I find the whole business of arguing that God doesn't exist and then blaming him for the needle and the damage done a bit hard to understand. Perhaps God wants us to solve our problems of evil through our own efforts rather than handing goodness to us like John the Baptist's head on a platter. Or, perhaps it's all meant to militate against omnibenevolence as robvalue suggests above. However, I think we can go somewhat further and show that within a context of agency, an omniscient god, benevolent or not, will not create anything:
This, the first actual result on the thread, shows that the fact of a creation implies not only that God wants things, but that he wants things that do not exist until they are created, that is, novel things. Provided God does create to begin with.
But can an omniscient god think up anything novel? Suppose that X is a novel idea, something that has never been thought of before. Now God thinks X. But since God is omniscient, he knew from the beginning of time that he would think X. Therefore, X is not new and novel ideas do not exist for this god. Since novel things don't exist, God cannot want them. (He can only want extant things.) By Pyrrho's result, an omniscient god does not create anything.
At least within a context of agency, where beings desire things. We might use this result to question the existence of beings who desire things but who can also conceive of benevolence. This would apply to Human as well as God. I don't know how this project would go down. However, Buddhist thinkers have pursued it in various formulations.
Denial of benevolence in Human is old. For instance, nn mAatj "there are no righteous men" (Line 122, Adolf Erman, "Gespräch eines Lebensmüden," JEA 42), in the Egyptian story of the man who was tired of his life, and in Paul's letter-writing, "there is none righteous" (Romans 3:10). So, why should God be benevolent, in the way we understand it? The pre-Hellenistic Mediterranean world was all about obeisance, not virtue. Once the Greeks had elevated the latter, one might credit Greek-speaking Christianity with an early attempt to introduce benevolence into the conception of deity.
(May 14, 2015 at 6:52 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: God would ... not create if he did not want to create. Therefore ... God does want things.
This, the first actual result on the thread, shows that the fact of a creation implies not only that God wants things, but that he wants things that do not exist until they are created, that is, novel things. Provided God does create to begin with.
But can an omniscient god think up anything novel? Suppose that X is a novel idea, something that has never been thought of before. Now God thinks X. But since God is omniscient, he knew from the beginning of time that he would think X. Therefore, X is not new and novel ideas do not exist for this god. Since novel things don't exist, God cannot want them. (He can only want extant things.) By Pyrrho's result, an omniscient god does not create anything.
At least within a context of agency, where beings desire things. We might use this result to question the existence of beings who desire things but who can also conceive of benevolence. This would apply to Human as well as God. I don't know how this project would go down. However, Buddhist thinkers have pursued it in various formulations.
Denial of benevolence in Human is old. For instance, nn mAatj "there are no righteous men" (Line 122, Adolf Erman, "Gespräch eines Lebensmüden," JEA 42), in the Egyptian story of the man who was tired of his life, and in Paul's letter-writing, "there is none righteous" (Romans 3:10). So, why should God be benevolent, in the way we understand it? The pre-Hellenistic Mediterranean world was all about obeisance, not virtue. Once the Greeks had elevated the latter, one might credit Greek-speaking Christianity with an early attempt to introduce benevolence into the conception of deity.
