I came across this philosophy paper (miter missive: The Browser) which ponders whether the hypothesis of an omnipotent and omniscient God is any more likely to imply that God is good rather than God is evil.
Suppose, for example, that the universe shows clear evidence of having been designed. To conclude, solely on that basis, that the designer is supremely benevolent would be about as unjustified as it would be to conclude that it is, say, supremely malevolent, which clearly would not be justified at all.
The problem always appears at a much more basic level for me. Suppose you are an omnipotent God. What do you do? Obviously to answer that question you should start by identifying all of the feasible alternatives (ok that one is easy, everything is feasible because you are omnipotent), rank them according to your preferences, and do the one that ranks at the top. Wait a minute. What are your preferences?
You are omnipotent remember. Its not just that you get to choose your preferences. Your preferences do not exist until you create them. Ok. So first you choose your preferences then solve the problem of what to do given those preferences. How do you choose your preferences? It is no help trying to choose the preferences that are easiest to satisfy blissfully because you are omnipotent. All preferences are trivial to satisfy blissfully. But why do you want to want that anyway? How do you even know what you want to want? You don’t have any preferences yet right?
So I think that an omnipotent God would be too neruotic to even get out of bed and decide whether to be good or evil.
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June 24, 2009 at 9:14 am
michaelwebster
I once heard a religious scholar state that “omnipotent” was mistranslated. All that the term signified was “more powerful than anything man could do”, or something along those lines. Be nice to know if this was correct as it would avoid a lot of purely logical puzzles.
June 24, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Lawrence M
I haven’t had a chance to read Law’s whole post, so I don’t know what exactly to respond to, but I’d have to say that the problem is with the word “benevolent” not “omnipotent”. Omnipotence can’t break laws of physics and nature. For instance, God cannot create a rock that he cannot lift. And even though Chuck Norris can divide by zero, God cannot. It’s just illogical. So, it’s impossible for God to make us love Him – His top preference. It’s like when a woman wants her husband to WANT to do the dishes. She doesn’t want to have to coerce him into doing the dishes. She just wants to know that he’ll do it on his own initiative because he loves her, etc.
So I believe the problem is with the term “benevolent”. Just because God is good, it would be wrong for Him to impose His will on us. Humans always have a choice to do right or wrong, good or bad. So I believe that most of the world’s ills are caused by selfishness.
As for AIDS, cancer, swine flu, etc, you can’t blame God for them. I don’t know if He created them or not. If He did, I’d argue that everything has a right to fight for its life. For example, we wouldn’t eradicate all lions because they eat humans. And if God didn’t create disease, I’d say that death and pain are realities of this world that we must learn to cope with – and for me, I find solace in knowing there is a God.
June 25, 2009 at 3:55 pm
jeff
If God cannot break the laws of physics then God starts to look pretty much the opposite of omnipotent (omniwimpy?) For if the laws of physics state that a rock (not even a big rock, maybe just a pebble) cannot float off the ground by itself, then how can God lift any rock? Unless there is a God-exception to every law of physics: a pebble cannot float off the ground *except* when God wills it to. But then God is not constrained by the laws of physics.
March 18, 2014 at 2:41 pm
Alex
that if God could be everywhere, auohtlgh he created Hell, He couldn’t possibly be there because He is supposed to be in Heaven. I think what the young boy would like to tell us is that our beliefs could make us either strong or weak. Wonderful. Thanks for sharing this.
June 25, 2009 at 8:36 pm
mike
Why does an omnipotent being need to have preferences? We choose only because we have a need to choose. Resources are finite and life is short, therefore we have preferences that guide us in using them wisely.
An omnipotent being does not have these restrictions. Therefore, if an omnipotent being exists and this universe exists, that means all possible universes exist. Because really, why not?
If the omnipotent being is considered benevolent, that simply means that the complete set of possible universes is on the whole more benevolent then not.
June 26, 2009 at 11:34 am
jeff
i agree, an omnipotent god does need preferences in the narrow sense that we usually use for mortals. but omnipotence describes what god *can* do, but in order for god to actually do, she must have something that qualifies as motivation, whatever we want to call it. she must have something that affects her choice of what to do and what not to do.
i don’t see such an easy way out by assuming that she just does “everything.” for example, one subset of “everything” is “everything and nothing at the same time.” how is that possible?
June 27, 2009 at 10:21 am
mike
Does God exist in time? And how does omnipotence work anyway? Does it function through a proxy, like say, wishing to a genie, or is it more intrinsic to her being?
I guess, what I’m trying to get at is whether or not there exists any push back, or barrier at all. And that’s important because it is that barrier that we tend use in order to define the difference between possibility and reality. If there is no barrier, then what is the difference between mere possibility and actual existing?
If God needs to ask a genie, then it’s pretty clear what exists and what doesn’t: any wish that has been processed by the genie exists, and everything else doesn’t (God, of course, can function as her own genie for our purposes). If God does not need to ask a genie, then there is no distinction.
Either way, how we answer this will tell us which type of logic system we should use: an ‘existence’ style logic, where ‘everything and nothing’ can’t happen. Or a ‘possibility’ style logic, which is more like Buddhist four-fold logic, where ‘everything and nothing’ is a perfectly kosher subset of ‘everything’, as you put it.
October 1, 2009 at 11:40 pm
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October 2, 2009 at 2:04 am
Matt
Logic cannot be applied to god. The very concept of god itself TRANSCENDS logic. Human reason is bounded.
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