# How Would You Defend the Concept of a Benevolent and Omnipotent God? **URL:** \ **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:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2021, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-defend-the-concept-of-a-benevolent-and-omnipotent-god/937878/61 "2021-03-15T03:48:54Z")
I do need to note that a benevolent and omnipotent God is not in the Bible per se. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2021, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-defend-the-concept-of-a-benevolent-and-omnipotent-god/937878/62 "2021-03-15T04:00:44Z")
Eternal damnation pretty much rules it out. ---
**Author:** ![Zack\_Poppet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/f07891/32.png) [@Zack\_Poppet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zack_Poppet)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2021, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-defend-the-concept-of-a-benevolent-and-omnipotent-god/937878/63 "2021-03-15T04:08:58Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > Think of God as playing a game called “being Creation”. God enjoys the activity as a whole as thoroughly entertaining. The experience of suffering is largely (if not exclusively) tied to not sensing the connection, so you aren’t seeing the football game, you’re just in the immediate moment of trying to go somewhere and being stopped, or the immediate moment of being body-slammed and feeling pain. Like all analogies, this one is limited and has non-accurate comparisions as well as fairly accurate ones, but I think it conveys a bit of how I think we’re viewing the whole matter, respectively. I wouldn’t say “being Creation” is quite exactly vapid entertainment and without serious purpose but I would say it is entertaining and fun. This argument is entirely unconvincing for me. It is one thing to undergo any form of earthly suffering. With the right justification, it would even be completely just and rational to do so. But the simple fact is that we simply don’t know, hence whatever consequence coming from such suffering is ambiguous, and hence potentially meaningless. > God enjoys the activity as a whole as thoroughly entertaining. The experience of suffering is largely (if not exclusively) tied to not sensing the connection, so you aren’t seeing the football game, you’re just in the immediate moment of trying to go somewhere and being stopped, or the immediate moment of being body-slammed and feeling pain. Without the context of understanding, such a thing _is_ meaningless. An amnesiac is being bodyslammed into the ground again and again by large, aggressive people who cause them physical pain. There are two possible options: 1) His aggressors are playing football, its all a friendly game, and afterwards they will enjoy ice tea and a nice lunch; 2) He is being beat up and tortured. Said person may _convince themselves_ through faith one of those things is true, but its merely an exercise in self-delusion until definitive knowledge exists. The question, to me, is not whether suffering exists, but rather why is it that we don’t know why suffering exists with a benevolent, omnipotent god. There is no such knowledge, so self-realized justifications with our limited understanding (i.e. faith) undermines that just as much as denying god entirely. Such a being could simply let us know. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2021, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-defend-the-concept-of-a-benevolent-and-omnipotent-god/937878/64 "2021-03-15T04:09:48Z")
I don’t think a free choice is a free choice unless it is made without coercion. John Doe has little choice but to hand over his wallet if I demand his money at gunpoint. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2021, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-defend-the-concept-of-a-benevolent-and-omnipotent-god/937878/65 "2021-03-15T04:27:45Z")
Free will. You makes your bed, you lie in it. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2021, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-defend-the-concept-of-a-benevolent-and-omnipotent-god/937878/66 "2021-03-15T04:31:08Z")
What the holy fuck does that have to do with what I posted? ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2021, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-defend-the-concept-of-a-benevolent-and-omnipotent-god/937878/67 "2021-03-15T04:36:06Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Eternal damnation pretty much rules it out. In response to _I do need to note that a benevolent and omnipotent God is not in the Bible per se._ ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2021, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-defend-the-concept-of-a-benevolent-and-omnipotent-god/937878/68 "2021-03-15T04:38:53Z")
Agree - and I don’t think the Bible teaches at all that _all_ suffering is from free will. Some people do indeed reap the consequences of stupid or evil behavior, but in a great many cases - famine, disease, injury, etc. - the suffering is no fault of the sufferer. In fact, the whole book of Job details the suffering meted out to a good man, whose friends blame for his own suffering. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2021, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-defend-the-concept-of-a-benevolent-and-omnipotent-god/937878/69 "2021-03-15T06:00:19Z")
> [@velcro](#): > > My OP is asking for a defense of that apparent callousness. Your response seems to be negating the callous cruelty because callous cruelty can not exist in your philosophy, almost by definition. Is that an accurate interpretation? Neither you nor I know if it’s an accurate interpretation. I don’t see it the way you do but that doesn’t make me inherently correct. Maybe it is somehow cruel of God (unto whom, God’s self?) to be all these different individuals and to start off with a lack of awareness of being God, to cause the experience (even if it is God’s own experience) of other external beings and forces being mean and cruel. I don’t see it that way. I understand that you do. ---
