this post was submitted on 20 May 2025
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If you're serious, there are so many. Here's one of the first results I found in a search, but you can find so much writing on it if you want to, which if you actually believe you're following the "truth" you should look into.
One of the most common fundamental contradiction arguments is the Judeo-Christian god is defined as omniscient and omnipotent, all knowing and all powerful, as well as benevolent. If this is true, why is there evil in the world? He's omnipotent so must have the power to make a world in which it doesn't exist, and he must be aware of whatever will happen in the world he creates, since he's omniscient, and must not want evil to exist since he's benevolent.
These cannot all be true. If they were then he'd create a world that satisfies his goals that does not have evil, which he must be capable of doing if he's omnipotent. If evil must exist to accomplish his goals then he isn't omnipotent. If he can't detect evil will exist then he isn't omniscient. If he wants evil to exist then he isn't benevolent.
I viewed your link and randomly selected 4-5 of the "contradictions" and basic knowledge of the bible and historicity dispelled them. I'm not going to go through all 50. Sorry you get out what you put in lol. But I've heard many of them before and highly recommend the "Whole Counsel of God" podcast which walks through scripture verse by verse and addresses the most common Catholic, Protestant and Post-Modern critiques of scriptural "contradictions" which are typically due to bad theology, poor historicity, translation errors, cultural ignorance etc etc It's also a great way to learn scripture in a deeper way.
This is a meme in Christian apologetic circles because non-Christians always think it's a big own when it is really just a demonstration of a lack of understanding of what Christianity is actually about -- Redemption. The story of how the world enters a fallen state is explained in Genesis. The fact that the world is fallen is critical to Christian theology and the process of sanctification.
God does not play by your rules. The struggles we face on Earth (often of our own creation) are for our salvation. This is what the bible and church tradition teaches.
I have a more expanded response in this thread here for some other points -- https://lemmy.ml/post/30390799/18750134
It being a meme doesn't mean there isn't a reason for the argument. Redemption from what? Whatever it is, God had control over it happening. Why did it happen? He is trivially capable of creating a universe where there is no need to be redeemed. Why is one where redemption required the one he chose to create? Dismissing something as just being a meme does not actually answer the question.
The point is, God knew we would create the struggles. Is he omniscient? He knew it would happen. Is he omnipotent? He could have created a situation where it doesn't happen. Is he benevolent? He wouldn't want it to happen.
Yes, this is what the church teaches. I'm well aware. Does it make sense?
I understand. I'm more commenting on how it's usually framed as a gotcha as if Christians have never thought of this before.
The real answer to what is essentially the Epicurean "Problem of Evil" lies in Freedom and Love. God created human beings with genuine freedom, because only freely chosen love is real love. This means that the possibility of rejecting the good (e.g. evil) is not a flaw in creation but a necessary precondition for freedom.
Yes. He is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-good. But benevolence doesn’t mean preventing every possibility of suffering. In the Orthodox view, God’s goodness is shown not in preventing freedom, but in enduring suffering with us, and transforming it into life and healing. God knew the risk of creation, yet chose to create and then chose to redeem through suffering love. That’s not negligence—that’s the Cross.
Not in a tidy, rationalistic way—and Orthodoxy is okay with that. There’s a deep apophatic element to the theology: the idea that not everything about God can be explained in human terms. But what does make sense in experience is the way the Church helps us encounter God through prayer, sacraments, and love. Evil isn’t ignored—it’s faced head-on, and transformed in Christ.
I think the questioning of it originally comes from Christians, so obviously that isn't the case, nor is it what I'm saying.
The flaw here is he's all powerful. If you believe the Adam and Eve story (and even if not it makes a good small case argument) he created the garden, created the tree and fruit, created the serpent, knew they'd eat the fruit, knew he'd damn them for it and they'd suffer for it, and chose to do this anyway. He trivially could also have created a world where they chose not to. Even when given the freedom of choice, he knows what choice will be made (since time is not relevant to him) and can set things up to create any outcome.
It's not a risk. He knew what would happen. He created something where this specific thing is what would come to be with fill awareness and decided that's what he wanted, if it's true. It's not negligence, it's indifference to suffering. There is no other option for it than that, since he could choose to have made something where it didn't exist. Maybe we can't imagine what that would be, but that's what it means to be omnipotent.
