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What is your favorite paradox or conundrum? I am partial to can god kill god? (lemmy.world)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The monotheistic all powerful one.

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 7 months ago (21 children)

Mine is similar to yours in that it's about the power of God. It's called the Epicurean Trilemma:

If a god is omniscient and omnipotent, then they have knowledge of all evil and have the power to put an end to it. But if they do not end it, they are not omnibenevolent.
If a god is omnipotent and omnibenevolent, then they have the power to extinguish evil and want to extinguish it. But if they do not do it, their knowledge of evil is limited, so they are not omniscient.
If a god is omniscient and omnibenevolent, then they know of all the evil that exists and wants to change it. But if they do not, which must be because they are not capable of changing it, so they are not omnipotent.

This proves fairly simply that God as commonly interpreted by modern Christians cannot exist. Early Christians and Jews had no problem here, because their god was simply not meant to be omnibenevolent. Go even further back in time and he was not omnipotent, and possibly not omniscient, either. "Thou shalt have no gods before me" comes from a time when proto-Jews were henotheists, people who believed in the existence of multiple deities while only worshipping a single one.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (13 children)

The Christian explanation for this is that god doesn't do evil, people do.
And god created people with free will to do evil. If he made people stop doing evil deeds, they would be his puppets, not free-willed humans. So he has the power to end all evil but chooses not to.

Now as for why god allows natural disasters, diseases and other tragedies to befall his creation – again, that's just the consequence of our actions, cause a woman gave an apple to her man in the past.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Christian here, don't agree with your "biblical" interpretation

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

If Christians could agree with each other about what's in the bible, history would be a lot more boring.

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