**Author:** ![velcro](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velcro/32/7102_2.png) [@velcro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/velcro)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2021, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-defend-the-concept-of-a-benevolent-and-omnipotent-god/937878/70 "2021-03-15T12:38:30Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > I don’t see it that way. I understand that you do. Thanks. I appreciate your placidity. To clarify one more point: When God divides into the components, of which I am one, each component loses the realization that it is part of the whole, and so experiences should be looked at as if done to an individual. When done to an individual with no knowledge of the whole, I think (and it seems you agree) it gives the impression of being cruel. The only way to remove that impression is the belief that we are all part of a whole. Unfortunately that belief has no evidence outside our minds. And if you base your beliefs on things that only exist in your mind, that causes other problems. And for me personally, cutting out special exceptions God that apply nowhere else in the world seems dishonest, but I recognize that is not true for all people. I can convince myself that we are all part of a whole, and so suffering is not real. I can also convince myself that there are no children dying of malaria, so I can buy that new laptop without guilt. Or I can strive to believe what the evidence provides. Note: I see evidence of love, justice, etc. even though I can’t touch them. I am not aware of similar evidence that we are all part of God. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2021, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-defend-the-concept-of-a-benevolent-and-omnipotent-god/937878/71 "2021-03-15T13:18:37Z")
> [@velcro](#): > > Unfortunately that belief has no evidence outside our minds. Depends on what you consider evidence. Not everyone agrees that it’s definitely true that the entire universe originated in the Big Bang approx 12 billion years ago, but there is evidence to support that. It had no prior cause, apparently; in fact there was no “prior” as time as well as space and all that we consider “universe” originated there. Separating the singularity into separate objects and separate events is an imposed mental construct; the separateness isn’t real in any intrinsic way. Everything is still the Big Bang. The impression of causality is useful for prediction and helps with understanding of many things but it is also useful for a different kind of understanding to realize that the “events” are part of a whole and are unfolding as part of a sequence that traces back to the singularity. Consciousness, self, and intentionality are more complex. But we experience ourselves as creatures of volition and that’s a notion that doesn’t mesh well with the notion that we are surrounded by and caused by events and contexts around us that make us who we are and generate our thinking. That apparent incompatibility shifts when we re-acquaint ourselves with the interconnectedness and realize there are no external events; if there is an illusion it is the illusion that our selves are individual selves. It can’t be completely illusory of course, our own senses attest to that. But if we can contemplate the possibility of determinism, we can surely also wrap our heads around the notion that the self that we sense that we are is in part plural, involving social processes, involving communication and culture and other people; and also that it is all-encompassing, meshing with the entirety of our context in space and time. I don’t know if it quite parses correctly to say that the entire universe is conscious. It’s probably more meaningful to say that whatever property the universe as a whole does possess, consciousness as we think of it is a subset of it. Dunno if that helps or if I’m just rambing, but it’s how it looks from where I sit. ---
**Author:** ![Ynnad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/4491bb/32.png) [@Ynnad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ynnad)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2021, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-defend-the-concept-of-a-benevolent-and-omnipotent-god/937878/72 "2021-03-15T13:32:17Z")
The purpose of pain is to help an organism avoid injury or further injury. If pain were not unpleasant then it would not be very effective, would it? What this has to do with God, I have no idea. ---
**Author:** ![filmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7993a0/32.png) [@filmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmore)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2021, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-defend-the-concept-of-a-benevolent-and-omnipotent-god/937878/73 "2021-03-15T14:38:55Z")
It’s understandable when physical pain is proportional to the degree of injury since pain serves as a deterrent system, but there are many cases where emotional pain is tremendous and seemingly random. For example, consider the fallout when a child joins the church choir and gets molested by a priest. The child may feel tremendous guilt and shame, may act out in troublesome ways, get involved with drugs, commit suicide, etc. The family may experience tremendous trauma and be torn apart. The priest does not experience any punishment. It’s conceivable that a god may have an underlying reason for all that to happen, but it seems totally inconsistent with a benevolent god. If the god really is benevolent, then it seems like part of that benevolence would be to convey the reason for all the suffering so we can understand why it happens. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2021, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-defend-the-concept-of-a-benevolent-and-omnipotent-god/937878/74 "2021-03-15T15:05:05Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > Think of God as playing a game called “being Creation”. God enjoys the activity as a whole as thoroughly entertaining. The experience of suffering is largely (if not exclusively) tied to not sensing the connection, so you aren’t seeing the football game, you’re just in the immediate moment of trying to go somewhere and being stopped, or the immediate moment of being body-slammed and feeling pain. Like all analogies, this one is limited and has non-accurate comparisions as well as fairly accurate ones, but I think it conveys a bit of how I think we’re viewing the whole matter, respectively. I wouldn’t say “being Creation” is quite exactly vapid entertainment and without serious purpose but I would say it is entertaining and fun. I would also keep steering you back to God as a sense of identity. If you cut off your left hand with your right hand it must have made sense to do so or you would not have done it. More usefully, perhaps, you sometimes opt to get into a passionate and hurtful argument with someone you love because it clears the air and achieves communication and makes the two of you happier in the long run even if there are hurt feelings and anger and a sense of betrayal in the short run during the argument. I seem to have been thinking about this