While any imaginable attribute is assignable to God, then any imaginable attribute can be assigned to God. As has been described ITT, it is imaginable to assign attributes to God which defy that logic.

Free will is a common defence against accusations ranging from 'god is a monster' to 'god can't exist because.... problem of evil'. I get it all the time. Theists commonly justify awful things this way, it is having a very negative effect.

This thread was intended to explore the logic of my current belief (in a polemical way because it's my preferred style, but I'm not as certain as I may appear to be) that free will is incompatible with an omniscient and omnipotent god. I'm happy to agree free will does exist if the theist is happy to agree that god is not omniscient and omnipotent. Your objection that we can't ever really grasp true omniscience or omnipotent simply isn't useful, how can we discuss god if we can't ever grasp two of his most important claimed qualities? Surely we can work within whatever limit understanding it's possible for us to have?

Why don't you try defining what you mean when you use the term.

'Free will' as used by an atheist like Sam Harris has a different meaning than
when used by theologian.

The term is very nuanced, and one needs to be extremely precise, especially the way you throw the concept around.

Have you ever stopped to think that if God is an infinite being that exists out of space and time, that there might be aspects of God that you aren't going to be able to explain with your finite rational mind?

Your line of thinking reminds of this simpleton argument:

- God can't create something so big he can't lift it
- ergo: God isn't all powerful

Well, I don't find the Problem of Evil very compelling myself, so in that regard I'm siding pretty much with the religious objectors.

And when it comes to the understanding argument it can flipped around, if you accept limitations of understanding you can also object to religious arguments that demand that God is omnipotent and omniscient.

Why not? What I don't find satisfactory is that in conversations about evil, theists will eventually fall back on what I call the 'mysterious ways' argument in that they argue themselves into a place where god, who is loving, must have a loving reason for the evil that we observe but they don't know what it is..... It's sufficient for them that there must be a reason. That's not enough for me.

I'd rather take it and use it against them. I'm happy to work within their paradigm and use the qualities that they believe their god to have, and they're not happy to work in mine, so I don't really have much choice.

Because it's not even a problem. You don't get to say what is evil.

And even if you could what if God created evil? So he did. Woopdido. Only ones you have a case against are some fluffy new age born-agains who claims "god is nothing but love", but it's not like they take the bible seriously anyway or have inclinations towards theology".

But you're not working within their paradigm, you're making ad hoc hypotheses that they don't.

Let’s say everyone agrees that religious people are not actually prioritizing truth and they instead use their intellect to rationalize and preserve their existing belief system in a self deceived way. What then? What is the process toward truth if people are blind to the reality that their intellect is relaying back to them that it is aimed at truth when it really isn’t?

If you don’t have a solution to that, then the probability that you’ll get trapped in the same predicament is 100% and you’ll look just as foolish.

What then? Do nothing and leave religious people be unless any of them intrude or impose religiously. Then deal with those individuals truthfully.

I don't need to, I can use the understanding theists themselves have and since I'm working in their paradigm anyway that's fine with me. I think the concept of evil without a god is meaningless, so I use the theistic concept of it.


'God is love' is the only counter theists have to the Euthyphro dilemma as well, it's a hugely important part of theism, so the problem of evil is hugely problematic for them. I think you're seriously underestimating the importance of this particular issue.

If we could show that god is not all loving, it's devastating to the theist position.


No I'm not. Without their paradigm I don't even have a view on this. I'm working only with what they provide. I'm using their rules, and their claims and their assumptions. I don't believe in god, or free will or that god is omniscient or omnipotent, those are entirely their claims.

I don't think a theist has to even consider these problems. All a theist does is believe there is a god. You have to specify revealed religion (and likely which) for it to even blip on the radar.

And if we take the most typical revealed religion discussed on this forum, it's pretty simple: If a Christian thinks God is "only loving", he has rejected the Bible. The stories of Noah, Moses, Job, Jonah (to name a few) all fly out the window. While debating some form of personal faith that basically rejects theology might be mildly interesting, its hardly earth-shattering stuff for religious theism as a whole.

Nor does the Euthyphro dilemma pose much of a problem for Christianity. God makes the rules, breaking rules = bad. The end.

You can't be serious. What's one of the most common responses to adversity for theists... it's to pray, to pray to the god that I always point out was responsible for the problem in the first place, which is the point where they always try to shift the blame to 'free will', i.e. it's not god's fault it's ours, even when the problem is not of our making, when it's a disease or a flood.

Of course they consider them, and free will always comes up.


No he hasn't he simply justifies it to himself by assuming that even if we don't understand how god is being loving, he must be since he can only be loving. As I said, it's what I call the 'mysterious ways' defence.

