"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God? "
[Epicurus]
"If God is omniscient, he must already know how he is going to intervene to change the course of history using his omnipotence.
But that means he can't change his mind about his intervention which means he is not omnipotent"
[Richard Dawkins]
If He knew it all
If He knew everything there is to be known
Then that would mean that He would always know what to do next to change the course of history
He could choose to suspend the laws of nature
He would always know the past and the future
But this would make his own knowledge untrue
For if He knew everything
He could not do anything different from what he knows
And even if he could hear our prayers
He could not encroach
There's no one here who knows it all
There's nothing there beyond the world we know
There's no one here who knows it all
Is there something there beyond the world we know?
Christian morality has all the characters of a reaction; it is, in great part, a protest against Paganism.
It's ideal is negative rather than positive; pa**ive rather than action; innocence rather than Nobleness;
Abstinence from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of Good: in it's precepts (as has been well said) "thou shalt not" predominates unduly over "thou shalt."
[John Stuart Mill]