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Epicurus was not an atheist, although he rejected the idea of a god concerned with human affairs; followers of Epicureanism denied the idea that there was no god. While the conception of a supreme, happy and blessed god was the most popular during his time, Epicurus rejected such a notion, as he considered it too heavy a burden for a god to have to worry about all the problems in the world.
P1. If an omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient god exists, then evil does not. P2. There is evil in the world. C1. Therefore, an omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient god does not exist. This argument is of the form modus tollens: if its premise (P1) is true, the conclusion (C1) follows of necessity.
Omnipotence, they say, does not mean that God can do anything at all but, rather, that he can do anything that is logically possible; he cannot, for instance, make a square circle. Likewise, God cannot make a being greater than himself, because he is, by definition, the greatest possible being. God is limited in his actions to his nature.
Also regarded as inconsistent with such a just being is the combination of human free will (on which the justification for eternal damnation for sinners is predicated), and the divine qualities of omniscience (being all knowing) and omnipotence (being all powerful), as this would mean God (not humans) would determine everything that has ...
Griffin argued in later works that humans cannot have free will if God is omniscient. He contended that, if God is truly omniscient, then he will know infallibly what people will do, meaning that they cannot be free. Griffin argued that the human will could not oppose God's will, if God is omnipotent.
Theists generally agree that God is a personal being and that God is omniscient, [note 2] but there is some disagreement about whether "omniscient" means: "knows everything that God chooses to know and that is logically possible to know"; or instead the slightly stronger: "knows everything that is logically possible to know" [note 3]
As opposed to a theodicy (a justification for God's actions), Plantinga puts forth a defense, offering a new proposition that is intended to demonstrate that it is logically possible for an omnibenevolent, omnipotent and omniscient God to create a world that contains moral evil. Significantly, Plantinga does not need to assert that his new ...
If God does know this, either their free will might be illusory or foreknowledge does not imply predestination, and if God does not know it, God may not be omniscient. [81] Open Theism limits God's omniscience by contending that, due to the nature of time, God's omniscience does not mean the deity can predict the future and process theology ...