Christians say, “God is omnipotent. He is all-powerful. He can literally do anything, including giving people superpowers, etc. God can do ANYTHING. He could make pigs fly with a snap of the fingers; he could create infinite universes with just speaking it into existence.” But, at the same time, these same people say, “God had to send his son to die because it was the only way.”
Okay, then God is not all-powerful then, lol. He’s not omnipotent. That’s literally the opposite of omnipotence. If God is omnipotent, then he literally had infinite options. In fact, if he’s this powerful, then sending his son is a really dumb idea and makes zero sense.
I don’t know if this comparison makes sense, but in The Flash TV show, when they were fighting a speedster named Savitar, there was a building with metahuman power dampeners so you can’t use your powers inside this building. Savitar was going to kill Iris West, so what would be the smart thing to do??? Maybe put Iris in this building because Savitar can’t use his powers inside it. Case closed. It would make no sense for this option to be here but then for Team Flash to say, “We know this easier and smarter option exists, but Iris, you dying is the only way we can stop Savitar and save you.”
See what I mean? Point is, if God is omnipotent, then Jesus dying wasn’t the only way. Jesus being tortured so he could feel all the pain of sin was not necessary. If you’re saying this was the only way, then fine, but don’t say God is all-powerful and limitless, because clearly there are limits to God’s own power.
makes zero sense
that about sums up religion in general, well done. I think that about wraps the thread up, honestly. good work, everyone!
George Carlin: “He always needs money! He’s all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can’t handle money!”
That’s why I send all my prayers to Joe Pesci!
God is just really into child sacrifice. For real, it’s a central tenet. Jesus. Abraham. David. Noah. Lot. Job.
“God is more important than your family” is literally a theme throughout.
I remember my dad drunk driving us three kids home rambling at us how if a man put a gun up to each of our <10yo heads, and that man demanded my father say he didnt believe in god or he would shoot us, my father was drunkenly proud to scream in front of his god and children how he would watch that man blow our brains out.
He wonders why we don’t talk to him.
God damn. I’m sorry.
Boomers and religion. I got some words for king james
My dad is/was a very conservative pastor. As is my brother. And two of my uncles.
I get it, to put it mildly.
You’ve re-framed an old philosophical problem: Why does (an omnipotent, benevolent) God allow evil? See Theodicy on Wikipedia
Non-religious but likes plot analysis.
An important factor here is free will. Without free will, one may easily have a perfect utopia of the kind you think an omnipotent God should be able to achieve. But it would be a meaningless utopia; like a kid playing with toy figurines, just deciding everything we say and do.
God doesn’t want that, and thus self-impose a limit on the omnipotence to not interfere with our free will. We are children that need to be taught, rather than marionetted to “save us” from the negative urges of free will.
Here, the (self-)sacrifice of Jesus enters. It is not about God using Jesus to fulfill some perverse quota of pain and suffering that God has decided is due before we are allowed into heaven. It is more about what humanity must experience for the lesson that makes heaven remotely possible as a concept. Only through pain and suffering will we come to understand how our actions affect the world and those around us. Jesus takes (some of) the pain and suffering “in our place” with the aim that the message will resonate with people throughout the ages to teach us about love and understanding, making the concept of a heaven possible despite our nature as (non-brainwashed) beings of free will.
In reality, even after 2000+ years, we still seem pretty far off the mark. Maybe the lesson didn’t take the way it was intended; free will is a fickle thing. Or maybe God is playing an even longer game.
God gives little kids leukemia, or at least allows it, which goes to the problem of evil, that if God is all-knowing and all-encompassing and still allows evil to occur, or has a plan that involves evil occurring, then God is not all-good, God is himself part evil. If God is omnipotent, then there is no reason for evil to exist beyond him having cruel fun at our expense. And that’s not even getting into the non-human suffering.
Christianity likes the idea that Lucifer disobeyed God and was cast down, but Lucifer IS god, just as much as God is, just as much as we are or the stones and moss in nature are. Lucifer couldn’t do anything other than God’s plan, because omnipotence.
So the only way the supposedly omnipotent God thought to run the universe requires a large chunk of the souls he created to be cast into hell forever. Why? What the fuck was the point of that? God is petty, spiteful, vindictive, callous and cold. Or not omnipotent. One or the other. You know what? Either way I’m not going to “worship” it.
And then there’s the most obvious third answer, that there’s no god, which is the only option that makes sense at this level.
You need to get more shorter showers.
None of it ever made sense to me, even when I was a kid. How does torturing Jesus to death remove MY sins? He gets killed, that somehow absolves my sins, and now I’m obligated to worship him, and do whatever some guy in a robe tells me that Jesus wants me to do?
