I am new to your forums, and am unsure if this topic is relevant for your site. However, your members are fairly even-headed (based on an EXTREMELY quick flip-through) and I could use some help with this argument. Please poke holes in it, or help strengthen it. Haha, it could use some brevity — any programmers out there?
So here it goes:
The concept of God in the Abrahamic world is of a being that is:
1) Omnipotent
2) Omniscient
3) Omnibenevolent
Step 1: Simplification (not totally necessary, but I find it makes things neater)
Any being that is Omnipotent will make itself omniscient. Or at least, omniscience is in the grasp of anything omnipotent. In other words, let us eliminate "omniscience", because it borders on redundant. God also has the best sense of humour, the biggest pool, the best summer home — but we do not say these things are essential. An omnipotent entity, such as God or anything, would be seduced instantly into omniscience, and it seems unfathomable to think otherwise. So our revised, simplified concept of God is:
1) Omnipotent
2) Omnibenevolent
Step 2: Analysis of the Interaction of These Two Ingredients of God
Premise 1
Omnipotence need not be expressed. It can simply be potential. God is not, for instance, using his omnipotence constantly. Otherwise everything and anything would be happening incessantly. Our only demand for an omnipotent being is that it COULD do anything and everything.
Premise 2
As an omnibenevolent entity, God does good things. In fact, there is another step we get to infer. As an omnibenevolent entity, unlike a morally ambiguous entity like a human, or merely a ‘benevolent’ entity, God is pre-determined to do the best thing he can, and since he is all-powerful, this is the best thing objectively possible. Now, he has to do it all in one piece, all of time and space at once in one big ‘best’ image he can (Leibniz argued this if I remember right).
Premise 3
If a being is omnipotent, they have power over all things, including themselves.
Premise 4
An omnibenevolent entity must do what is best. God cannot do what is wrong.
Step 3: Conclusion
Because of our assumptions about the nature of omnibenevolence, God is unable to escape its dictates. Therefore God lacks the free will that us morally ambiguous humans get (thank God). As a result, he lacks power over himself. Which means he lacks omnipotence.
What this shows is that in the very concept of God there is a contradiction. No Bible contradictions, nothing so flimsy — rather, right in the very concept of God there is confusion.
What we can say, simply, is that a being might be omnibenevolent, or a being might be omnipotent, but it cannot be both, for the omnibenevolence kills the omnipotence by shrinking the potential ability of the entity. As an omnibenevolent entity, there are things which God cannot do.
Doesn’t this mean we must pick? We must believe either in a God of Goodness, or a God of Power?
(Equally, any all-evil — omnimalevolent -- entity would also lack the possibility of omnipotence)
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