That’s the assertion. If I can show that the assertion a being which is both omnipotent and omnibenevolent leads to a logical contradiction, the assertion that it is both is falsified. It does not say if the being is not omnipotent or not omnibenevolent or not either - just that it cannot be both.
Exactly. Since you cannot tell if a greatest being is omnipotent or omniscient or omnibenevolent (not being able to be two or three of these) the assertion that there is a greatest being is not supported.
Omnibenevolence is a characteristic, not a description. It is a property of a deity. An inherent property, otherwise ominbenevolence would be dropped for a tri-omni god since it is a subset, in your view, of omnipotence. They say “god is all good” not that “good happens to be all good.” That god has happened to do only good up to this point does not demonstrate omnibenevolence. You’d have to see if God could do evil. If not, then I’ll agree it is omnibenevolent. If not, not.
If the inherent capability of an omnipotent god includes being able to do unwarranted evil, then it is not inherently omnibenevolent. If that is not a capability, then it is not omnipotent (no matter what your initial assumption is) because it is limited in its actions, and cannot do something that is logically possible.
No, I agree that the god is able to do B. But the moment it does, it is no longer omnibenevolent. Remember, my God B who is omnipotent has the capability of doing that God A refuses to do.
I’ve asked you time and time again to demonstrate how a god can do B and still remain omnibenevolent (or omni-even in the simpler example.) You have refused. That’s omniannoying.
But we already know that’s possible. An omnipotent being can choose to do only beneficial actions, or else, would not be omnipotent. If they do so, they are also omnibenevolent. Since they do not loose their omnipotence by merely choosing a subset of possible actions, they’re both omnipotent and omnibenevolent.
It’s not. An omnipotent being can be omnibenevolent, but one doesn’t need to be omnipotent to be omnibenevolent, since there’s no contradiction in doing the best action possible with limited powers (and up to possible boundaries of knowledge). Omnibenevolence is merely a way of choosing one’s actions.
The opposite is the case. Again, benevolence comes from wishing or intending to do good; if a being were limited to only do good, its intentions would not matter. It would not intent the good—it wouldn’t velle the bene. What is inherent to the tri-omni God is just this intention: that they always choose the good. But that doesn’t imply that they don’t have the capability to do evil. They just don’t.
Suppose there’s an omnipotent being that only does good. They are able to do evil, but choose not to—out of their inherent benevolence. They do so in every case. What distinguishes them from a being that’s omnibenevolent? You’re usually very keen on having distinctions be demonstrable to you. How would you demonstrate the distinction between this being and an omnibenevolent one?
I have told you time and time again that doing something that makes you not-x and remaining x is simply a logical impossibly; no omnipotent being can do so. One that isn’t x in the first place because they’re not x; one who is x because doing so makes them not x.
@Half_Man_Half_Wit
If, minutes after walking into X’s house, burning oil is thrown on me, then I am savaged by hungry dogs before being dropped into a dungeon of spikes that impale me…do I have any reason to doubt that X is a perfectly loving host?
As I’ve said before, yes, certainly—but only because you’re bringing in tons of additional information. You’ve been in similar situations countless times before, without (I hope) undergoing similar treatment. You know that the space of reasons that could make a ‘perfectly lovely host’ (who, we will presume, is chiefly characterized as ‘wishing no harm to come to their guests’) treat their guests this way is tiny to the point of practical irrelevance—perhaps somebody is threatening their life, but why would that somebody be so intent on torturing you? So the likelihood of ending up in that situation is likewise tiny, given that your host is a perfectly lovely one.
So consider what information it really is that makes you confident in your declaration that ‘perfectly lovely hosts’ wouldn’t submit you to this sort of treatment. Your case, in analogy to the one under discussion, would have to rest on the mere fact that they usually wouldn’t wish harm on their guests. But is that really so? Suppose that before you follow up on the invitation, somebody takes you aside and tells you that your host has amassed a large gambling debt, which is used as leverage by a local mob boss that enjoys making lovely hosts do cruel things to their guests. Would your assessment of the situation change? Would you maybe think twice about accepting the invitation? If so, then your assessment was never based on the information that lovely hosts don’t wish harm on their guests, because that information hasn’t changed at all—just your additional, context-framing information.
