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I couldn't find "omnibenevolent" in Wiktionary or Dictionary.com. While it's definition is pretty self-evident, is it actually a real word? -- LtNOWIS 02:44, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I would not reference any other texts to prove existence of this word. Please keep in mind that language develops as we form words with our mouths, then is committed to paper using symbols to represent those sounds. If you can use etymological resources to define the prefix omni as all inclusive, and benevolent to mean helpful and good willed, then you can understand the word that came out of my mouth when I say "omnibenevolent".
The self evidence of its meaning is what may soon put this word in the dictionary. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.30.170.151 ( talk) 07:30, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
What is the difference between the problem of evil and Argument from nonbelief? It seems to be the same from a different point of view and therefore easily unifyable: You just equal "not believing" with "not obeying or ignoring gods moral amendments" and nonbelief equals imoral and evil. Common practice in religion. "You're either good or bad, go to heaven or hell, belief in this god or don't, are with us/god or against us/god." Religion seems intollerant to neutrality and calls evrything "is not good" autimatically "is evil", therefore "nonbelief" equals "evil" and both arguments are unified.
Any dogma here?
Evil is hard to measure and nebulous, whereas belief and relationships are much more easily defined. Essentially, if a god existed and wanted people to believe in it, it should be able to go to every individual person and say hello in such a fashion where people would believe. It's a very clear and measurable metric.
This is by far one of the worst written articles I've ever come across. I know that isn't saying much for Wikipedia, but the way this article is worded, particularly the "Summary of proposed resolutions" section, simply amazes me. I have never seen such an awful display of rhetoric. The extent of unnecessary wordiness and illogical orderings/bulletings is astounding. I cannot even being to attempt to salvage anything that makes any kind of normal sense in this article.
69.0.39.195 03:26, 02 January 2007
This part was marked as NOR, and it probably is, so I'm dumping it here:
A shortcut of this argument is as follows: God gave us complete unawareness; therefore various paths are realized. He cannot say they are realized against his will, because his decision whilst creating the world guaranteed there will be no sooths. The less prerequisites, the more nearing are the probabilities of various options and therefore their relative frequency tends to be equal. And vice versa, the more knowledge, the more probable (and therefore dominant) is one path over another. (Actually, Christianity in the Middle Ages used to explain e.g. attacks of faithless Normans as 'the punishment for the sins', therefore admitting these peoples were there in God plans.) In short: God wanted relativism (and actually it is hard to talk about free will when anyone since their birth thinks the same).
If anyone is willing to work on Drange's argument that would be good, it is mostly discussed online. -- Merzul 19:18, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
I reverted a well-intended edit that changed the style of the article. The reason is that all the sources, both atheist and theist, that discuss this argument refer to God with a capital G. This entire argument has developed in a Judeo-Christian setting, and if we are discussing Schellenberg's argument, I think we should follow the style that all the sources of this article are using. Note that I don't feel strongly about this, and if anyone feels the genderless god is more appropriate I won't present any further objection. -- Merzul 14:39, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 03:46, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
Someone has added to the free will section:
When I get the time I will expand a bit on this. This objection is questioning whether libertarian accounts of free will are possible. If they are not, then evil (and even more nonbelief) is a serious problem. For example Graham Oppy uses this reasoning in his "Why I am not a Christian":
On the other hand, this rebuttal is better dealt with in argument from evil, I'm still thinking about how discuss those parts, which are actually the most important parts of this article. -- Merzul ( talk) 20:02, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Fascinating article, but ...
1. Shouldn't the Bertrand Russell quote be referenced? 2. The following makes no sense.
The question here is: does God have what he wants? E.g. if he wants people to believe or not basing only on who they are and what conditions they encountered, then the result is what we see: it might be other if people were other, or acted otherwise, but they don't, so the above question remains.[clarify]
Someone has said earlier in the discussion that they intend to tidy up/expand on this bit. That would be helpful, but my main problem is grammar and sentence structure. Should 'basing" be "based"? 3. Re the earlier discussion about whether we are talking about "god" - deity in general - or "God" (Judeo-Christian) - surely this is an essential point, and the inconsistencies remain throughout the article. I would tend to vote for capital-G "God" myself from what I understand of the argument. -- V1oletv ( talk) 00:04, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
I also think that it needs to be pointed out that this arguing against a strict, Judeo Christian God, not just any god within any religion. Because for these arguements to work, we need to assume that God is one and such way and wants to reveal and stuff. So a more agnostic religion would dispute that on the assumptions alone. 69.85.154.45 ( talk) 04:46, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
I'm new to editing; I guess I should have suggested my May 20, 2013 revisions here instead of just putting them in. Sorry!
