God is too “omni” for our world to exist
The Bible describes God as having these attributes:
- omniscience (all knowing)
- omnipotent (all powerful)
- omnibenevolence (all good)
It follows:
- If God is all knowing, then he knows evil exists.
- If God is all powerful, then he can prevent evil from existing.
- If God is all good, then he doesn’t want evil to exist.
So why does evil exist?
Answers by Christians:
- God wants to test us.
But if he knows everything, then he already knows the results. There would be no point in using evil for testing.
- Evil comes from Satan.
But if God is good and doesn’t want evil to spread, he could fingersnap Satan out of existence instead of waiting thousands of years before casting Satan into hell.
- Evil is a result of human free will.
But if God is all powerful, then he could create a world where free will could exist without causing evil. (Kind of like heaven, supposedly, where we would freely worship God for eternity without sinning.)
When theists rationalize why such an Omni-God allows evil to exist in our world, they end up putting limits on him.
They have to believe in a weaker version of God that doesn’t live up to the full potential of these omni attributes.
Because if God truly is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good...
Then for every possible universe that he has the power to create, God would know in advance the consequences of every human or non-human decision and interaction. And the best, “goodest” universe he could come up with was our inferior world of evil and suffering?
That‘s just as logically incoherent as God making a rock so big that he can’t lift it.
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