Narrowing it down to a Christian God helps. (It does appear that we have a true disagreement.) But it does bring along a lot of historical and cultural baggage. In the interest of making it easier to find cruxes, I suspect that even if you discarded some of the burdensome conjunctive details, we may be left with a core set of attributes for a Being that we would both agree could be fairly called “God”, such that if we removed any one of them, said being could not be called “God”. In other words, there are probably many details such that if you discovered that you got them wrong (though some means you would consider authoritative), you would not abandon your faith. These details are not cruxes.
Is “omnipotence” one of those necessary attributes such that if the Being in question did not have it, He could not be fairly called “God”? Or can that be discarded and replaced with a sufficient amount of “power”?
Is “personality” one of those attributes? Must God have a mind to be “God”? Or can He be a Law of Cause-and-Effect with no will of His own? Can “God” be a rank or office that Beings may attain or abdicate?
Is “omnibenevolence”? Or can God be morally neutral? Evil? Good to some degree, but imperfect?
I’m genuinely enjoying the idea of “limited omnipotence” right now. Not in a condescending way, but as an interesting paradox. Thanks for that! 🙂
Related thoughts:
Can God make a being greater than God?
Can God destroy God?
Can God take away God’s powers?
Can we become or make beings at least as great as God? (In the Old Testament, God seems to worry about things like this on occasion. Else why strike folks down when they try?)
I may as well also point out an old problem. Since we observe bad things in the world, God cannot logically be both omnipotent and omnibenevolent. Both are claimed by the church, though neither is demonstrated in the Christian Bible. That may well be one of my cruxes.
2) 3) I don’t know. I would say “can but will not because of omnibenevolence”.
4) The thing in the Old Testament I understand as sarcasm from God. I would say we can become “lower gods”.
This problem requires the definition “what is good” first basically. For example, is it better to give the gift immediately, or to give the person a difficult task first, knowing that he is capable to do it, and then to give this gift as an award? When the person would feel better?
Also, when you are saying it is your crux, do you mean the statement “omnipotent omnibenevolent God is incompatible with observed Universe” is crux for “There is no omnipotent omnibenevolent God” ? So if this statement is false you would believe that there is a God? :)
What I’m saying is “omnipotent and omnibenevolent God is logically inconsistent”, or maybe a better phrasing is “omnipotence and omnibenevolence are mutually exclusive descriptions of a single entity given the condition of the universe I find myself in”.
An omnipotent being would be able to prevent all, to borrow a religious term, “evil” from happening and an omnibenevolent being would be compelled to do so. Since we observe evil in the world, God cannot be both. Despite this, God is so described. This is a very old problem called theodicy that the christian church tends to call a “mystery of faith”, which is nothing but a semantic stopsign.
So if you can show that there is no logical inconsistency here, I will consider my prior for “there is God” to be substantially larger than I currently do.
Then you have to overcome the whole existence-of-supernatural problem, and show overwhelming evidence that “there is specifically God and not Krishna or Allah or Jehovah or Elohim or Ganesh or Zeus or Odin or… … …” Even those names referring to the “God of Abraham” are presented within their respective faiths as belonging to very different deities.
In the end, given the “perfectly good” (in the colloquial sense) physics explanations available for everything I have ever personally observed, when it comes to God, I have no need of that hypothesis. So you’d still have to demonstrate that need.
I pretty much agree with all of this. I can’t believe in a God that is simultaneously omnipotent and omnibenevolent without a solution to the Problem of Evil. It’s a logical contradiction.
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then from whence comes evil? --Epicurus [apocryphal?]
But a solution to the Problem of Evil is not sufficient to make me believe God exists. So it’s a co-crux for me.
God is such a complex claim that I would need this part solved before even allowing that God exists within the space of all logically consistent hypotheses to be considered. I suppose that’s less of a crux and more part of a prerequisite definition, come to think of it.
So, regarding the omnibenevolence—again, we first need to clarify what means “good” and “evil”. So, first we need to get, if we have the same understanding of this, otherwise it is the argument about definitions. I am not sure if it is possible to give a precise definition, but let me ask few question to see if we have the same answer to them or we understand it differently.
1) Is “good” only utilitarian (i.e. for some higher purpose—then which one?) or deontological (i.e., there are some good things that are good by default. It is good to bring some joy to the life of the old person even if he is totally useless and senile—like that).
2) Is good only result or there can be some goodness in the process? Is there any goodness in striving and gaining, playing hard game and winning—or only final result is important?
Regarding no need of this hypothesis—somewhere below there is a thread where we argue about miracles.
What if we use a specific example of evil, in lieu of hashing out a complex definition that we can all accept.
Let’s use one provided by the church itself and still preached from thousands of pulpits today, which cannot reasonably be divorced from the question of God.
Let’s use Hell.
Without getting too deeply into the weeds, Hell is at least one of:
What happens to evil people when they die
An evil (and, I might add, eternal) thing that happens to some people when they die
A… let’s go with “place” here for simplicity’s sake, where evil resides
Either omnipotent God can stop this and yet allows it to continue, or omnibenevolent God is powerless to stop it.
I don’t think we need a definition of evil at all. If we take omnipotence to be “able to do literally anything” and rephrase omnibenevolence to be “unable to abide evil” the meaning doesn’t change but the paradox becomes evident. The two qualities are mutually exclusive regardless of your definition of “evil”.
Narrowing it down to a Christian God helps. (It does appear that we have a true disagreement.) But it does bring along a lot of historical and cultural baggage. In the interest of making it easier to find cruxes, I suspect that even if you discarded some of the burdensome conjunctive details, we may be left with a core set of attributes for a Being that we would both agree could be fairly called “God”, such that if we removed any one of them, said being could not be called “God”. In other words, there are probably many details such that if you discovered that you got them wrong (though some means you would consider authoritative), you would not abandon your faith. These details are not cruxes.