I have two issues:
1. The argument from divine hiddenness is the one atheists usually discuss. It is sometimes called the argument from reasonable nonbelief but never just the argument from nonbelief. 'The argument from nonbelief' is the label Theodore Drange gives his argument. So this article, in suggesting that 'argument from nonbelief' and 'argument from divine hiddenness' are two names for the same argument is misleading. I suggest that the article should be renamed 'argument from reasonable nonbelief' or 'argument from divine hiddenness' and that Drange's argument from nonbelief (without the 'reasonable') should be presented as an alternative to Schellenberg's approach. (Another way to deal with this would be to call 'argument from nonbelief' a more general label covering both Drange and Schellenberg. But I see now that this would probably count as 'original research.')
2. In the preface to the paperback version of his book (Cornell, 2006, p. viii) Schellenberg says that it is misleading to use the formal statement of his argument suggested at the beginning of chapter 4. According to him this is because, as he implies at the beginning of chapter 4, premise 2 is "grounded in the deeper claim...that if there is a perfectly loving God, anyone capable of explicit and positively meaningful relationship with God who is not resisting relationship with God is in a position to participate in such relationship." Belief is necessary for being in such a position and that's why reasonable nonbelief is problematic. This point is also emphasized in The Wisdom to Doubt, where Schellenberg restates the argument. So I suggest that either something should be said about this point in the article when the formal statement of Schellenberg's argument is given, or that statement should be replaced by the more up to date version in The Wisdom to Doubt.
Cheers!
Teecrosser 16:55, 23 May 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Teecrosser ( talk • contribs)
I noticed a small problem with how the argument is described at the very beginning of the article: "The premise of the argument is that if God existed (and wanted humanity to know it), he would have brought about a situation in which every reasonable person believed in him; however, there are reasonable unbelievers, therefore, this weighs against God's existence." The problem is with the part in parentheses: "(and wanted humanity to know it)". If this is included, then what follows from the two premises is not that God doesn't exist but that either God doesn't exist or God doesn't want humanity to know it. Since the argument is an argument for atheism, for 'God doesn't exist' full stop, something needs to be changed. I suggest that instead of 'and wanted humanity to know it' we put in the parentheses 'and has the traditional attributes' or 'and is perfectly good and loving'. According to the argument God wanting humanity to know God's existence isn't separate from God existing (as the present statement suggests) but part of it because included in the attributes of God.
Does anyone have a concern about my making a change here, or about my earlier suggestions above? If I don't get a response, I'll take it that no one does.
Teecrosser 18:38, 8 June 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Teecrosser ( talk • contribs)
Most of the changes I made were discussed above. A few were done to remove typos or create consistency, and changes to the discussion of Murray and biblical references to Satan were introduced to make that discussion more coherent. I added a sentence to the Plantinga reference near the end to explain the point of the defence he uses when it is applied in the context of a discussion of divine hiddenness. Later I'll try to find some secondary sources to add to the discussion of Drange's argument. Teecrosser 15:10, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
3.4 says "This is the argument that all true atheists are at heart lying [...]". Accusing all atheists of lying is not a counterargument to their position. There are no references to support this accusation and the wording is messed up. I suggest deleting 3.4. -- 84.155.82.251 ( talk) 13:37, 5 February 2015 (UTC)
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In Deism / Pandeism / Pantheism qua theology, the hiddenness of the deity is actually a feature and not a bug. Worth mentioning. Hyperbolick ( talk) 01:03, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
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I couldn't find "omnibenevolent" in Wiktionary or Dictionary.com. While it's definition is pretty self-evident, is it actually a real word? -- LtNOWIS 02:44, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I would not reference any other texts to prove existence of this word. Please keep in mind that language develops as we form words with our mouths, then is committed to paper using symbols to represent those sounds. If you can use etymological resources to define the prefix omni as all inclusive, and benevolent to mean helpful and good willed, then you can understand the word that came out of my mouth when I say "omnibenevolent".
The self evidence of its meaning is what may soon put this word in the dictionary. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.30.170.151 ( talk) 07:30, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
What is the difference between the problem of evil and Argument from nonbelief? It seems to be the same from a different point of view and therefore easily unifyable: You just equal "not believing" with "not obeying or ignoring gods moral amendments" and nonbelief equals imoral and evil. Common practice in religion. "You're either good or bad, go to heaven or hell, belief in this god or don't, are with us/god or against us/god." Religion seems intollerant to neutrality and calls evrything "is not good" autimatically "is evil", therefore "nonbelief" equals "evil" and both arguments are unified.
