A lot of popular religions believe that their god is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good. However, there are a lot of contradictions in the existence of such a god
For those who believe in such a god, how do you resolve the following issues?
1) the problem of evil — why does god allow so much evil to occur? Starvation, torture, murder, people stealing fg
- If you choose a free will rebuttal, how do you handle the issues of natural disasters, divine intervention for some prayers, and lack of religious text claiming this to be reason?
- Or if you go with a divine mysticism rebuttal, doesnt it feel completely dissatisfying? Practically, i would imagine this stance takes away a lot of comfort. “God is looking out for me” will now always be qualified by “if it fits in its divine plan”, which is really feels like “he’ll look out for me if he really wants to—i hope he really wants to”
2) the problem of divine hiddenness — why doesnt god reveal itself more clearly to us? This is especially problematic for religions that claim believers will be rewarded and nonbelievers will be punished. There are hundreds of religions with very similar levels of “evidence”, which usually is just a circular reasoning level of evidence:
- we “know” our god is the true god because our religious text says so, and
- we “know” our religious text is correct because our god is the true god
But if every religion can and does claim the same thing, how is anyone supposed to correctly choose the right religion over false religions?
3) omnipotence paradox — if god is all-powerful, then can he create a boulder so heavy that even he cannot lift? If he can, then he’s not powerful enough to lift the boulder. If he cant, then he’s not powerful enough to create the boulder. Either way, being omnipotent / all-powerful isnt logically possible
4) the problem of hell (only applies to those who believe in eternal damnation) — it’s unjust to give infinite punishment for finite sins. We each have a finite lifespan, so we can only commit a finite amount of sins. Hell is eternal damnation/suffering though. Isnt nonbelieving already sufficient for going to hell for many religions? Would a just god actually punish people infinitely for a finite number of sins? Seems unjust
There are many more, but this is getting long so ill pause here
/edit:
@mods, I think there’s actual debatable content here, and it’s not simply a “i believe in god” vs “i dont believe in god” pointless thread, but feel free to close it if it violates the forum rules
The majority of your post implies God is at fault for many of your points.
God created a world to be free from everything you mention and the fall of man came not by God's choosing. From that fall every generation from that time was born into a broken world. Jesus came to pay the price for all sin and to be free from the broken world created by the fall of man.
God is not to blame for everything that followed in the garden and anyone who tries to blame God for all the evil man causes they are not in support of being a free being.
Have faith, trust in Jesus, and you'll see the evil of this temporary world fall before his glory.