Is “omnipotence” one of those necessary attributes such that if the Being in question did not have it, He could not be fairly called “God”? Or can that be discarded and replaced with a sufficient amount of “power”?
Is “personality” one of those attributes? Must God have a mind to be “God”? Or can He be a Law of Cause-and-Effect with no will of His own? Can “God” be a rank or office that Beings may attain or abdicate?
Is “omnibenevolence”? Or can God be morally neutral? Evil? Good to some degree, but imperfect?
Are there others?
Omnipotence is necessary but only in a sense of programmer analogy.
Personality is totally one of these attributes, otherwise it is just Laws of Nature
Omnibenevolence—yes, but then we will need to define properly “what is love”, “what is good” etc. We can do it if it is necessary.
I’m genuinely enjoying the idea of “limited omnipotence” right now. Not in a condescending way, but as an interesting paradox. Thanks for that! 🙂
Related thoughts:
Can God make a being greater than God?
Can God destroy God?
Can God take away God’s powers?
Can we become or make beings at least as great as God? (In the Old Testament, God seems to worry about things like this on occasion. Else why strike folks down when they try?)
I may as well also point out an old problem. Since we observe bad things in the world, God cannot logically be both omnipotent and omnibenevolent. Both are claimed by the church, though neither is demonstrated in the Christian Bible. That may well be one of my cruxes.
1) No, it is logically impossible (I think so).
2) 3) I don’t know. I would say “can but will not because of omnibenevolence”.
4) The thing in the Old Testament I understand as sarcasm from God. I would say we can become “lower gods”.
This problem requires the definition “what is good” first basically. For example, is it better to give the gift immediately, or to give the person a difficult task first, knowing that he is capable to do it, and then to give this gift as an award? When the person would feel better?
Also, when you are saying it is your crux, do you mean the statement “omnipotent omnibenevolent God is incompatible with observed Universe” is crux for “There is no omnipotent omnibenevolent God” ? So if this statement is false you would believe that there is a God? :)
What I’m saying is “omnipotent and omnibenevolent God is logically inconsistent”, or maybe a better phrasing is “omnipotence and omnibenevolence are mutually exclusive descriptions of a single entity given the condition of the universe I find myself in”.
An omnipotent being would be able to prevent all, to borrow a religious term, “evil” from happening and an omnibenevolent being would be compelled to do so. Since we observe evil in the world, God cannot be both. Despite this, God is so described. This is a very old problem called theodicy that the christian church tends to call a “mystery of faith”, which is nothing but a semantic stopsign.
So if you can show that there is no logical inconsistency here, I will consider my prior for “there is God” to be substantially larger than I currently do.
Then you have to overcome the whole existence-of-supernatural problem, and show overwhelming evidence that “there is specifically God and not Krishna or Allah or Jehovah or Elohim or Ganesh or Zeus or Odin or… … …” Even those names referring to the “God of Abraham” are presented within their respective faiths as belonging to very different deities.
In the end, given the “perfectly good” (in the colloquial sense) physics explanations available for everything I have ever personally observed, when it comes to God, I have no need of that hypothesis. So you’d still have to demonstrate that need.
I pretty much agree with all of this. I can’t believe in a God that is simultaneously omnipotent and omnibenevolent without a solution to the Problem of Evil. It’s a logical contradiction.
But a solution to the Problem of Evil is not sufficient to make me believe God exists. So it’s a co-crux for me.
FYI, while I still do not believe in God, I was… actually just pretty satisfied by Scott Alexander’s Answer to Job?
[edit: epistemic status: haven’t actually thought seriously about it tho. Also, someone just gave a plausibly convincing counter argument]
I am interested in that counterargument. Can you summarize or link?
God is such a complex claim that I would need this part solved before even allowing that God exists within the space of all logically consistent hypotheses to be considered. I suppose that’s less of a crux and more part of a prerequisite definition, come to think of it.
So, regarding the omnibenevolence—again, we first need to clarify what means “good” and “evil”. So, first we need to get, if we have the same understanding of this, otherwise it is the argument about definitions. I am not sure if it is possible to give a precise definition, but let me ask few question to see if we have the same answer to them or we understand it differently.
1) Is “good” only utilitarian (i.e. for some higher purpose—then which one?) or deontological (i.e., there are some good things that are good by default. It is good to bring some joy to the life of the old person even if he is totally useless and senile—like that).
2) Is good only result or there can be some goodness in the process? Is there any goodness in striving and gaining, playing hard game and winning—or only final result is important?
Regarding no need of this hypothesis—somewhere below there is a thread where we argue about miracles.
What if we use a specific example of evil, in lieu of hashing out a complex definition that we can all accept.
Let’s use one provided by the church itself and still preached from thousands of pulpits today, which cannot reasonably be divorced from the question of God.
Let’s use Hell.
Without getting too deeply into the weeds, Hell is at least one of:
What happens to evil people when they die
An evil (and, I might add, eternal) thing that happens to some people when they die
A… let’s go with “place” here for simplicity’s sake, where evil resides
Either omnipotent God can stop this and yet allows it to continue, or omnibenevolent God is powerless to stop it.
I don’t think we need a definition of evil at all. If we take omnipotence to be “able to do literally anything” and rephrase omnibenevolence to be “unable to abide evil” the meaning doesn’t change but the paradox becomes evident. The two qualities are mutually exclusive regardless of your definition of “evil”.