Food for Thought: A Discourse on Deities

[Dr.Goomonkey]

Originally Posted by Joseph Sweeney

Well right, which is covered in the conclusion of the argument. If God has it in for people then he isn't benevolent.

But my post was specifically aimed at the claim that we *cannot* know God the way we know humans. And that only stands in opposition to God's omnipotence and omniscience. Whether or not he is all loving, or whether or not non-belief is a threat to humanity isn't directly correlated to the claim I was attempting to preempt. Because benevolence and threat to humanity aren't related to what we can know, those are related to if God would want us to know. And my specific claim dealt with can.

~JS

While I see the logic you're using, I'm going to turn all those points around at you, even though I'm arguing entirely for the sake of argument in this post and not because I actually believe the ideas I'm suggesting.

Your definition of omnipotent seems to be taking omni to its very farthest reaches. Now I point back to Sean Murray, the creator of No Man's Sky. While he is far from a God, he could be called omnipotent in reference to his creation. Sure, his coding skills limit his potential, and the very nature of code is sure to impact what he is capable of, but in the end all of his creation comes from him, thus allowing for a somewhat limited definition of omnipotent to be viable.

Does omnipotent mean you can do everything, or do everything within some boundaries of what is possible to do? Same question as far as omniscient. My answer to both of these is that, in reality, I don't know; but I think both definitions for both words are useful in these kinds of discussions (as useful as anything is in these discussions).

So, let's put in our head a God that is omnipotent and omniscient, but limited to what is possible to do and know (you don't have to try to believe in him, just imagine ). Let's throw all-loving into the mix, too. Can you get a God that has it out for some people in this scenario? Sure. If in creating people it is necessary for there to be the evil that we see in the world, then all of this can work together. If He loves everyone, then he would want as many of them to be happy as possible. If some of these people have to be crummy and will necessarily bring down the happiness of others, in this life and the next, then an all-loving God would have to have it out for those people for the sake of the many. He might feel terribly about having to do this, but nonetheless his omni-powers are limited to what is possible and this is the best possible mode of operation for him.


Additionally, I think that the idea that we can't know whether or not a deity exists is kind of a common sense argument. We don't have concrete evidence pointing toward a deity, and it is impossible to find concrete evidence against a deity (yeah, yeah, FSM and Six Gamblers and all that, I definitely agree that those are just as likely as any individual religion's God or Gods). Belief in God vs. belief in your girlfriend are fundamentally different, because if there is a God they clearly either have hidden themselves from us and demand faith, or are somehow incapable of proving their existence to us; but you can see your girlfriend and we have concrete evidence for scientific theories even if I individually don't really understand them. I don't think them being fundamentally different negates your idea that belief is not a choice, though.