On the Question of an Omnipotent Being
Miles Cruikshanks
Mr. Danetta
S6 Philosophy
March 7, 2016
On the Question of an Omnipotent Being
Humanity has been exploring existential questions such as the existence of God for a significant amount of recorded history. The widespread belief in God throughout the modern world can be attributed to this history of inquiry, as well as observable phenomena in human behavior such as Apophenia. This is the tendency to ascribe patterns to sets of data where there are none, which helps explain why humans search for answers to metaphysical questions. There are many explanations as to why humans believe in God, but the more pertinent question is whether or not God exists. From the time of Jesus Christ, to the beginning of the modernist period, the truth of God’s existence was held as self evident, and only in this recent period of human history has this truth been questioned. Arguments against the existence of God will be explored, in order to further the atheist stance on the existence of an omnipotent being. This will be done through examining the problem of avoiding hell, the existence of reasonable non believers, and the omnipotence paradox.
In order to better understand these ideas, some definitions need be established. God will be defined as an omnipotent being, of which there is no greater, the creator of all things and the moral standard by which all lesser beings are judged. Non believers will be defined as those who are without adherence to a religion and without belief in God. In reference to the existence of non-believers, reasonable will be defined as blameless or free from blame, and will be elaborated upon with the introduction of J.L. Schellenberg’s argument.
The problem of avoiding hell is a very old argument against the existence of God. Since there are many possible religions, if any faith is as likely as the other to be the correct interpretation of God, then the probability of any one being correct is P=1/n where n is the number of possible religions.[1] This assertion is based on the fact that many theologians and practitioners of faith claim to have experienced divine revelations, which when compared produce conflicting and mutually exclusive results about God and his word. An example of this would be the differences between the Buddhist and Christian hells. Naraka is a term in Buddhism which signifies a literal hell to adherents. Unlike the hell of Christianity, the Buddhist Naraka differs in two unique ways. Firstly that the stay in Naraka is not eternal, and secondly that beings are not sent there as a result of divine judgement.[2] Another example would be the difference between Christian sects that believe in Predestination, and those that do not. These contradictions are important part of the problem of avoiding hell, because the more of them that exist, the lesser chance the individual has of choosing the correct religion. If the thrust of the problem of avoiding hell could be entailed in one statement, it would be the words of Denis Diderot in his Pensées philosophiques. He states that whatever proofs are offered for the existence of God in Christianity or any other religion, "an Imam can reason the same way".[3] If the chance of an individual selecting the correct religion constantly decreases proportional to the increase in new conceptions of God, it follows that a loving, omnipotent God does not exist.
Furthermore, if an individual has a very small chance of choosing the correct religion, one must examine the existence of those who abstain from adherence to religion. The existence of non believers is a paradox between the existence of God, and the existence of individuals who fail to recognize him. This paradox highlights the inconsistency between a fact agreed upon by the majority of theists, and an empirical observation of the modern world. This inconsistency is that, God desires to be worshipped and has the power to see all mankind worship him, yet empirically the world exists with reasonable non believers that inhabit it. This idea was first put forth in J. L. Schellenberg's 1993 book Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason. His formal argument contains six premises and a conclusion, but can be reasonably reduced to the following. If God exists and is perfectly good and loving, every reasonable person would have been brought to believe in him; however there are reasonable non believers; therefore God does not exist.[4] This idea that God is reluctant to reveal himself is not merely a recent theme for inquiry among Atheist philosophers and theologians. The Abrahamic faiths have wrestled with such a question since their very inception. For example in the Psalms of the Christian old testament, an anonymous adherent of Jesus Christ’s teachings remarks: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?....I cry by day, but you do not answer....".[5] This theme of divine hiddenness is important to understanding the incompatibility between a loving and omnipotent God and the existence of non believers who have never encountered his specific religion. Therefore, religions which assert to be the true disciples of such a God must be discredited and discarded.