r/CosmicSkeptic

Theists often describe their deities as being tri-omni: omniscient - all-knowing, omnibenevolent - all-loving, and omnipotent - all-powerful. In this post, I will focus on the last quality, and why theists give too little credit to their deity.

Omnipotence is generally defined as the ability to do anything - or alternatively, to bring about any state of affairs - that is logically possible. Yet, when defending their beliefs, theists repeatedly (and often unknowingly) place artificial constraints on what their god can do. I want to highlight this contradiction by looking at two common arguments: the fine-tuning argument for creation and the free will defense to the problems of evil and original sin.

Part 1: Fine-Tuning

The Fine-Tuning argument posits that the physical constants of our universe (the strength of gravity, the cosmological constant, the mass of electrons, etc.) are precisely tuned such that any changes would ensure that life as we know it would not exist. Therefore, a designer must have "fine-tuned" the dials of the universe specifically to accommodate us.

The glaring issue here is that this argument treats god like a cosmic tinkerer working with stubborn, preexisting materials, rather than an omnipotent creator.

If god is truly omnipotent, he is the author of physics, not its subject. The idea that life requires a specific set of physical constants imposes an external constraint on an unconstrained being. An omnipotent god could easily create conscious minds in a universe composed entirely of plasma, or in a universe with weaker gravity or a less massive electron.

Further, when we examine god itself, it is an unembodied mind existing prior to, and entirely independent of, the physical universe. Then, by the theist's own admission, it is logically possible for a conscious mind to exist without being composed of matter. If an unembodied mind is a logical possibility, an omnipotent being could have simply instantiated a universe consisting entirely of unembodied minds.
Why would an all-powerful creator bind consciousness to fragile, carbon-based biology that requires an impossibly narrow set of gravitational and cosmological constants just to survive in an extremely tiny subset of his creation? The necessity of "fine-tuning" only exists if we assume the creator was forced to use physical matter with a fixed set of dials to house minds, a stark contradiction of omnipotence.

A common theistic counter to this is that god chose to use these specific physical laws for aesthetic reasons, or because an elegant, orderly universe reflects his nature. However, this defence neutralises the fine-tuning argument entirely. If the physical constants are merely an aesthetic choice rather than a strict necessity for life to exist, then the "improbability" of our universe is a manufactured crisis. God essentially created a problem (biology requires exact physical constants) and then solved it (setting the constants exactly). This makes the fine-tuning a self-imposed limitation.

By arguing that god had to set the dials perfectly for life to emerge, theists are stripping god of his omnipotence. If god could bring about conscious life without fine-tuning anything, then the precise arrangement of our universe's physical constants is not evidence of necessary design; it is merely an arbitrary choice.

Part 2: The Problem of Evil

The classical logical formulation, often attributed to Epicurus, poses this dilemma: If god is willing to prevent evil, but not able, then he is not omnipotent. If he is able, but not willing, then he is malevolent. If he is both able and willing, whence cometh evil?

Theists often argue that this evil cometh from free will - that god allows evil and suffering because he values free will, and a world populated by truly free agents necessarily includes the possibility of those agents making evil choices.

This defence falls apart when we apply the rigorous definition of omnipotence to the concept of heaven. Consider the following argument:

1. An omniscient being is capable of knowing the future of any possible world.

2. An omnipotent being is capable of actualising any logically possible world.

3. An omnibenevolent being desires for every being to go to heaven and not hell.

4. The theistic god is described as omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent.

5. Heaven is a possible world actualised by this god where there is no separation from him (and presumably, no evil, sin, or suffering).

6. God is thus capable of and willing to actualise a world where there is no separation from him.

7. We are in a world where presumably some people, such as Hitler, do not go to heaven.

8. This is a contradiction, so one of the previous premises must be false.

To expand on this: theists generally maintain that in heaven, souls retain their free will, yet they do not commit evil. If humans can possess free will in heaven without sinning, then a world containing both "free will" and "zero evil" is a logically possible world. An omnipotent god can actualise any logically possible world. If a sinless world with free will is logically possible, an omnipotent god could have just actualised that world from the very beginning.

Some theists appeal to "soul-making" theodicies, arguing that a sinless heaven is only logically possible for beings who have first freely chosen god and developed their moral character through the trials of Earth. But once again, this limits omnipotence by subjugating god to a psychological process. If a mature, morally perfected soul freely choosing good in heaven is a logically possible state of affairs, an omnipotent god could actualise a world containing beings created directly with that fully formed, perfected character. Claiming god requires a temporal process of suffering, sin, and testing to forge such souls implies he lacks the power to instantiate the end result directly.

