No, that is not a part of the definition. What is: If I am a non-smoker, I can’t smoke and still be a non-smoker. If you define God as a being which is tri-omni, then you have the problem. It is not at all a problem for gods which are not tri-omni.
Several “proofs” of God involve God being the greatest that there is and can be. Your argument is with those who believe in this kind of god. The god in the Torah is not even close to being omnibenevolent by most people’s definition, though you hear defenses of all kinds of things - like it was ok for God to kill babies during the Flood because they would have grown up bad and unhappy.
Then this unconstrained God lets all sorts of evils, human and natural, into the world. Kind of a rat, eh?
God certainly matured morally throughout the Bible. If the early stories are all lies, and God’s morality matches human morality as it matured, this makes perfect sense. If God actually did those things, then it doesn’t. If people did bad things supposedly by God’s command, and they were lying, why not lie about good things supposedly do by God’s command. If God were inspiring them, how did they get it wrong?
What is your cite for this? Have you spent years observing gods in their natural habitat and found this to be true? Have you received divine revelation from God about what his goddiness comprises? Is there any dictionary anywhere that defines “god” this way? It certainly doesn’t match the beliefs of any of the hundreds of polytheistic cultures I’ve read about, nor does it jibe with the Bible, with the Jewish theology of which I’m aware, or much Christian theology.
Thanks!
I knew that once, I really did! I’ve always thought “almighty” for Shaddai was a particularly iffy translation. It’s pretty obvious newer translations keep it because no one wants the bad publicity for being the person who God’s omnipotence out of the Bible.
Your claim is that being all-loving and all-powerful are mutually exclusive. I don’t see how it matters if those are “part of the definition” of God, or not. My whole point in this thread, however, has been that God is not typically defined that way by Scripture or tradition.
Besides, most theologians would argue that God has the ability to do evil, and his omnibenevolence consists in him choosing to do good. You can argue that if he’s really, REALLY omnibenevolent right down to his inner essence, then he couldn’t choose to be evil, but that’s not how we talk about ordinary love and free will, and there is no reason to think anyone who believes in God means it that way. If you really, REALLY love someone, to the point that it defines who you are, it’s not nonsensical to say that you honestly couldn’t intend to cause them harm, but we don’t usually take than to be a limit on your ability or free will, just a reflection of your character.
But my point is that “the greatest that there is or can be” isn’t enough for some people. It doesn’t include doing things that are self-contradictory or mere nonsense, but some people say “That’s not real omnipotence, then!” If the future isn’t knowable in the way that the past is because there not yet facts or truths to be known about it yet, then “knowing the future” is just as meaningless as “God creating a rock so heavy he can’t lift it,” but you still get people claiming that that’s not enough.
I’m just guessing, but I don’t think Anslem would have much to talk about with these people.
He’s not much closer to omniscient or omnipotent by most people’s definitions, either.
Trivial nitpick or clarification: does the bible say he needed to rest or just that he did? I thought it was the latter. I often rest because I like to not because I have to.
There are no gods.
My claim is consistent with universal laws. Yours isn’t.
Belief is a human need to be emotionally gratified. It’s irrelevant by definition. Theists are either ignorant louts, or intentionally anti-social mentally dysfunctional individuals needing treatment.
Huh? You realize I’m an atheist, right? I did mention that in my first post. Given that there are no gods, how can there be a universal law that they must know the future perfectly?
I’m wise enough not to play trivial crap like that. I much prefer trivial crap like WoW. But what this has to do with the matter at hand is beyond my wisdom, I concede.
Thanks everyone.
If I understand correctly then, the whole tri-omni thing is an interpretation from different parts of the Bible and nowhere is it explicitly stated. Is that correct?
Jim, there’s been nearly 30 posts so far in this thread!
You mean no one has yet answered your original question?!
I was simply suggesting that you perhaps God did make “wise and good enough to choose of [your] own free will not to commit evil” after all.
Let’s look at it this way. Every action God takes would add to or diminish the goodness of the world in some sense. When God chooses an action, he has a wide variety of choices, or does if he is not omnibenevolent. If he is omnibenevolent, he must choose the action which maximizes goodness. From omniscience he knows what that is. If you think he will always choose the right action, you must not believe in free will. God clearly has free will. If this counts as free will, God can design our choices so that we always choose to do good. But it doesn’t matter, since God cannot choose to do anything but the maximally good action without giving up omnibenevolence. If this is omnipotence to you, you have an odd definition of it, since God is no more than a puppet here.
That so called paradox fails because it is in a single dimension, that of omnipotence, and it makes perfect sense that no being can exist who can make a rock too big for it to lift. But for a tri-omni god, you can have a being, who is not omnibenevolent, who can do actions that God cannot. Thus, God is not the greatest, and is not God. The external constraint is what is different here.
Now that is quite true. He has a problem with iron chariots, for example.
In Hebrew School we got taught that he rested to set an example for humans who do need to rest, and who must under the law.
But omnibenevolent doesn’t mean that he has to perform the action that leads to the greatest good. It means he wants to. But always wanting to do good isn’t a limitation on your power, it’s a reflection of your character. In fact, a constant theme in discussions of free will is that one must have the option of doing evil in order to do good. So arguably omnibenevolence would require that God have the option of not choosing what is good.
