chekmate

I'm looking to compile a list of reasons that God, in the traditional, omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent form, cannot exist. I'm going to keep it in a drawer, for when I am having a weak moment, and I will memorize it...

So, if you have something to add, please do. Try to keep them relatively short (not more then 2-3 parapraphs. Less is better), but be sure to get the point across. Thanks!

Syphor

Omnipotence and omnibenevolance contradict. How can you have the ability to do anything yet lack the ability to do evil?

Godot

Omnibenevolence should preclude the existence of evil. Unless of course you are a proponent of "tough love"...

Godot

Look at it in terms of comparative theology (deiology?): what makes this particular deity more likely to exist relative to that one? Why do you dismiss any one of the pantheon of available gods, yet insist in the validity of this one?
Although it does not follow that if one religion is false that all are false, the arguments used to "falsify" that religion are applicable equally to all religions.

emotional

God can't learn. He's omniscient, He knows everything already, so He can't learn. That's already one thing God can't do, so He's not omnipotent.

Darth Dane

Maybe God is re-experiencing God self, through us.



DD - Love Spliff

Ernest Sparks

Theists would fare better if they just dropped all those singular suprema. God is strong enough, smart enough and good enough would be sufficient. If challenged, they could demand a better idea and take the argument a different way. If they are successful in checking the idea of a rival candidate, then they can proclaim that their faith choice is in their God.

mdn

and gosh darn it, people like him!

I agree in principle, in that God couldn't be so powerful as to break the law of non-contradiction, for instance - certain basic principles are inherent in Being, and God must Be, so he's bounded by those laws. But the deeper philosophies of god consider him to be the substance of being, or the immanent wholeness or whatever, and that means omnipotence in the sense that the potentiality of god is all that is potential; omniscience in the sense that all that is known is known by god, etc.

But in another way, that crosses god off the list anyway - if he's everything, he's kind of nothing, too. He's just a metaphor for beingness or something.

The pantheon gods, and I include the christian pantheon of jesus, the father, & whatever saints or spirits are included by the individual christian, do have a problem with the all-ness words, though, since those gods are posited as separate beings. The Hindu religion addresses this issue and has quite a beautiful solution, but the western monotheisms don't.

Mageth

I'm looking to compile a list of reasons that God, in the traditional, omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent form, cannot exist.

Even if a god did exist, how could you know that it posessed those qualities? It sure couldn't demonstrate any of them to you.

God: "I am the omniscient god. I know everything."

Me: "Prove it."

Jobar

Here's a non-rigorous but emotionally appealing one- if God exists, and rewards people who believe in him, then those who disbelieve should at minimum live lives which are nastier, more brutish, and shorter than the lives of believers. Evidence for this is completely lacking; indeed, by many measures, atheists live more ethical lives. (Fewer in prisons, etc.)