Omniscience Doesn't Exonorate God For The Colorado Movie Massacre
Previously I've suggested some reasonable ways a good God could have stopped James Holmes from firing on innocent people in that Colorado theater without revealing himself, and without abrogating Holmes's free will. Link. But is there another way to exonerate God in what I call the Omniscience Escape Clause? Could God have overriding reasons based in his omniscience for allowing that horrible tragedy to happen? I don't think so at all. While this isn't impossible it's extremely improbable to the point of being virtually impossible.
Before proceeding there are very important questions concerning whether there is evidence for a personal three-in-one beginningless omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenelovent, omnipresent God who consequently never had a prior moment when he chose his values or his nature, never had a disagreement within the Godhead, never took a risk, never learned any new truths, and so on, and so forth. Questions include why this God created at all, why he set human beings up for a fall into sin, how it's possible for a God/Man to truly be a God/Man, or how this God/Man's death atones for sin, and why God expects people living in a scientific age like ours to believe in miracles in the superstitious past like the resurrection of this God/Man or be thrust into hell. These kinds of questions, if studied in scholarly depth, already diminish the probability that there is a God who needs to be exonerated for allowing the killing spree of Holmes. With no God there is no need to exonerate him.
Even granting this kind of God it's hopeless trying to exonerate such a deity based in omniscience. Theists claim we cannot fathom God’s omniscient ways. This is either a blanket statement covering all that we think we know about the ways of an omniscient God (i.e. nothing), or we can know something about the reasonableness of his ways. As a blanket statement we would consequently have no way of knowing that God's ways are reasonable or good ones at all, and if that's true, we would also have no reasonable way of knowing whether we could trust him. But if instead we can know something about God's ways then we should know enough about them to know that they are reasonable and good ones. But there is absolutely no reasonable explanation for why such a God would allow this tragedy to happen. Not one potential explanation works at all.
Think otherwise? Then I challenge believers to try. Go ahead. Think. Don't proof-text from the Bible since that's also in question here. Come up with one reasonable explanation for why God might have allowed this tragedy to happen when there were many reasonable ways he could have stopped it before it happened. Just one. Give it your best shot.
The bottom line is that theistic attempts to exonerate God based in his supposed omniscience cut both ways. We’re told God is so omniscient that we can’t understand his purposes, and this is true, we can’t begin to grasp why God allowed Holmes to do what he did if he exists. But if God is as omniscient as claimed, then he should have known how to avert this tragedy before it happened since we do have a good idea how he could’ve done so, especially since by not doing so there will be more people who reject the very faith he so desires people to have in him.
The Omniscient Escape Clause as I have argued elsewhere, makes one's faith unfalsifiable and forces the skeptic to prove the believer's faith is impossible before he or she will ever consider it to be improbable--an utterly unreasonable standard of proof.
I think this calls for something at the end. Hmmmm...
Q.E.D.
Before proceeding there are very important questions concerning whether there is evidence for a personal three-in-one beginningless omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenelovent, omnipresent God who consequently never had a prior moment when he chose his values or his nature, never had a disagreement within the Godhead, never took a risk, never learned any new truths, and so on, and so forth. Questions include why this God created at all, why he set human beings up for a fall into sin, how it's possible for a God/Man to truly be a God/Man, or how this God/Man's death atones for sin, and why God expects people living in a scientific age like ours to believe in miracles in the superstitious past like the resurrection of this God/Man or be thrust into hell. These kinds of questions, if studied in scholarly depth, already diminish the probability that there is a God who needs to be exonerated for allowing the killing spree of Holmes. With no God there is no need to exonerate him.
Even granting this kind of God it's hopeless trying to exonerate such a deity based in omniscience. Theists claim we cannot fathom God’s omniscient ways. This is either a blanket statement covering all that we think we know about the ways of an omniscient God (i.e. nothing), or we can know something about the reasonableness of his ways. As a blanket statement we would consequently have no way of knowing that God's ways are reasonable or good ones at all, and if that's true, we would also have no reasonable way of knowing whether we could trust him. But if instead we can know something about God's ways then we should know enough about them to know that they are reasonable and good ones. But there is absolutely no reasonable explanation for why such a God would allow this tragedy to happen. Not one potential explanation works at all.
Think otherwise? Then I challenge believers to try. Go ahead. Think. Don't proof-text from the Bible since that's also in question here. Come up with one reasonable explanation for why God might have allowed this tragedy to happen when there were many reasonable ways he could have stopped it before it happened. Just one. Give it your best shot.
The bottom line is that theistic attempts to exonerate God based in his supposed omniscience cut both ways. We’re told God is so omniscient that we can’t understand his purposes, and this is true, we can’t begin to grasp why God allowed Holmes to do what he did if he exists. But if God is as omniscient as claimed, then he should have known how to avert this tragedy before it happened since we do have a good idea how he could’ve done so, especially since by not doing so there will be more people who reject the very faith he so desires people to have in him.
The Omniscient Escape Clause as I have argued elsewhere, makes one's faith unfalsifiable and forces the skeptic to prove the believer's faith is impossible before he or she will ever consider it to be improbable--an utterly unreasonable standard of proof.
I think this calls for something at the end. Hmmmm...
Q.E.D.
0 comments:
Post a Comment