There is no logical necessity to actualise a flawed, intermediate testing ground (Earth) filled with horrors such as genocide, paediatric cancer, natural disasters, and horrific moral evils, where countless souls are ultimately condemned to eternal separation. Claiming that god had to actualise this current, suffering world order to achieve his ultimate goals implies he would lack the power to actualise those goals directly.

Conclusion

There seem to be quite a few arguments where pointing out that the theistic god is omnipotent would cause a fair bit of trouble to the theist. In both the Fine-Tuning argument and the Free Will defense, theists attempt to solve philosophical hurdles by quietly shrinking god’s power. A truly omnipotent god wouldn't need to tweak physical dials to keep unembodied minds alive, nor would he need to rely on a trial phase with evil and suffering to populate a sinless heaven.

There are several other arguments that can be dismissed just as easily. For example, take the challenge of irreducible complexity from intelligent design proponents - theists frequently point to the complexity of biological systems, such as the human eye, to advocate for a designer god. However, an all-powerful being does not need to engineer a fragile, complex Rube Goldberg machine of retinas, optic nerves, and visual cortexes just to grant a creature sight. An omnipotent god could simply actualise a universe where a completely solid, homogenous cube of biological matter can see perfectly. Complexity is a result of constraints, not omnipotence.

If we take divine omnipotence seriously, the popular theistic justifications for the actualisation of our universe simply do not hold up.

Christianity had once met its match, but Luther revived it with his scripturalism (Nietzsche complained about this). But scripturalism had also met its match as science began to establish its epistemological authority in the world. Christianity was rolling downward to its grave, but then philosophy came alone, specifically Analytical Philosophy, and provided it with a new sophist form that it is still monopolizing to this day.

Analytical Philosophy is the sophist form that is legitimately used by theists*: Plantinga, Swinburne, William Lane Craig and many others, have all found subterfuge in the abstractness of this form. And because humans bias abstract complexity, assuming it to be proof of greater and deeper truth, the form alone has been enough to insinuate the validity and intellectual legitimacy of the claims of Christianity. (People like Alex O’Connor have added to this public image of legitimacy).

Don’t get me wrong, Christianity is still rolling down to its grave, per empirical evidence, but this is partly because its social practice is archaic and diametrically opposed to the short attention span of social media culture.

The more important question is, what happens to these individuals who impulsively reject Christianity when they actually pay attention to its apologetics? (Many get indoctrinated into it). Most people do not reject Christianity at this level, they don’t even know that this level exists. They just don’t like sitting in Church listening to people make archaic declarations from a book they can’t relate to. Because Christianity has clashed with modern egoism, therefore it is highly unappealing to the modern egoistic man.

There’s a reason why philosophy empowered the discourse of theism, while Critical Thinking and Scientific Skepticism did not, and do not, and this is because philosophy is itself a theological form.

*Theists were even conscious of this form. In 1998 the book, “The Analytic Theist” appeared, Eerdmans Publishing Company

Here's the official link to the conversation/debate: https://pcr-od.streamguys1.com/the-unbelievable/20260515104810-PODCAST-FINAL_14052026_PUnb_WLC-AOC_Midroll-3601_Endroll-011421.mp3?awCollectionId=Unbelievable&awGenre=Religion+and+Spirituality&awEpisodeId=90d15060-504b-11f1-a5fa-6dc14ef122b2

The first part of the conversation contains interesting discussions about infinity, including Bernardete and Zeno's paradoxes, Hilbert's hotel, as well as the A and B theories of time.

The second part, which definitely turned the conversation into a debate about animal suffering, was quite infuriating; at least to me (even the usually calm and collected Alex was often livid while listening to Craig's nonsense).

If you're saying we can only dream things containing rearranged elements that we have experienced while awake, that doesn't rule out very much. Most of us have seen math equations before, and should therefore be able to dream a new equation. Most of us have seen touchscreens, computers and telephones before and should therefore be able to dream a smartphone according to this version of the claim. Alex has not talked much about dreams?

“There is a principle in things, about which we cannot be deceived, but must always, on the contrary recognize the truth,-viz. that the same thing cannot at one and the same time be and not be, or admit any other similar pair of opposites.” Metaphysics, Book XI Part V

Here Aristotle does not lay down a mere formal suggestion or “model,” he expounds a law of thought, intelligence, reason and meaning. This law draws a line, it demarcates those who are ignorant from those who are willfully incoherent.

Anyone who rejects this or attempts to contradict it, merely affirms it— they shout, as from the highest mountaintop, that they belong to the most common species of “Stupid.”

