When I was first introduced to the idea of God, I was told that it is Omnipotent and Benevolent. Omnipotent meant that he is all-powerful or that it can do whatever it wants with no imposed constraints. This brings us to the question of intent. I was promised that God is Benevolent or full of goodness and warmth towards us, its favorite creations.
I see myself as a semi-helpful being. I sometimes try to use my limited power to enhance the life experience of other beings.
If I were both all powerful and all good I would eradicate all evil and suffering.
How is it possible that there is a supreme being that is both omnipotent and benevolent and still there is so much suffering and pain?
Because it is difficult to think about things in the scope of the universe—or even humanity—I want to start by looking at the smallest human experience.
Consider a person with an illness: That person experiences suffering and pain. With no relation to what unforeseen goal or end this may serve, if God is infinitely powerful and infinitely good, would it be possible for it to have the same result with one fraction of a second of pain less for that person?
Some people claim that the world is ordered in a certain way to achieve a long term strategic goal. If God were not all powerful this would make sense, but when something is not limited in its powers it could create a scenario where the same goals are achieved with a fraction of a second of suffering less.
When I see people in pain and obvious agony I wonder if it is possible for an omnipotent and benevolent God to intentionally inflict suffering where its unlimited power could avoid it.
The only logical assertion—and correct me if I am wrong—is that unlimited goodness cannot intentionally create suffering. Unlimited power could easily fix any unintentional suffering caused in the quest of ultimate happiness of us as the dearest creation.
So, there may be a benevolent or omnipotent supreme being, but the combination is impossible. The combination cannot produce the experience of suffering as we experience it, for whatever reason, because there would always be a way to accomplish the same with less suffering when power is not limited, until we would reach no suffering and ultimate universal bliss.
We don’t need to concern ourselves with some grand plan because, as players in this system, even our subjective momentary experience is counted towards universal benevolence.
After realizing that the omnipotent and benevolent God combination is logically impossible with the experience of pain and suffering, we can try to evaluate lesser possibilities for that being.
The options we are left according to the initial quest for God are benevolent but impotent or omnipotent and malevolent or, in simple terms, kind but weak or powerful but nasty. There is also the most obvious option that it does not exist but for argument sake let’s try to analyze this being as if we believe that it does exist.
The benevolent but impotent being—I will not call it God as God was my definition to a being that must be omnipotent—will likely try to enhance our earthly experience as much as it can in its limited powers. It is said that you can assess the gardener’s skills by looking at the garden he keeps. Judging from the amount of suffering and pain in the world and the negative subjective experiences of so many people, this proposed being is not very powerful at all. In fact, the positive experiences, when contrasted with the neutral and negative experiences, do not seem to a casual observer as if there is a major benevolent force affecting the natural occurrence of things. As this benevolent being is good-seeking by nature, it will do its most to inflict as much warmth and kindness on our subjective experience. Would our praying and pleading cause it to act more forcefully on our behalf?—only if it is not benevolent by nature! A benevolent being does not require any pleading to do as much good as it possibly can under its limitations.
To conclude the discussion of the benevolent but impotent being, I will say only that it might exist somewhere doing its best to assist with little global impact. It is not likely motivated differently by our praying as it is benevolent by nature.
Let us now discuss the omnipotent and malevolent being. This may be some kind of a god, as it is omnipotent, but it is not the nice and kind God we pray to. As it is omnipotent, it by definition, implemented its vision to the letter. Not limited by power and time, the possible becomes the exact will. Judging again, by the result and by our subjective experience and those around us, we can see a lot of evil but also a lot of good. It is not likely that an all powerful and evil god implemented its will as it will not likely allow for the goodness we experience. For many experiences we subjectively experience, we can imagine another experience that would hurt us more or torment us even more, even if just a little more, and for a fraction of a second. An all powerful and evil God would not allow for these relative grace moments by its nature.
To conclude the discussion of the malevolent and omnipotent being, I believe that it cannot exist because of a logical contradiction between its nature and our subjective experience of goodness at some point in time. This point in time could be reduced even by a fraction by such a God.
