, an omnipotent, omniscient god is still omniresponsible.

When omnipotence and omniscience are coupled, the result is the same regardless of the god's opinion of us. To make a human analogy, consider Person A who is both aware that Person B is drowning and the only one capable of saving Person B. Based on both the action taken by person A and the values systems of the observers, Person C and Person D may draw differing conclusions about the benevolence of Person A, regardless of Person A's opinion of Person B.

Thus if an omnipotent and omniscient diety is in possession of the knowledge that the ground chuck in the fridge contains bacteria harmful to me does not necessarily impact my free will to make either burgers or meatloaf. However, having this knowledge and not preventing me from consuming the ground chuck (regardless of the chosen preperation method) would qualify the god as willfully negligent by my values system.

Regards,
mrmufin

[Frank]

By first defining God's "knowledge" (His all-knowingness) we can then precede onto what is the love and power that issue forth from this knowledge. But how are we to come to conclusions about God's knowledge? On the ground that we can understand God's knowledge we could certainly derive ideas concerning his love (presumably for us) or his power (to create or to act on His own volition) but we are precluded from our seemingly reasonable goal of understanding His knowledge by our own finiteness.
Therefore, we cannot say whether God is all-loving, all-powerful and all-knowing or not as we are incapable of reaching an understanding of God. We can have faith or not, and we can argue reasonably or not ---that, I believe, is the gift that God gave us...to share the qualities of Love, Power and Knowledge that He has but in our very human way.

[Dilettante]

I think we are ignoring some possible answers to this riddle.

The fact that evil exists and God is doing nothing to prevent it does not necessarily mean God is not omnipotent or omnibenevolent. Perhaps the evil we experience does play some role in God's whole picture, which is supposed to be a lot wider than ours. At least it's not logically impossible. It may be unlikely, perhaps highly so, but it's certainly not logically impossible as I see it.

[SpinyNorman]

Just a question.

If man is able to FULLY comprehend all that God does and is.......wouldn't that make man equal to God?

I don't see how man, even with all his pithy logic and thought, can ever fully know the mind of God.

Am I wrong?

[Corvus]

Just a question.

If man is able to FULLY comprehend all that God does and is.......wouldn't that make man equal to God?

Er, no? What exactly makes God God? Is it knowledge? That would mean the only way in which we are subordinate to God is through ignorance, and we are human by virtue of being ignorant. Must His Absolute Benevolence, the Good King, conceal His motives and be beyond the comprehension of His subordinates? No, I do not believe it is knowledge and comprehension which makes God what he is. I think to myself if perchance it could be power, but I don't believe this is true either. It would mean might makes right, and any sentient creature could be a plaything for a spiteful creator who existed at the dawn of time (or before it) could do as he pleases with it.

My understanding is that God is God, and God has certain attributes, but possessing these attributes does not make one God any more than someone possessing my grace and charm would make that person me.