So now take an analogous situation. Bracket all of your outside knowledge, and suppose that you’ve never before been a guest somewhere (sample size of one), and suppose that the only two things you know about the situation are that perfectly lovely hosts don’t wish harm on their guests, and that at least sometimes, they can’t avoid harming them (both, surely, true). What can you conclude, on that basis alone, about your treatment? You have no information about other, similar, cases. You have no information about the frequency with which guests are, regrettably, harmed. You have no information about the amount of harm that comes to them. You don’t know, in other words, how likely one is to end up in the overlap where perfectly lovely hosts can’t avoid harming guests, and no information about how bad the ‘typical’ case is.
Because that’s the information you have readily available in the real scenario, and which you use to make your judgement: in the majority of cases, perfectly lovely hosts don’t hurt their guests at all, and even if they do, the harm is usually minor—perhaps spilling some wine on a new blouse, or maybe hot coffee if some physical pain is a component. This is where your confidence that the scenario you’re describing is very unlikely to be compatible with the hypothesis of a perfectly lovely host comes from. But in the problem of evil, you don’t have that information—not unless you make further arguments justifying additional assumptions about exactly this sort of thing, about how much harm should be expected given the existence of a tri-omni God. You have a single sample where evil is present, and know that at least sometimes, even a tri-omni God can’t avert evil. You know nothing about magnitude and distribution of that evil, nor about the prevalence of cases where God must accept evil. Hence, from that one single case, you can’t derive a likelihood of experiencing this sort of harm given a tri-omni God.
No we don’t know that’s possible, since your definition of omnipotence and omnibenevolence as a pair involves the supposedly omnipotent being restricting his power. Fine, he can do that - but he cannot exercise his full power. Not choose to - can.
You might as well say that the logical contradictions of creating something too heavy to lift is not there, since the being just chooses not to do so.
I didn’t say that. Saying omnibenevolence is a subset of omnipotence in no way implies that an omnibenevolent being has to be omnipotent. And I didn’t claim it did.
Please cite a definition of omnibenevolence that critically depends on wishing to do good. Would a being who wishes to do good, but does not because of some mental flaw, still be omnibenevolent? I hope not.
To make your distinction, we only need to do a thought experiment. Just ask this supposedly omnipotent being to provide the results of a scenario where it does evil. If there is a solution, it can tell you - and you’re not asking it to do evil, just provide a scenario where it does. If it refuses to do this, then we could pretty well conclude it is not omnipotent. You certainly are refusing to face this scenario.
Using your logic, we can solve the Spanish Barber paradox: a famous logical puzzle illustrating set theory issues, where a barber shaves only men who don’t shave themselves the contradiction arises when asking if the barber shaves himself, as either answer (yes or no) violates his own rule, proving such a barber can’t exist within the village’s logic. All you have to do is to say that the barber can shave himself, but chooses not to, so no paradox.
That is exactly the sort of nonsense you are pushing here.
And I have told you time and time again that since we can imagine a being that can do the things the bi-omni being cannot, you cannot call the bi-omni being omnipotent. The most potent being under those constraints, sure, but not the most potent being who is logically possible. You seem to be redefining omnipotence into a nonsense concept.
This is very difficult to follow but I think traditional interpretations of the Bible support the idea of God choosing to limit His own power, namely through covenants. Like, yeah, He doesn’t have to allow rainbows to exist when the light hits the rain at a certain angle, He could snuff rainbows out at will, but He chooses to let them exist, every time.
This would only be right if not doing implied not being able to do, which you agree it doesn’t. So there’s no restriction of power, merely a choice of actions.
Go back to the toy model. Every omnipotent being chooses a certain sequence of actions. Say that sequence is ‘geggegggegggge…’. Call this ‘omnichampernowne’. Is that being now no longer omnipotent for making that choice? Obviously not. But the same holds if that sequence is ‘ggggg…’. every omnipotent being has exactly the same power—choosing one of these infinite sequences. An omnipotent being that chooses all-g just gets a special name. We could equally well name other sequences (although not all of them, obviously, since we only have denumerably many names). No being named thus has any less power than it’s brethren.