Yeah, that's fine if it helps you. However, every religion has this claim, so it isn't evidence that it's correct. That's fine. Faith is by definition belief without evidence.
You're right to point out that God knew what would happen. In Orthodox theology, this is acknowledged—but it's essential to distinguish foreknowledge from predetermination. God's knows the outcome of free choices but doesn't coerce them. His foreknowledge does not violate our freedom.
More importantly, God is not only omnipotent but all-good. And since God is the source of all goodness, the possibility of choosing anything other than God is the possibility of choosing evil—which is, by definition, a lack or distortion of the good. If we are to love God freely, we must be free to reject Him.
Therefore yes, God could have created a world where Adam and Eve never fell—but that would not be a world of genuinely free persons. It would be a world of perfectly programmed beings, and Orthodoxy insists that freedom is essential to personhood. Without it, love isn't possible.
Also, it's important to clarify: Orthodoxy does not teach that God "damned" humanity for the Fall. The consequence of sin is death and corruption, not divine vengeance. God's response was not punishment but a rescue mission—the Incarnation. The “Tree of Life” returns in the Cross.
From our human perspective, it may seem this way. But God did not create evil or suffering—He permitted it as the cost of freedom, because only through freedom can there be love, growth, and communion. What matters is not just that suffering exists, but how God responds to it.
And His response is not indifference, but sacrificial love. In Christ, God enters our suffering, takes it upon Himself, and opens a path to life. The Cross is not God watching suffering from a distance—it’s God partaking and being the example for all of man for our sake.
While it may not mean much to you I would be remiss not to defend Orthodoxy here. Faith isn’t blind belief or wishful thinking; it's trust grounded in revelation, history, and experience. The resurrection of Christ, the lives of the saints, the enduring wisdom of the Church—these are not “proofs” in a modern empirical sense, but they are reasons for belief.
Furthermore I don't know what your standards for evidence are but I encourage you to look at arguments like the Transcendental Argument for God. It argues that universals like logic, reason, and math are only justified if God exists. (e.g. X (God) is necessary for Y (logic, math etc). Y therefore X.)
If you deny God’s existence, you must account for the reliability of reason, logic, and abstract universals like mathematics. If these are simply “self-evident,” then you’re assuming the very thing your worldview has no means to justify. Furthermore without a transcendent source of rationality, why assume logic is binding or that it applies universally?
Believing in God is foundation to a worldview that relies on universals the alternative is arbitrarily granting yourself self-evident axioms.
I think you misunderstand. He could create a world where they freely choose to not fall. It's not predetermination, like you say. It's premeditation. He must have wanted them to fall, because that's what he knew would happen and he set it up so they would choose that. If I set up a tripline that activated a trap then tell someone to go where it'll be tripped, that's something I did, even if they chose to follow it.
He's all powerful, so he must necessarily be able to create a world with free will and free choices, but also one such that we always genuinely choose the right thing. It doesn't require us to be programmed beings. Rather it requires foreknowledge, planning, and capability of the designer, and a desire for this to be the case. It doesn't matter if we can't imagine that world. He's omnipotent. He can create it, but chose not to.
Again, he designed it knowing the results, with the ability to create absolutely anything, even things we can't imagine. The problem with the human perspective is we assume this is the way things must be, but with omnipotence it allows literally anything to be possible, including total freedom, but also where every choice made is good. That is necessarily true, if he is omnipotent.
He can create a world where every person gets into heaven, by choice, even if they have the ability to make choices where they wouldn't, since he's omniscient. It's like setting up domino's. You don't program how they fall. You just set things up so they fall as planned, but you're omniscient and omnipotent, so you never make a mistake. All dominos fall perfectly into place exactly as you want, because you know the outcome of everything you place.
They're proofs that every religions claims equally, yet (for most) only one can be correct. That's the big issue.
First, I don't deny any gods existence. We both lack the brief on most gods. I just don't believe in one more than you. I don't claim to have knowledge on any of their existences, except insofar as them not being internally consistent. I'm an agnostic (not knowing) atheist (lack of belief). I don't actively believe anything about any gods.
The reliability of logic and mathematics are as reliable as the axioms they are founded on. No further and no less. There isn't a thing universal about them. They are not a part of reality that we wandered across. They're made up by humans to be useful tools. This seems obvious because both have come into existence in different forms in different places and times. If they were universal they would always appear in the same form.