overnight; and to have come up with a different sort of analogy. I live with cats; I do that on purpose, I like living with cats, and overall this benefits me. But occasionally a cat scratches me in play or by accident, and can do so enough to make me bleed. When I bleed, the expelled blood cells, which are part of me, die prematurely. For that matter, if I bruise myself doing something I enjoy, the blood cells in the bruise remain part of me but also die prematurely. The problem is that I don’t see this as my being benevolent towards those blood cells. At best I’m neutral toward them; I know I need to have blood and may be concerned about it in bulk, but I don’t care, and generally don’t notice, what happens to any individual blood cell. So I think that your everything-in-the-universe God may not be inimical; but I don’t think that God can fairly be described as benevolent, either. And I very much doubt that individual blood cells have consciousness, or that they themselves care when and whether and how they die. Whereas humans, and most likely quite a lot of other beings, do. So if your God is also omniscient, then your God must know about the pain of individuals – if omnipotent as well as omniscient must have deliberately _created_ the pain of individuals–, and still doesn’t care. Your description doesn’t clarify that, though; so maybe God just doesn’t know any more about people than I know about blood cells. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2021, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-defend-the-concept-of-a-benevolent-and-omnipotent-god/937878/75 "2021-03-15T15:12:33Z")
The idea that a god feels the same pain I do when hurt is problematic, in that if a bullet strikes me I can die a painful death, whereas this god can endure the explosion of a sun without so much as an “ouch!”, which might lead one to believe that even _if_ she/he/it feels the bullet, this entity is NOT feeling the same effect. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2021, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-defend-the-concept-of-a-benevolent-and-omnipotent-god/937878/76 "2021-03-15T15:18:28Z")
Which is worse, physical pain or emotional pain? I think part of this world with physical pain has to do with us learning about what really matters, emotional pain. It’s brought out physically to show us physically, why we really hurt inside. After all if we are eternal beings, what is death? ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2021, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-defend-the-concept-of-a-benevolent-and-omnipotent-god/937878/77 "2021-03-15T15:19:25Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > After all if we are eternal beings, what is death? That is one hell of an “if”. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2021, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-defend-the-concept-of-a-benevolent-and-omnipotent-god/937878/78 "2021-03-15T15:19:34Z")
> [@Bootb](#): > > It perplexes me that so many people stumble over the concept of the OP. All the arguments and objections that are commonly raised on this topic can be answered simply, concisely, and easily– > > Free will. > > Anybody who studies the biblical depiction of God will find that His love and benevolence are perfectly balanced by His justice and holiness. A God who allowed wrong-doing to slide by unpunished would be an unbalanced–and thus imperfect–God. > > The Bible is VERY clear that ALL forms of pain, suffering, and general unpleasantness in the world are a direct result of sin–something that entered the world as a direct result of free will. > > The angels were already created at some point before Adam and Eve. But the angels are somewhat akin to robots–they had precisely one chance to decide whether they would serve God or Satan, and that one chance sealed their fate forever. At this point, they no longer have any choice in the matter. > > God wanted a class of intelligent beings who could freely choose to worship Him–even though that very ability to choose had the inherent risk of producing a different result. God has the **power** to override free will–but He refuses to use it, because exercising that power would render the whole thing meaningless. > > To ask questions such as the OP asks is a seemingly-sophisticated form of saying, “I’m going to blatantly ignore 95% of the source material, and then have the gall to be puzzled when I can’t figure out the answers.” “Sin entering the world as the cause for all suffering” is a fiat rule that an ominpotent and omnibenevolent creature could change. If shuddering, gasping deaths due to cancer are the result of the divine plan, then the plan was not created by a benevolent omnipotent being. Period. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2021, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-defend-the-concept-of-a-benevolent-and-omnipotent-god/937878/79 "2021-03-15T15:27:36Z")
> [@Lobohan](#): > > “Sin entering the world as the cause for all suffering” is a fiat rule that an ominpotent and omnibenevolent creature could change. This makes it sound as if “sin” is some sort of hereditary disease and not a necessity, doesn’t it? ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2021, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-defend-the-concept-of-a-benevolent-and-omnipotent-god/937878/80 "2021-03-15T15:31:21Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Entirely aside from whether any of that is so, I don’t see how it’s an answer either to > > > [@Czarcasm](#): > > > > If we only have free will for the tiniest fraction of our eternal lives, do any of the choices really matter and, if they do matter, _should_ the choices we make for the tiniest fraction of our eternal lives determine what happens for the rest of our eternal lives? > > which is what you were quoting; or to the OP. I have questioned the actual meaning of free will as the standard definition does not seem to fit biblically. As such I do question that we only have free will for the tiniest fraction of our lives. Paul states that everything is permissible for me, but not everything is beneficial. As such it appears like we can walk our own path. God seems to give us leeway even those like Paul that modern Christians might consider Paul fully surrendered to God. Jesus offers freedom in scriptures, that also implies free will. As such I would say that choices continue to matter, forever. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-defend-the-concept-of-a-benevolent-and-omnipotent-god/937878.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-defend-the-concept-of-a-benevolent-and-omnipotent-god/937878.md?page=5)