This law renders the irrationalist functionally mute. The moment they open their mouth to deny it, they have used it. They are like a man using his lungs to argue that air does not exist.

To ignore this principle is not "brave" or "subversive,” it is a surrender to a self-inflicted lobotomy. One cannot "deconstruct" the floor they are standing on without falling into the basement of idiocy.

Do you seriously believe YOUR mind could come up with EVERYTHING in this reality?

That YOUR mind invented E=MC2, not Einstein's mind?

That YOUR mind did all the hard work for thousands of years to fill Earth's history?

That YOUR mind figured out advanced physics of the universe?

That YOU alone has the privilege of living as a brain in a vat created by some advanced aliens?

That NOTHING is real because YOUR mind created everything?

THIS........my Friend.......is the very DEFINITION......of........Hubristic Ego.

🤔 . Has alex ever commented about this?

He makes brain dead arguments, ignores counter points and repeats a claim he already made, then fucks off to be racist with his racist friends. Alex cannot be this desperate

This is a cross post I made from the consciouness sub - since a lot of discussion around consciousness sometimes focuses too much on philosophical positions - I'd like to instead ground a discussion in some empirical observations and how that restricts what our views on conscious might be, and how we are under unique restrictions compared to under phenomena. This is the best below.

This does not even get to the hard problem of consciousness itself but even the easy problem as Charmer's conceived it involves the process of figuring which structural states or properties are needed for particular conscious experiences to appear for an organism. No one doubts conscious experience requires specific structures to be in place - a point adequately demonstrated by Paul Broca almost ~200 years ago after broader speculations for such an idea dating back far longer.

But here's the kicker: Until the elements are made clear, we don't even know what to look for when trying to understand phenomenology. Take organisms with simple nervous systems - they might have similar environmental responses to us, hunger, tactile reception, taste buds near their mouth - but nothing precludes these processes being done totally unconsciously, or the inverse - perhaps it is EXTREMELY vivid for them, we truly cannot distinguish these opposite alternatives if we don't know the relevant elements for phenomenology.

Now we know all kinds of relevant elements for neurology itself - neurons, transmitters, receptors etc the list goes on. This is why neurologically studying simple organisms goes off without a hitch (not that it's easy, don't be fooled by the name easy problem), we merely import our methodology and are sometimes even thankful for the easier processes - when your don't have to deal with ~80 billion neurons to map, as you do with the human brain you can even make a beautiful connectome with a ~ 300 neuron nematode nervous system. Despite this easy import of neurology, we find importing phenomenology works the exact opposite we have no idea what to infer about their phenomenological experience and we're probably a lot better inferring stuff about much more complex brains (other humans, closely related mammals, other mammals in general etc) because importing neurology unfortunately doesn't translate to an import of phenomenology.

Something to further illustrate my point is we leave the animal kingdom entirely (for those not familiar with animal phylogeny, nervous systems are entirely restricted to animals) Take something like a plant, does it have conscious experience? Importing neurology is very easy in this respect - it doesn't have any neurons! Job well done. You might even say we have a complete neurological understanding of a plant. However, does something about it's structure entail, as Nagel says, that 'there is something like it to be' a plant? We are even more clueless here than with simple animals. It could go completely in the dark, no phenomenology whatsoever, or it could meet some structural condition that does allow it to feel some experiences - even quite vivid ones. Again, we have no idea, we're even more clueless since we can't infer from much morphology in common (beings with no nervous system are pretty different to us) and we are left wondering.

I hope this outline shows that with whatever framework you subscribe to, that neurology is not a surefire way of getting at these important questions we are after and that the discrepancy between neurological and phenomenological information is made clear - because this is something any philosophical framework around consciousness has to be consistent with.

This was a long discussion that kind of went all over the place, but I'm going to focus in on what I consider to be the most key points and give my take on it as someone who aligns with Sam's perspective.

>Aren't we just talking about people's preferences?

Alex made this point repeatedly, and in a Q&A video after the fact he stated this as his main reason for not being convinced by Sam's argument. There's one thing Sam said that best captures why this is missing the mark: We can make objectively correct and incorrect statements about subjective experiences.

Alex seems to be misunderstanding where the goal posts are with regards to objective truth, and assuming that if we're talking about people's subjectivity that the truth value of those statements must be subjective, but that's not how it works. Alex and Sam agree that the feelings of beings are central to what morality is about, but Sam is saying that it's an objective fact whether a given being at a given point in time feels good or bad. It's also an objective fact whether something will cause them to feel good or bad, and these facts are independent of what a person stating them might feel or think about them.

>Moral statements equate to yay and boo, which do not contain any truth value.

