The divine attributes themselves are said to conflict, so that no being could hold them all together.
Tagged: Arguments against God Divine Attributes
Classical theism describes God as essentially omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good, and holds these attributes necessarily and together. Critics argue that the combination creates contradictions: an omniscient being cannot learn anything new, yet learning seems possible for a mind; a perfectly good being cannot do evil, yet omnipotence seems to include the power to do anything; and a being who knows everything may be unable to experience ignorance, surprise, or regret.
If the attributes cannot be held together, the argument concludes, then the God of classical theism is not merely unproven but incoherent, and the question of evidence does not arise.
The Argument in Form
- God is essentially omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good.
- Omniscience excludes learning, and perfect goodness excludes the power to do evil.
- A being that cannot learn and cannot do evil lacks powers that omnipotence requires.
Conclusion: Therefore, no being can be at once essentially omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good.
Proponents and History
Questions about the coherence of the divine attributes run through medieval theology and returned sharply in twentieth-century philosophy of religion. Writers examined whether omniscience can include knowledge of every true proposition, whether omnipotence extends to the logically impossible, and whether perfect goodness limits what an omnipotent being can do. The debate continues because much depends on how each attribute is defined, and small changes in definition change which combinations are possible.
Standard Responses
Classical theists reply that the attributes are great-making properties, understood as maximal perfection rather than unlimited ability in every sense. On this view, an omniscient being does not need to learn, because learning is a remedy for ignorance, not a perfection; and a perfectly good being's inability to do evil is not a lack of power but the perfection of a will that cannot fail. Careful definitions of necessity, knowledge, and goodness, theists argue, dissolve the alleged contradictions rather than merely avoiding them. The dispute therefore turns less on the attributes themselves than on the definitions used to state them.
References
- Concepts of God (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Free / open access
- Omniscience (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Free / open access
Related Across the Site
- Argument from Non-Belief Argument — The sheer scale of unbelief in the world is said to fit naturalism better than theism.
- Cosmological Disproof Argument — Modern cosmology is said to remove the need for a first cause of the universe.
- Divine Hiddenness Argument — If God were perfectly loving, reasonable people would not remain without belief; yet many do.
- Foreknowledge and Free Will Argument — If God already knows infallibly what each person will do, the future seems fixed and human freedom seems lost.
- Omnipotence Paradox / Coherence of Theism Argument — The stone paradox asks whether a God who can do anything can make a stone too heavy for God to lift.
- Ontological Disproof Argument — The ontological argument is said to fail because existence is not a property that can be built into a definition.
- Problem of Evil Argument — The suffering of the world is said to count against a God who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good.
- Teleological Disproof Argument — Evolution and natural explanations of fine-tuning are said to remove the need for a designer.
Related Arguments
- Omnipotence Paradox / Coherence of Theism — The stone paradox asks whether a God who can do anything can make a stone too heavy for God to lift.
- Foreknowledge and Free Will — If God already knows infallibly what each person will do, the future seems fixed and human freedom seems lost.
- Cosmological Argument — Everything that begins to exist has a cause, and the universe began to exist, so the universe has a cause.