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From: laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Even If I DID Believe ... (the difficulties of omnipotence)
Message-ID: <1629@utcsstat.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 8-Jan-84 19:11:17 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsstat.1629
Posted: Sun Jan  8 19:11:17 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 8-Jan-84 19:41:27 EST
References: <6483@unc.UUCP>, <231@wu1.UUCP>
Organization: U. of Toronto, Canada
Lines: 40

it is perfectly reasonable to accuse a god of doing evil though we have the
power to do good and don't. I don't think that I am omniscient and
omnipotent, but that is the claim that is made for God. 

First of all, we can do evil because we have free will. This is a pretty
universal belief of Christianity, though the old-time Calvinists won't
agree. But what good is free will? If it is what keeps me from doing
the good all the time, then I sure don't want it? I would rather do
the good all the time. 

this world has bugs. If god built it, he built it with bugs. Free will
may be the greatest of the bugs, but there are littler ones like
world hunger and earthquakes and mosquitos to consider. If you hand
me a piece of code that has bugs in it, I will be perfectly willing
to point the ones I notice out to you. This does not mean that I am
saying that had I written the code there would be no bugs, just that
i know bugs when i see them.

if god is omnipotent, then he could have created a world where the
human beings couldn't sin, and the foxes didn't eat the rabbits
and we all got all of our food needs from photosynthesis like the
plants. it is arguable that human beings who couldn't sin are not
human beings, by definition. (this gets back to -- could Jesus
sin? If he couldn't, was he true man?). I make no claims to
omniscience either, so no doubt making us all plants would have
its own moral problems, which I cannot see, but if god can do anything
then he can create a world where there are none of these evils by
definition.

If you are known as a great expert in DZ drivers and you send me a
smelly piece of code that crashes my machine, I will get pissed off
as well. I *KNOW* that you can do better.

In conclusion, I don't believe that an omniscient and omnipotent
god created the world. I do not believe that the world was created.
So I don't stay up nights railing at the injustice of a God that
could do anything and stuck me with this. but if i DID believe....

Laura Creighton
utzoo!utcsstat!laura