That is absolutely what that implies. If A is a subset of B, every A is B. Since humans are a subset of mortal beings, every human is mortal.
Again, it’s just the literal meaning of the word. ‘Omnibenevolence’ is just the Latin word for ‘always wishes the good’.
That’s simply false. There’s no scenario in which I would eat a banana, but that doesn’t mean I can’t eat bananas. That there’s no scenario in which a being chooses evil doesn’t imply it is by some magical force restrained from doing evil. It might just not want to. There’s nothing difficult about that.
There is no paradox, no contradiction with an omnipotent being simply choosing not to do evil. Again: a being is omnipotent; it decides to only do good, under any circumstance. What’s to stop it? There is no loss of omnipotence; the counterfactual ‘if it wants to do evil, it can’ is still as true as before. It’s antecedent is simply false: it doesn’t want to do evil. Non-omnipotence would only come about if it couldn’t do evil despite wanting to.
(And obviously, the solution to the barber paradox is to employ a female barber.)
No matter how often you say it, however, it remains nonsense. A non-omnibenevolent being may do things an omnibenevolent one doesn’t do, but that in no way implies that a non-omnibenevolent being has any powers an omnibenevolent one lacks. Doing something is not a requirement for being able to do something. Else, this would imply that a being is only omnipotent if it does everything it is able to do, which is patently nonsense.
Say God normally leaves your desires in their natural state, which includes an apetite for bananas. You eat bananas every day because they’re your favorite snack. This is very predictable. But then, on national banana day, God specially intervenes in the physical world and removes your desire for bananas. Sticks his hand in and pulls it out. Such being your desire, you choose to forego bananas on national banana day. The next day, God returns your desire and you go back to eating bananas.
If we stipulate that you exercised free will every time you chose to eat a banana, did you exercise free will when you chose not to eat a banana on national banana day?
That’s impossible to answer without a deeper discussion of the nature of free will, which I think is rather beyond the scope of the thread. Somebody who holds that free will is merely acting in accordance with one’s desire may want to answer yes, no matter whether these desires are shaped by evolution, random chance, or meddling deities. Someone who holds that free action needs to be genuinely agent-caused would answer no, because the ultimate cause of the action is external to the agent.
Completely irrelevant. This could be the first time I’ve ever been invited to someone’s house and it would change nothing about the hypothetical.
Can I say nothing about the character of a train driver if it’s my first time on a train?
The only information that we are bringing in, is that causing unnecessary suffering is, in itself, incompatible with concepts like “loving”.
As I’ve tried to explain, the position that actually requires positing external facts and is Occam’s vulnerable, is the idea that an omnimax God has mitigating factors.
“Conclude” is not the term I would use here, because, as I said, we’re not talking about proof. Just about confidence and doubt, the same as any claims about external reality.
And yes, I don’t need to draw from other cases to doubt that it is a loving host, given the large amount of apparently unnecessary suffering. The same as my first train ride.
I know you share my view that free will is an incoherent concept; not even a thing which could exist (correct me if I’m wrong on that), so I hear you if you find it frustrating at times not calling out the elephant in the room.
But we’ve had lots of threads on the nature of free will, and they always run to thousands of posts. So personally I’d go with ignoring the elephant and accepting the premises of the OP.
I’m sorry, but that simply isn’t true. If all you know is that your host wishes that no harm comes to their guests, and that at least sometimes, such harm nevertheless can’t be avoided, you have no information to gauge either the likelihood of coming to harm, or the amount of harm to expect. ‘At least sometimes’ covers everything between ‘only once in the history of the universe’ and ‘pretty much every time’, and ‘harm’ is anything from spilled wine to outright torture. Everything else can only be derived by means of additional information; there simply is no grounds for further inferences there.
Suppose you go on a new fairground ride about which you know nothing except that it has a warning sign saying ‘Despite our best efforts, riders may get wet’. You ride, and are absolutely soaked. Do you have grounds to complain?
Suppose you think you do, and ask to speak to the manager. They ask you: “Why did you think you wouldn’t get wet?” What do you answer? Maybe, you thought you’d get wet, but not that much. OK, they press on, why did you think you wouldn’t get that wet? What could you point to as justification of your assumption? Perhaps you might say that you’ve never gotten that wet on other rides. Or, you might have reasoned that it’s not in the park’s best interests to soak its visitors. Surely, those are valid concerns: but they all refer to additional assumptions and further information. The sign as such is perfectly compatible with getting soaked almost every time one rides.