Of course it does, it directly counters Divine Command theory. Are you messing with me?

I see no issue for Christianity with any of these "dilemmas" or "problems". They're all pretty much answered in the Bible. God can get angry, God will do bad stuff to people and he'll do good stuff to people, God makes the rules, breaking the rules is bad, God wants you to be saved but he ain't doing it all for you and both your faith and how you act is up to you.

We can dress up in long phrases and pretty words and pretend we're having a very big and important discussion, but why? The Bible isn't unclear on any of this.

Christianity's problem isn't in some big airy theological debate on what grounds morals or what the motivations of God are. It's in its clear reliance on simple superstitious tropes that are by all accounts mostly debunked a long time ago.

When I first found this forum I thought the battlefield was not in the detail of religion, after all why argue about something that something that isn't true, might as well argue about whether unicorns had horns on their heads or halfway down their backs, and that actually the way to convince theists of their mistake was to simply point out that many religion's claims have been debunked, or are the result of cultural bias etc etc.

I now think that the best way to undermine religious views is to take what they believe and demonstrate inconsistencies in it, to use what they believe to counter other beliefs they have, to attack it from within their own paradigm, to show for example the contradiction between the claim that god is all loving and the obvious evil that exists in the world, or the claim that morals originate with god which is actually a circular claim.

The problem of evil is a huge element in both those debates.

Well, then I think you have an issue because from where I'm standing you haven't pointed out such inconsistencies, and nor have the problems and dilemmas you enjoy referring to. In fact, as I have written in previous replies, from a biblical perspective they are easily answerable.

I think very few religious mono-theists would claim to fully understand the motivations, powers or mechanisms by which his / her God operates, so the bigger issues on hypothetical paradoxes caused by omni-potency or omniscience seems overstated. Since most believers would honestly admit they can't know, why should they take seriously your claims that you can?

And I'm not even a Christian and nor am I religious. I'm hardly motivated by religious zeal.

If you don't think that the Euthyphro dilemma at the very least qualifies as an 'inconsistency' then I don't really know what to say next. You yourself pointed out that any christian claiming that god is all loving is automatically rejecting much of the OT, and yet there are a great many christians who have that contradictory view.

No, I said "only loving". I think most of those Christians would hold that divine punishment exists because God is loving. Of course, if they reject that such punishment exists you have a case, but as I said earlier... that sort of fluffy new-age Christianity doesn't really have theological grounding in the Bible, and I also very much doubt it puts much stock in some claimed big philosophical dilemmas.

I'm not drawing a distinction between 'all loving' and 'only loving'. If god is by nature, the 'greatest' possible being, then that being will have the most desirable qualities to the highest standard it's possible to have them, and since love is a more desirable quality (to Christians if not anyone else) than being evil, god can only be the most loving it's possible to be. Therefore god cannot be anything other than loving. God can't be bad or do something bad, it's logically impossible.

It's not a biblical quality, or a fluffy new age thing, it's a logical conclusion.

Problem here is that Christianity doesn't tell you how God must be, it tells you of some of the things he does and some character traits he possesses, some explicitly ("for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God") and some implicitly (he punishes transgressors).

And it's God who makes the rules, on that the Bible is crystal clear. You don't get to say that he is bad (or you do, but you won't be right), he gets to say that you are. Thus the observer in these thought experiments have already gone way beyond the theology they claim to represent.

And all the proponent of this god being all-loving has to say is that these traits are necessary for being all-loving, and then there is no dilemma or problem. There is only disagreement, which is another thing entirely.

Ok, so these are great examples of what I'm talking about. The Christian claims, god is loving, and we can argue 'there is no god' or 'pffft.. you can't know that' and get nowhere, or we can point out that the bible itself says that god is a jealous god, and jealousy is definitely not all-loving, so now we have a contradiction that we can exploit. We can use that contradiction to erode their belief structure.

If they try to escape it by denying the OT, now we have them on a cherry picking charge. Whichever way they turn, they face contradictions in their beliefs.

Or they can run away telling you to have a nice day, as the JV's who came to my door did the other day.

There is no contradiction, the contradiction only exists in the observer (aka you) in your thought experiment, the Problem of Evil or the Euthyphro dilemma dilemma.

Your not going to erode anyone's belief structure, they'll just punt you to the side as someone claiming to know exactly what they must believe, for no reason they agree with.

Then get them to agree. Do you agree that god is all-loving? Yes. Do you agree that in the bible it says that god is a jealous god? Yes.

Bingo.

Yes, an all-loving jealous god.

But that's a paradox!

Says you.

You guys realise you are talking about a God that doesn't exist...right?

We're aware that we are two atheists disagreeing, yes.