If God created everything, God created suffering. If don't think creating suffering would be right if he could have achieved the same ends without anything suffering (which does open the related question of what Gods aims would actually be).
That does not logically follow. God created everything so there was the 'potential' for suffering, but God did not actually create suffering. Moreover, there is no way for humans to know if God could have achieved the same ends without the potential for suffering because we are not all-knowing as God is.
Omnipotence would mean he could do anything (and having "all power" means the same thing if it means anything at all). If there was anything God couldn't do, there would have to be something with power that God doesn't have to be able to prevent him from doing it.
Omnipotent means God is all-powerful, it does not mean that
God can do anything. God can only do what is within His nature. There are things that God cannot do such as becoming a man, or lying, or being malevolent, because that is not according to the nature of God. God cannot not be omnipotent or not be omniscient because those are attributes of God that make God who He is.
This is part of the reason I think attributing the concept of omnipotence to anything is fundamentally flawed. The whole point of declaring gods as being "all powerful" is just to discourage people from challenging them (or the authority of the people claiming to be their earthly representatives
).
Nobody attributes omnipotence to God, that is revealed by God in scriptures. You either accept those scriptures as true or you don't. I do not see anyone being discouraged from challenging God's omnipotence. In fact, what I see is atheists trying to use it to their advantage, saying
'God is omnipotent so God can do anything' and what they are really saying is
'God is omnipotent so God should be able to do what I expect Him to do' which is completely illogical because
an omnipotent God only does what He chooses to do, He does not do what humans expect Him to do. Thus far, no atheist I have posted to has been able to understand this simple logic.
Even if that is true, God could have created humans with "character" in the first place and cut out the whole suffering aspect. Is that not the state he is said to have created Adam and Eve in? It's only because he also created the tree of knowledge and the serpent that they fell (which an all-powerful God must have known would happen).
So you think God should have created pre-programmed robots, just so humans would not have to suffer and learn and develop their character?
I am a Baha'i and Baha'is do not believe that the Adam and Eve story is literally true, we believe it is just an allegorical story that has spiritual meanings. We believe that all humans were created good, but we al have two natures, and we all have free will, so we can choose to act according to one of our two natures, our spiritual or higher nature and our material or lower nature. By our choices and ensuing behavior, we start to differentiate ourselves, and we wind up somewhere along the continuum between spiritual and material.
“In man there are two natures; his spiritual or higher nature and his material or lower nature. In one he approaches God, in the other he lives for the world alone. Signs of both these natures are to be found in men. In his material aspect he expresses untruth, cruelty and injustice; all these are the outcome of his lower nature. The attributes of his Divine nature are shown forth in love, mercy, kindness, truth and justice, one and all being expressions of his higher nature. Every good habit, every noble quality belongs to man’s spiritual nature, whereas all his imperfections and sinful actions are born of his material nature. If a man’s Divine nature dominates his human nature, we have a saint.” Paris Talks, p. 60
THE TWO NATURES IN MAN
Moreover, all imperfection comes from our physical nature, our spiritual nature is purely good.
It's not about what you believe, it's about what you say. You are anthropomorphising God (albeit selectively) even if you're not aware of it.
The point is that it is you're attributing God with some human characteristics (regardless of which way round you present it) when that is convenient to support your point, trying to apply logic and morality to Gods decisions and actions but when holes appear in that logic, you will fall back on God being all powerful or beyond our understanding.
No, not at all. You have that completely backwards. God is what God is.
God has certain characteristics such as
Good, Loving, Gracious, Merciful, Just, Righteous, Forgiving, and Patient and it is humans who have the 'potential' to reflect these characteristics since we were all made in the image of God.
I do not apply morality to God's decisions because God is not subject to being moral since God is benevolent by His nature. Morality applies only to humans who have the potential to be moral or immoral.
I don't think you can have it both ways. A "should" question can't really apply at all to a truly "all-powerful" God since, as before, there would need to be something above God to impose that limitation. If "should" questions can be asked of God, applying our logic and morals, they can be asked of anything attributed to God and never dismissed out of hand on the basis that God is "all-powerful" or that we should unconditionally submit to him.
You are correct, and you get the door prize for logic since you are the first atheist who has figured this out.
Of course 'should questions' do not apply to an omniscient-omnipotent God, since whatever we see is just as it should be since God knows what is best for humans and has the power to bring it to fruition.
The OP was just a fun exercise to see how many atheists would come out of the woodwork and start saying
what God should do, and it worked!
