# Omni-benevolent, Omnipotent, and Omniscient

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/omni-benevolent-omnipotent-and-omniscient/571346>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [February 14, 2011, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/omni-benevolent-omnipotent-and-omniscient/571346 "2011-02-14T19:40:11Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 5

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**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:** [December 27, 2011, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/omni-benevolent-omnipotent-and-omniscient/571346/81 "2011-12-27T06:14:32Z")

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> [@Der\_Trihs](#):
>
> Comic books are a good analogy; what we see in Christianity and religion in general is the result of millennia of power inflation. Just as Superman always gets more and more powerful over time, the claimed abilities of gods got larger and larger.

Actually a very good analogy. Supe’s powers did grow until the Silver Age, when I read him, but seem to be shrinking since the super-duper Supe got so absurd. It looks like a lot of people have backed away from the tri-omni god after it was defined 1500 years ago since that god is so obviously not in our world.

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**Author:** ![Jaledin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Jaledin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jaledin)\
**Post date:** [December 27, 2011, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/omni-benevolent-omnipotent-and-omniscient/571346/82 "2011-12-27T06:26:56Z")

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Saving this page for future – I try to keep my Latin up by reading Spinoza’s _Ethics_ when I have a spare minute or whatever.

As noted above, these distinctions are

* * *

“semantic”

* * *

.

But that don’t mean shit. All them terms come from the scholastics and the church-father cats as well as the lens-grinders and the corn-foolers. Depending on your orientation, they mean degrees with fine or coarse degrees as you wish, depending on how fine a comb you wish to pull. Off the top of my head, I don’t believe there are equivalent terms in koine, but I only know Homeric Greek.

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