Another possibility is an impotent and malevolent being. It merits the same conclusion as the impotent benevolent being. It may exist, acting according to its nature with limited power and unclear results. As this too is not really God as usually defined, I will simply move on.
As I understand things, not only that the God about whom I was told cannot exist, I also take comfort in the realization that its malevolent version cannot exist as well. All I am left with is to think about other logical possibilities. There are two groups of other alternative beings I need to look at: the omnipotent but indifferent and its lesser possibility, the impotent indifferent, as the first group; the less totalitarian versions, the strategist egoistic omnipotent and strategist egoistic impotent as the second group.
My treatment of the first group is very short. If they exist it is most likely meaningless to us as they don’t care. Omnipotent or impotent, the question of our well being is not on their agenda for the good or for the bad. Is it possible that with pleading and praying we might be able to sway, influence or manipulate these beings to act on our favor? I suggest that it is checked immediately. I will even try to suggest a method of experimentation. We could take a device that simulates coin tosses and see if our praying causes the reading to deviate from what is statistically plausible. If we get no difference we can assess that either these beings do not exist or that they don’t care to the extent that our pleading cannot pierce their apathy. Getting positive results in our experiment with the simulated coin toss will not prove anything really, other than the fact that praying had some correlation with the effect and, as we all know, correlation does not imply causation. Although it will not serve as a proof of any kind or positive results correlated with praying, it can give us something potentially useful to further scrutinize.
My last group of beings left is the strategic or egoistic. These beings are also divided into the omnipotent and impotent. My view is that an egoistic omnipotent would implement its strategy with no relation to what we do. Such a being that is obsessed with a very specific grandiose plan will do whatever it takes to accomplish its goals and as an omnipotent God will accomplish it. As this being is not limited in anyway, nothing we can do can have any effect on its decided course of action, so praying, etc is a pointless waste of time from a practical god-influencing point of view.
The impotent subtype deity is doing its best to implement its ego-driven strategy and, since it is limited in power, its success is not guaranteed. With a being that is not all powerful but acts according to a self motivational strategy, we may have a chance to influence the outcome. Not to influence the plan itself, because by definition this being is self motivated and egoistic, but use our limited power to act with accordance or against such a plan. In this case praying to this being is pointless as is the omnipotent egoistic being scenario since it is motivated by a plan and not by our wants—which is painfully obvious when looking around. The only strategy we must decide on, as I said previously, is whether to use our limited powers to disrupt or assist the plan and affect its success. The problem with deciding what to do is that we have no idea what the plan is. We have many written resources, from various alleged heavenly sources, and they are very different from one another; even for a certain holy book there are countless interpretations. Are we likely to know if any one book is the true representation of the grand plan of the impotent egoistic being? Are the books a real representation of the plan or a set of rules to make us assist the plan? Would such a being disclose the real plan or just the stories that would make us comply and assist the chances of the plan? As a reminder, this being has an interest with its egoistic plan and not with our well being.
I think that our collective effort to enhance our earthly experience is more beneficial to mankind than trying to follow obscure plans with unknown planner or outcome. Moreover, the various scriptures are filled with events that, to say the least, are not kind to people.
Assuming that the conclusion section may not be overly popular with people obsessed with worship, I will save myself from the ill-tempered ones by not writing one. Their hot tempers are, hopefully, accompanied with lack of patience which means they would not read this article to the end. The lack of conclusion is to protect myself from the ones who will skip ahead in attempt to hate me with little effort. Too bad! If you are one of them go back to the second paragraph, or give up and get a life. For the others the conclusion is obvious. Actually this whole article is obvious, but there was some comforting pleasure in the process of writing it down. It all started because I fell asleep in front of the television and woke up to the loud voice of what looked like an Christian preacher of Asian descent, and I realized that he and his broadcasted predecessors infiltrated my dreams for about half of the night. This is my retribution for a night’s sleep that was ruined because of their blubbering.
Those people, who think that worship of imaginary beings is good for our mental well being, need to have their chemical balance restored. The sooner the better for them as well as for the rest of us!
Trips