This is just a reminder that I have a new ebook available called: The Problem with “God”. My new ebook is…
Tag omnibenevolence
It comes with great sadness to announce that my favourite podcast of all time, Reasonable Doubts, will no longer continue to be. This upsets me because there is no greater podcast on the internet than this one. RD has been with me for a good number of years and has provided ample stimuli for me to pass on in my own way.
My new ebook is available now on Kindle, Nook and Kobo. James A. Lindsay (Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly) kindly wrote a foreword to support the project.
The classical theistic components of God, his characteristics of being all-loving, all-powerful and all-knowing don’t work very well together. This has been something which I have sought to elucidate over the years, so I thought I would compile a synopsis of where we are at with the idea of OmniGod, and what he has created. These are good arguments, I believe, and I would love to see my readers interact with them, and I would love to see theists of all natures take them to task to see if they stand up. Bookmark this page and return to it, if you will – there’s quite a lot here! I would like to see this as a growing compendium.
My friend Julian Haydon questions this: ANSWERS BY AN HONEST CHRISTIAN Did anything exist before the Creation? …Only God,…
Some time back I posted an argument on mentalizing deficits with regard to God being unfair. This broadly stated that certain autistic type people who have an inability to empathise are less likely to believe in God, presumably because the intersubjectivity of empathy allows an agent to see the,selves from somebody else’s point of view. This means that they are less able to suppose what God would think about them whilst doing any given moral action, and such like. The abstract, to the paper looked at in the post, reads:
I have been involved in long and protracted, and not to say a little tiring, debate on facebook about misogyny with regards to atheism, and the apparent schisms in the “atheist community”. Though most feminists will probably sigh at another man giving their tuppence on what should be a fairly straightforward point, I do feel the need to pass comment in the context of atheism and theism. Feminism in its various waves has become more and more nuanced in its outlook in what is now, in some sense, a broad collection of ideologies.
Lothar’s Son, who has interacted before with me on Ockham’s Razor (which I was just too busy to deal with his reaction to my initial thoughts, so sorry there), has responded to the Google Hangout that Counter Apologist, Justin Schieber and myself. Here is his post, which I will post in a slightly different colour, and will comment interlinearly:
In the recent google hangout with Counter Apologist and Reasonable Doubts’ Justin Schieber, we were talking about the great argument against hell. I will set this argument out again, as I have done previously, before getting on to my main point. This is an argument brought up by Ray Bradley in a debate with William Lane Craig.
Some theists state that god does not have the full gamut of traditional omnis, that he does not know the…
Here is an argument which I have communicated before here and here. Justin Schieber from Reasonable Doubts has worked on this and it has now made it into the Iron Chariots wiki site:
After having looked at Randal Rauser’s reasons for being a Christian, and having had my reasons and his defences intensely debated on his blog, I have in a previous post offered Dr Vincent Torley’s account. Some readers may know Vincent from the Uncommon Descent website which attempts to refute evolution. I have argued with him at length when I used to write for John Loftus more often at Debunking Christianity. Here is his bio:
After having looked at Randal Rauser’s reasons for being a Christian, and having had my reasons and his defences intensely debated on his blog, I would like to offer Dr Vincent Torley’s account. Some readers may know Vincent from the Uncommon Descent website which attempts to refute evolution. I have argued with him at length when I used to write for John Loftus more often at Debunking Christianity. Here is his bio:
I wrote this some time ago at Debunking Christianity
Let us assume the triple properties of the classical approach to God: that he is omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent. In terms of the classic Problem of Evil argument, if there is too much evil in the world, God knows what to do about it, is powerful enough to do it, and is loving enough to want to do something about it.
“And I want to suggest to you that it is not only tiresome, when otherwise intelligent people speak this way, it is morally reprehensible. This kind of faith is the perfection of narcissism; God loves me, don’t you know? He cured me of my eczema. He makes me feel so good while singing in church. And just when we were giving up hope he found a banker who was willing to give my mother a mortgage.
Jeremiah 19: 19 Thus says the Lord, “Go and buy a potter’s earthenware jar, and take some of the elders of the people and some of the [a]senior…
WARNING. Watch this video will disturb you. It is horrific. But I ask that you do so, Christian, Muslim, atheist or other. You will never watch it again, and it will scar you. But remember, this activity was divinely decreed by an all-loving God. Yes, all-loving. And for what? For all of the actions below.
Here is a really useful little paper by Theodore M. Drange on the contradictory aspects of God. Drange is Professor of Philosophy at West Virginia University. This article can be found here, at Philo online. This gives a neat little summary of many of the arguments against God based on his characteristics being incompatible with each other. The classic one, as touted by Dan Barker (and myself, often) is that God cannot be perfectly merciful and perfectly just at the same time. See what you think.