# How Would You Defend the Concept of a Benevolent and Omnipotent God?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-defend-the-concept-of-a-benevolent-and-omnipotent-god/937878>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [March 14, 2021, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-defend-the-concept-of-a-benevolent-and-omnipotent-god/937878 "2021-03-14T14:08:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 14

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2021, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-defend-the-concept-of-a-benevolent-and-omnipotent-god/937878/261 "2021-04-04T23:27:22Z")

</div>

I think you need to look at humans as a collective whole and not an individual for this to work.

Like an ant colony you might have in your room in a terrarium. You care about the colony as a whole but probably don’t care about any individual ant.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\
**Post date:** [April 5, 2021, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-defend-the-concept-of-a-benevolent-and-omnipotent-god/937878/262 "2021-04-05T17:31:12Z")

</div>

If the ants in the ant colony spelled out “give us a break” with their bodies I think we might want to treat them a bit differently.  
As far as I can tell God is less like the benevolent keeper of a terrarium and more like the obnoxious kid who kicks the ant colony and stomps on the ants just for fun. Nice guy.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Johnny\_Q](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/898d66/32.png) [@Johnny\_Q](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Q)\
**Post date:** [April 6, 2021, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-defend-the-concept-of-a-benevolent-and-omnipotent-god/937878/263 "2021-04-06T04:02:21Z")

</div>

This seems relevant

[![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ESXW7_LUlmc/hqdefault.jpg "William S Burroughs- 11 A One God Universe") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESXW7_LUlmc)

[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-defend-the-concept-of-a-benevolent-and-omnipotent-god/937878.md?page=13)