Or God. Or maybe both, because they’re kind of the same person, along with Dead Jesus, who is just as bossy as both God and Jesus.
And let’s not get into Communion. The first time that was explained to me, I was appalled. Then I was told about Transfiguration, and I was like “You people are out of your fucking minds,” but I was only about 8, and nobody was interested in my opinions on religion. Decades later, and my disbelief has only increased.
The more you think about it, the less sense it makes.
If you actually read the book, it makes so little sense you will weep for humanity.
I think God set it up so we could save ourselves.
From whom? Why do we need saving in the first place?
Just responding to the OP. Ask them.
Oooh, gotcha.
God is supposed to be a father figure, right? And this alleged father says, “I give you complete free will to choose to believe in me or not,” right?
The reward for faith and obedience is eternal life in a utopic paradise. The punishment for disbelief is eternal, irreversable torture and pain.
A father who tells his children that he will only give them one chance to learn isn’t a good father.
A good father is patient and kind. A good father understands that a child will mess up and need to learn some lessons on their own. A good father would never consider the complete destruction of his child for the sake of his own ego. A good father would be terribly pained by his child’s pain and suffering. A good father would do everything in his power to prevent that pain.
The idea that the only way “up” is through required love doesn’t sound like love.
Imagine seeing a parent out in the world. Imagine hearing that parent say “If you don’t love me the way I want you to love me, then I will kill you” to their child. That would not be a good parent. That would be a petty, abusive, manipulative piece of trash. You would do well to save that child from that parent.
God doesn’t exist.
of course not, he tried to make us a woman out of our rib first, but it didn’t work
Yeah the whole “God is all powerful and all knowing” would mean that he can stop things like children’s cancer but he chooses not to.
But something, something Satan, something something free will, something something God’s test 😱🤢
Bill Hicks: “Okay, dinosaur bones.”
“God put those there to test our faith.”
“…l think god put you here to test my faith.”
I prefer that God put the dinosaur bones there because he loves everyone, including scientists and wants them to be happy too.
the whole “God is all powerful and all knowing” would mean that he can stop things like children’s cancer but he chooses not to.
God is either not all powerful or not all good.
I’m not Christian but was unfortunately raised in a very conservative Christian environment.
The argument they made up to deal with people asking this question was that god intentionally limits his power to give us true free will. I remember asking myself the first time I heard this, “but if he’s all powerful couldn’t he find a way to give us free will and prevent us from suffering?”
Eventually I realized arguing with these people is a waste of time.
what many people don’t understand about actions the christian God made is that she had to make decisions that allowed for humans to understand that she sent Jesus to prove there’s a better way to live and that you don’t need to live in shame or subservience. What is the one thing that can’t be faked in our world? Death. That’s why it was a big deal.
Jesus didn’t die to save anyone, he died because the Romans (colluding with corrupt Jewish religious authorities from what I understand) thought he was too dangerous of an element to keep alive. And many prophets and righteous believers have suffered injustice and death at the hands of the powerful. And I’m sure he knew it would end up like this too, which makes his open preaching and “social disruption” (fucking with the money folk at the temple, for instance) even more badass (and many more fitting, positive adjectives I can’t think of right now, lol).
Yeah, Roman Catholicism, and any offshoot that follows its tenets, is nonsensical. But Jesus was a “Jew”, a monotheist in the vein of Abraham, Moses and Solomon, who didn’t come to “change the Law and the prophets but to fulfill it”, to embody one that makes IRL change because his faith cannot allow him to do otherwise, to just be inactive. If the world is shit because of our own action and inaction, isn’t it time to make the right choices? So he lived that life and walked the walk and talked the talk, so we can still talk about him (his talk and his walk, not his divinity of Roman origin…) two thousand years later, because he was very conscious that, in much the same way that you don’t jump off of a roof because you understand gravity and the dangers of falling from high altitude, if he didn’t do his best to be okay with the Heavenly Father (of everyone and everything, not an actual anthropomorphic dad, but the Creator on the outside and responsible of spacetime and everything in it; without compare is the Almighty, the Merciful), his soul could fall into Hell. He just, to quote Diogenes, was “singing louder in the choir so everyone else could follow the right tune”. Anyways, follow Jesus and you’ll be okay with God. For further info, read the Sermon on the Mount. If you wanna deep dive into what happened to actual Abrahamic monotheism after the Romans mutated and exported it, the Qur’an is freely available online (Clear Qur’an is a good translation, so is the Monotheist Qur’an). 👋