Let's assume for a moment emotivism is correct about moral statements equating to yay and boo. While it's true linguistically that we don't respond to these words by saying "correct" or "incorrect", I honestly think there is a kind of slight of hand going on here, even if unintentionally. Because, while that is how they work as a linguistic construction, I don't think that's accurate to the underlying semantics. Saying yay expresses something, something like "I like that!" or "I approve of that!", which are both true or false statements about you.

So, the actual meaning of words like yay and boo does have truth value regardless of their status in our language, and it's the meaning that emotivism claims is equivalent with moral terminology. Of course, emotivism still entails that our personal feelings are the only thing we're stating with moral claims, which is very different from the picture Sam is painting, I just wanted to be clear that even emotivism can't claim to be devoid of any kind of truth.

>Why ought I care about the suffering of others?

Alex creates the hypothetical of a weapons manufacturer to get this point across, that there are at least possible instances of a person whose wellbeing runs contrary to the wellbeing of humanity as a whole. This is one place where I don't entirely agree with how Sam responded, because he kept trying to justify the idea that this person's life would in fact be worse as a result of being a morally bad actor. And while I do think there are lots of good reasons one can give as to why someone's life is likely to be worse, or at least could be better, if they behave in a morally bad way, I think Alex is right to point out that you can always control for the hypothetical in such a way that you can't argue for that anymore (such as adding that they're a sadist and whatnot).

The thing is, I don't think anything actually hinges on this point. It might matter slightly to our ability to convince people to be moral that there are highly specific fringe cases where a person will be personally better off doing the morally wrong thing, but it doesn't matter whatsoever to the claim Sam is making about objective moral truth. Because, the ability for someone to not care about something doesn't diminish its truth value. If I don't care at all about math, if I choose not to understand it or incorporate that understanding into my life, it is still just as objectively true to say that 2+2=4.

And under utilitarianism, "X is morally wrong" will still be objectively true or false regardless of whether that deters you from doing X or not, because we're arguing that the definition of "morally wrong" is what leads to worse experiences on the whole, and that includes a lot more than just you personally. Let's say X is good for you, so you do it, but it increases the average suffering in the world. X would still be morally wrong under a utilitarian definition of the words. If you are unable to be convinced to care about doing the morally right thing, that says nothing about the semantics of the phrase "morally right". The universe will never force you to care about anything.

Ought means that something will bring about a good outcome, but it holds different applications because there is always the question: Better outcome for who? If the word "ought" in Alex's question is referring to what will make his life specifically better, then that doesn't align with the moral application of ought under utilitarianism, and a utilitarian doesn't have to argue that someone ought to care about the suffering of others in that sense. If the "ought" is going to mean the utilitarian application (what will make lives better across all beings) then it becomes definitionally true that one ought to care about the suffering of others.

>Utilitarianism vs. Emotivism: Whose feelings are relevant to moral statements?

This is the final piece of the puzzle, they sort of danced around it but unfortunately its something they never truly addressed. The closest the discussion got was when Sam decided to put his views in emotivist terms and talk about which actions will lead to more "yums" or more "boos". What this highlights is that Alex and Sam's perspectives are the same in an important way, they agree that moral good and bad relate to people feeling good or bad. The key difference is simply: who?

Emotivism argues that if I say it's morally good to give to charity I'm effectively saying "Yay charity!" (which, as I covered earlier, carries the same meaning as "I like charity!"). So what makes it good is the positive effect on me when I see someone giving to charity or I think about the concept of charity. When defined this way, it is of course an opinion as it's all relative to the feelings of the speaker.

Utilitarianism argues that if I say it's morally good to give to charity, I'm claiming that giving to charity will increase the average wellbeing in the world (or decrease the average suffering). So what makes it good is that it has a positive effect on everyone who benefits from the charity. When defined this way, it's an objective fact that will be true or false regardless of what the speaker thinks or feels about it.

>What resolves this disagreement?

The important question this all comes down to is this: Which of these ways of defining moral language makes more sense? I would argue strongly that given the context in which we make moral statements, as well as the justification and purpose for them, the utilitarian one does. To demonstrate this, lets suppose someone asks you "Can lying ever be morally right?". What information are they more likely to be trying to get from you: The situations in which you would enjoy someone lying? Or the situations where lying would have more positive effects than negative ones for everyone affected by the lie? And which way would you be more likely to justify your answer?

To me it seems clear that those who are affected by the action are whose feelings matter to the morality of the action, not the feelings of whoever happens to be the speaker. But I would love to hear from opposing perspectives on this, emotivist or otherwise, if you think my reasoning has any errors. Thanks for reading.