I mean, I think the whole thing is bullshit anyway, and I also think that free will is a poorly defined concept that leads to all sorts of logical inconsistency. But I think it is a bit silly to pretend that you can disprove God’s existence by arguing about omnipotence and omnibenevolence. Most believers mean by that (as you said) that God is as good and powerful (and knowledgeable) as possible. Since that’s all they really mean, it’s not much of an argument to say that God isn’t omnipotent because he can’t choose to want something other than what he wants, if that’s logically impossible anyway. Most Christians are ok with a god who can do anything he wants, but can only want what is good and loving. It’s only a problem when too-clever-for-our-own-good atheists like you and me start playing gotcha with it, saying “but then he’s not a real god!” Like it matters to us anyway!
Oh, please, you are making God sound like Curious George. “God wanted to be good, but the idea of flooding the world was just too interesting.” In any case, we have no idea of what God wants or what God thinks - benevolence depends on what God actually does.
But you are confusing omnipotence with omnibenevolence. I agree that an omnipotent being must be able to do evil as well as good. An omnibenevolent one cannot do evil. (Unless it is necessary in some logical sense.) That is a splendid short description of the inherent contradiction.
I avoid free will discussions, because it all comes down to a definition of free will. A discussion of God’s free will would be even worse. A God without free will wouldn’t be God, as you imply. so it gets very confusing.
The tri-omni problem just shows that it is easy to play with words without thinking through the consequences. Whoever defined God to be tri-omni screwed the pooch. The Greeks had no such problems. Their gods were hardly omnibenevolent, and the fact that they took opposing sides in the Trojan War showed they weren’t omniscient.
As for your other point, we’re back to “pick two” again. What does maximally kind of omnipotent/kind of omnibenevolent mean? How do you logically decide if a God who is truly omnipotent and not omnibenevolent iss more or less powerful than the God who is kind of both?
The only actual solution, as I think you agree, is that there is no such god, and the problem goes away. It matters in the sense that we can prove that a certain class of god does not exist, using similar methods employed by theologians to incorrectly prove he does exist. We’re then reduced to looking for evidence of a god, and we’ve been over that already.
I’m trying to parse this sentence and not entirely succeeding. But if you are suggesting that, since I [in your example] have shown wisdom on one occasion, there is no general problem of evil to answer, then no.
Evil undoubtedly occurs, and people undoubtedly make evil choices. Demonstrably then God has failed to equip all of his people to always spurn the evil choice and make the good choice, despite being able to have done so, had he so chosen.
What’s do you mean by “cannot”? He can not do evil and still be omnibenevolent, but that doesn’t mean he is without the power to do evil, which is all that is necessary to be omnipotent. He has the power to do anything including evil, which makes him omnipotent. If He is all good, that means He must be all good by choice to fulfill the requirement of being omnipotent. No contradiction here.
I have no idea what you’re talking about with the Curious George thing. I’ve already said that the Bible doesn’t describe a god who is omni-anything.
But that is NOT what “omnibenevolence” means. That might be what YOU mean when you say it, but I spent three years studying religion in grad school, and I don’t think I ever heard anyone claiming that God’s goodness means he can’t do evil. It means he doesn’t.
But the only class of god you’ve disproven is one no one believes in anyway. Sure, it looks like you’ve disproven the Christian God, because Christians do talk about God in ways that suggest tri-omni, and most won’t object to the tri-omni characterization. But in fact, you’re using tri-omni to mean things that–when you actually engage believers in discussion–you find they never meant.
And even if there are some who did mean that because they’d never really thought about it before NO ONE except atheists defines God that way. So the most you’ll get from a believer who actually follows your semantic twists is “I guess tri-omni isn’t a very good description of God after all.”
All of this, when, as you point out, there’s a much simpler and more honest way: look at the evidence. It won’t always convince people, but at least the ones who are convinced will be convinced for the right reasons.
The tri-omni god is hardly the product of the imagination of atheists. It may not be in the Bible, but it wasn’t dreamed up by smartass non-believers, it was invented (or I suppose some would say, extrapolated from Scripture and natural reason) by Christian theologians.
The Catholic Encyclopedia (1917 edition) is a rather old-fashioned work, now available on-line. Given its publication date, it would be a mistake to trot out everything in it and say “Aha! Here is the official position of the Catholic Church in 2011!” But it can give a good view of classical Christian theology, and here are some of the things it has to say on the topic of God’s omniscience:
(So be good for goodness sake…)
On the problem of evil:
The tri-omni God was the invention of Christian theologians, and it’s not like they aren’t aware of the problems and paradoxes posed by their definition. (Of course they go on to give their answers to the problems posed, however unconvincing I may find them to be.)
These quotations are from a Catholic point of view, but I don’t believe there would be any particular difference between Catholic theology and that of mainstream, classical Protestant theology of various denominations on these particular points.
Of course, if you’re just talking to some guy who believes in a vaguely Christian-flavored Higher Power, none of this may be relevant. If you’re talking to a Christian theologian, a clergyman, or someone who is trying to defend the stated beliefs of any of the main Christian denominations, it’s perfectly proper to bring this stuff up.