There is no such position. Nothing extra is assumed in showing the compatibility of evil and God. This is still just misunderstanding the basic logic under discussion. The conclusion of the argument is the compatibility of evil with the existence of God, without any need for further assumptions.
‘Conclude’, to me, doesn’t carry any connotations of definite proof, and wasn’t intended to portray them. If the weather forecast says a 60% probability of rain, I can well conclude I better bring my umbrella, without any commitment to definitely needing it.
Even in that sentence, you’re bringing in additional assumptions, namely that you’ve been subject to a comparatively large amount of suffering, and that this suffering was unnecessary. Claiming that it is large implies that you have some point of comparison; claiming that it is unnecessary implies that you have some notion about the distribution of suffering in such situations. Neither of which follows from information you actually do have: that your host wishes for no harm to come from you, and that this can’t always be avoided. Given that information, the amount of suffering you received might have been the bare necessary minimum; it is only your assumptions that contradict this.
Take again this bit of the scenario:
Would you, under these circumstances, evaluate your likelihood of coming to harm differently? If so, then you’re not reasoning from the originally given information alone, because that information remains the same: this scenario is perfectly consistent with your host not wishing you harm. Thus, that original information can’t adjudicate whether you should expect this scenario, or one where you’ll maybe suffer a wine spill at worst. Hence, your expectation of the latter can’t be derived from this prior information.
I’ve never disputed that God can limit his choices - that has to be possible for an omnipotent being. We’re talking about possibilities here. God certainly can reverse the colors of a rainbox if he wanted, or change it from an arc to a box. He can - and maybe has - broken the covenant.
I’m talking about things that an omnipotent god can do which contradict what an omnibenevolent god can do. Thus my example - he does not create an object too heavy for him to lift because he chooses not to, but because it is logically impossible for him to do so. In this case we define omnipotence so this isn’t a problem, which I’m fine with. That’s not the case for a bi-omni god since there is a possible non-bi-omni omnipotent god without these problems.
No, he never shaves himself, since shaving himself leads to Russell’s paradox. I know it isn’t the greatest example, but I was trying to find a non-theological one.
When do we get to look at these sequences? Are they infinitely long, which means never? If not, does the being who created the all g’s sequence have the power to extend it by adding an “e?”/
An omnipotent being has the power to appear omnibenevolent, of course. But a truly omnipotent being has the power to do something that increases harm. If the omnibeveolent being does not have this power, which is logically possible, then it is not omnipotent.
So, no commentator has explicitly used this. I’ve already noted that wishing does not make it so.
That’s absurd. If there is no scenario where you will eat a banana in any possible world, how is that different from you being unable to eat a banana. Perhaps I can imagine more possible worlds than you can.
Firesign Theatre: “No choose, doctor!”
Can he choose to do evil in any possible universe?
As for your solution, do you think women don’t shave? (It doesn’t say the barber’s face.)
We’ve been through this already. A god throwing a “2” does not limit omnipotence if it can throw any other number, whether or not it does. A god not being able to throw a “3” does if it does not do so while being omni-even.
I’ve never, ever said that an omnipotent god has to do all possible things. I’ve very explicitly said otherwise. It must be able to do all possible things. I hope you can see the difference.
If I am writing a book, I possess omnipotence and omnescience over the universe described therein. Omnescient narrators are well attested in literature. Who is to say I cannot be omnibenevolent as well? The mere existence of evil in my story does not, as a matter of logical necessity, make me evil. I have my own reasons for writing my story, which may not agree with the moral views of the characters within. Not even if I give my characters the same moral system that I hold myself - they have imperfect information, but I know everything. See the Book of Job.
Let’s say there is a mountain in my story. This mountain exists, in my story, as a literary device for ultimate heaviness. It is the heaviest thing in the universe. The characters say so. I can’t lift a mountain in real life. But I could make this mountain float, in the story, if I so wished, with so many words (“and the mountain floated”). But I don’t, and never will, because it would defeat the purpose.