Nov 17, 2008

The 3 conflicting attributes of God

As a solipsist, I believe that I am god. But many of my mind's creations believe that one particular other God exists. Christians call their concept trinity, which is fancy talk for their 3 gods all being one, which gets around that monotheism thing. But that aside. Lets investigate God and see if we can disprove some of the mythology about him.

God has 3 primary attributes that make him better than us:

Omnipotence - Which means all powerful. This is the attribute of God that allows him to do anything at all. From designing atoms to moving a galaxy to making life spring from dust.

Omniscience - Which means all knowing. This is the attribute of God that allows him to know everything that has happened, that will happen, and all the thoughts and feelings of every thinking being alive.

Benevolence - Which means being good. In God's case, this means he can only do good. It means that God can't do something that results in a negative outcome.

These three attributes of God can not exist together, as evidenced by the state of the world. Consider the following:

If God were not Benevolent, then the world makes sense. He would be capable of doing good and bad things to people on a whim, and this is what is evidenced by the state of the world. Good and bad things happen.

If it is required that God be Benevolent, then perhaps he is not Omniscient. He could then not know everything, and be justified in some of his plans not working out for the good even though he intended them to do good things. Since he would not know the outcome of any action taken, guessing wrong is not unreasonable. This could then account for all the bad things that happen.

If God must be Benevolent and Omniscient, then perhaps he is not Omnipotent. It would then be reasonable that even his best laid plans, and good intentions would go wrong when some outside force beyond his control dictated it would be so. This is often how the God/Satan relationship is portrayed. Sometimes God just isn't powerful enough to stop the evil Satan from causing harm. Sometimes the will of an evil man is able to overcome the power of God.

Let's dig deeper.

Imagine God sitting alone before he created the universe. His choices in how he creates the universe will dictate how that universe takes shape. If he knows all, then he knows what his actions will result in from then till the end. If he is all powerful, no outside force could prevent his will from coming true. This suggests that the universe is EXACTLY as God intended it to be. And by the simple fact that the universe has pain, suffering, starvation, genetic disease, plague, war, murder, clinical depression, mutilation, poverty, sickness, poison, and a host of other items that are not pleasant and not good. God must not be Benevolent. For if he were, it would have certainly been within his power to not include these things.

Why include these things?

The classic idea is that without pain, how would you know pleasure. But what you must not forget is that God created both concepts. If God is all powerful, it would be within his power to create a world with only pleasure. Pleasure that never gets old. Endless novelty. After all, he can do anything.

The only thing stopping him would be a lack of forethought, or a lack of desire. Two things he is defined as incapable of.

The other classic counter is that God must have wanted to restrain his own power to prevent pain. To give humanity free will.

But he must have known ahead what man would do with that free-will, or decided to not know. And in either case that shows a lack of Benevolence. Because if he knew, he knew what terrible things man would do with that free will, and he would have created a construct to prevent free will from causing negative ramifications. And if he allowed him self not to know, then he knew that his choice could cause any kind of outcome, and a benevolent being would not risk causing pain, or at the very least would have put a stop to it long before things like the Holocaust happened.

So, clearly, God lacks at least one of these attributes. Which suggests that God's nature is not as advertised. Which should make the entirety of the product suspect.

How can you lay down divine morality if you don't know the outcome of such morals, if you don't have the power to redeem on your promises or you aren't as good as you say you are?

How?

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