God cannot be all-loving, all-powerful, and all-knowing

[otseng]

It's getting kinda quiet from all the atheists, so I'm going to help it along.

Here's one argument I've heard from atheists on why God doesn't exist.

Christians acknowledge that God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving. But there exists many problems in the world today. And many quite serious problems. If God is all-knowing and sees all these problems and all-loving and doesn't want these problems to exist, then it's not all-powerful since it allows the problems to exist.

Or if it knows all these problems and is all-powerful, then it is not all-loving since the problems exist.

Therefore God cannot be all-loving, all-powerful, and all-knowing. Consequently, God cannot exist.

[SuzySteamboat]

That's a good one. There's also the classic "can God create a rock so big that even he can't lift it?" That exposes the sheer folly of the "god" concept, pure and simple.

[k-nug]

Yea good one. The way ive seen it, If God wanted a personal relationship with his "children" why can't he just come down here and say, "HELLO! IM THE GOD OF THE UNIVERSE!" And ever single person would say, YAY! THERE IS A GOD! Why does he let so many children suffer at the hands of nature? Why doesnt he just come down and feed eveyone? Because theres no one up there. How could God let the Inquisition happen? Isn't it his church? How did he let the crusades happen? Missionaries have caused more damage and hurt way more people than they've helped.

So instead of coming down to earth and letting everyone know what the deal is, he just lets everything go, and people are left to fend for themselves. That is not the sign of an all knowing all loving God.He just lets religions make splinter sects and take interpretations of "his" Bible out of context and twist the words around to fit whatever belief the sect wishes to promote. There are so many denominations out there, you'd think God would finally come down to earth and give everyone bible lessons. But there is no one up there.
We are on our own. as soon as we learn that, the Human race will end hunger, and make things better here.

[DeoxyriboNucleicAcid]

There are a number of illogicalities in Christian thinking and no, if the Christian God is the correct model, He cannot be a loving God.
Simply put:
God created everything
Evil is a subset of everything
Therefore God created evil.

Further, there can be no freeewill if God exists outside of time and at all times. What this absurdity means is that God, existing in tomorrow has already seen me do what I will do. Nothing I can do will prevent me from behaving as He has already seen me behave. It is as unchangeable as that which he saw me do yesterday. I can have no freeewill as a result. This isn't God anticipating what I will do, oh no, He has already seen all of my tomorrows. If somehow I could change what He has already seen me do then he would have been in error when He saw me tomorrow. In fact following this through, even God can have no freewill as He has already seen Himself do everything.

What a confusing web of nonsense and paradox the belief in gods drags us into.

[otseng]

Well, since no other Christians are giving any responses to my statement, I guess I'll answer my own question.

At the core of this argument is that God has done nothing to address the problems we see here on earth. Since we see so many problems, suffering, and evil in existence, either God is uncaring or impotent.

But God does care.

Matthew 25:42-45 "For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’ 44 ‘They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ 45 ‘He will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’"

Not only does God see all the suffering happening to people, He identifies and suffers with that person. Like a father seeing a child suffer, the father suffers too.

The failure of the hungry not having food and the naked not having clothes is not with God. It's actually with those who claim to follow God. God commands his followers to take care of widows, visit prisoners, feed the sheep, etc. It's not that God doesn't want to address problems, but that his followers are not serious enough to obey his commands.

[CanadianBuddhist]

Ah but all of your evidence comes from the writings of man. The bible was written by man and it is a translation of a translation and also not everyone believes in the bible. What about all of the other religious scriptures, what makes the bible superior? There is no evidence or proof of your idea of god outside of the bible why then do you not trust other scriptures as you do the bible? And do you know that almost everything in the bible was taken from older mesopotamian texts. Genesis is a condensed version of the sumerian epic of creation in which there are many gods who create man to do there dirty work. Some are evil and some are compassionate towards man. The gods of the origional texts are extraterrestrials and it may interest you to know that the original word for god in the bible was Elohim which is a plural of Elowah. Elowah means Deity or the Deity and Elohim is the plural form. Elowah was only rarely used in the bible. It has been proven that almost everything in the bible was taken from these older texts, the sumerian texts have an identical yet longer version of the whole noah ark thing and the similarities are amazing. My question is why do you not trust these previous texts from which the bible is derived. You may say that the sumerian "mythology" is farfetched and just stupid to believe but maybe some feel the same way about christian mythology.

[otseng]

CB, again, please start another thread if it's not related to the topic. You do have quite interesting thoughts, but they should be in their own threads. Thanks.

[CanadianBuddhist]

Ok but it's kind of hard to debate when everytime I respond to a point I have to start a new thread. It would be nice to be able to have a dialogue without always having to change threads.

[otseng]

Ok but it's kind of hard to debate when everytime I respond to a point I have to start a new thread. It would be nice to be able to have a dialogue without always having to change threads.

You only have to start a new thread if you bring a question or statement up that is off topic. I want to try to keep topics to the point. Otherwise it'll be hard to keep track of topics. So, for example, in this thread it's basically about "God cannot be all-loving, all-powerful, and all-knowing". I understand that it could get a little off-topic, and I allow for that. But if a question is presented that is off topic and should be answered, then it should spawn another thread. And you get extra credit too for starting a new thread. You get an additional token for every reply that is posted in that topic.

[CanadianBuddhist]

Ok I'll rephrase. How can you say that your god cares or even exists when all of your evidence comes from the works of man. Have you no examples from your own personal experience?