Any dogma here?
Evil is hard to measure and nebulous, whereas belief and relationships are much more easily defined. Essentially, if a god existed and wanted people to believe in it, it should be able to go to every individual person and say hello in such a fashion where people would believe. It's a very clear and measurable metric.
This is by far one of the worst written articles I've ever come across. I know that isn't saying much for Wikipedia, but the way this article is worded, particularly the "Summary of proposed resolutions" section, simply amazes me. I have never seen such an awful display of rhetoric. The extent of unnecessary wordiness and illogical orderings/bulletings is astounding. I cannot even being to attempt to salvage anything that makes any kind of normal sense in this article.
69.0.39.195 03:26, 02 January 2007
This part was marked as NOR, and it probably is, so I'm dumping it here:
A shortcut of this argument is as follows: God gave us complete unawareness; therefore various paths are realized. He cannot say they are realized against his will, because his decision whilst creating the world guaranteed there will be no sooths. The less prerequisites, the more nearing are the probabilities of various options and therefore their relative frequency tends to be equal. And vice versa, the more knowledge, the more probable (and therefore dominant) is one path over another. (Actually, Christianity in the Middle Ages used to explain e.g. attacks of faithless Normans as 'the punishment for the sins', therefore admitting these peoples were there in God plans.) In short: God wanted relativism (and actually it is hard to talk about free will when anyone since their birth thinks the same).
If anyone is willing to work on Drange's argument that would be good, it is mostly discussed online. -- Merzul 19:18, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
I reverted a well-intended edit that changed the style of the article. The reason is that all the sources, both atheist and theist, that discuss this argument refer to God with a capital G. This entire argument has developed in a Judeo-Christian setting, and if we are discussing Schellenberg's argument, I think we should follow the style that all the sources of this article are using. Note that I don't feel strongly about this, and if anyone feels the genderless god is more appropriate I won't present any further objection. -- Merzul 14:39, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 03:46, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
Someone has added to the free will section:
When I get the time I will expand a bit on this. This objection is questioning whether libertarian accounts of free will are possible. If they are not, then evil (and even more nonbelief) is a serious problem. For example Graham Oppy uses this reasoning in his "Why I am not a Christian":
On the other hand, this rebuttal is better dealt with in argument from evil, I'm still thinking about how discuss those parts, which are actually the most important parts of this article. -- Merzul ( talk) 20:02, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Fascinating article, but ...
1. Shouldn't the Bertrand Russell quote be referenced? 2. The following makes no sense.
The question here is: does God have what he wants? E.g. if he wants people to believe or not basing only on who they are and what conditions they encountered, then the result is what we see: it might be other if people were other, or acted otherwise, but they don't, so the above question remains.[clarify]
Someone has said earlier in the discussion that they intend to tidy up/expand on this bit. That would be helpful, but my main problem is grammar and sentence structure. Should 'basing" be "based"? 3. Re the earlier discussion about whether we are talking about "god" - deity in general - or "God" (Judeo-Christian) - surely this is an essential point, and the inconsistencies remain throughout the article. I would tend to vote for capital-G "God" myself from what I understand of the argument. -- V1oletv ( talk) 00:04, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
I also think that it needs to be pointed out that this arguing against a strict, Judeo Christian God, not just any god within any religion. Because for these arguements to work, we need to assume that God is one and such way and wants to reveal and stuff. So a more agnostic religion would dispute that on the assumptions alone. 69.85.154.45 ( talk) 04:46, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
I'm new to editing; I guess I should have suggested my May 20, 2013 revisions here instead of just putting them in. Sorry!
I have two issues:
1. The argument from divine hiddenness is the one atheists usually discuss. It is sometimes called the argument from reasonable nonbelief but never just the argument from nonbelief. 'The argument from nonbelief' is the label Theodore Drange gives his argument. So this article, in suggesting that 'argument from nonbelief' and 'argument from divine hiddenness' are two names for the same argument is misleading. I suggest that the article should be renamed 'argument from reasonable nonbelief' or 'argument from divine hiddenness' and that Drange's argument from nonbelief (without the 'reasonable') should be presented as an alternative to Schellenberg's approach. (Another way to deal with this would be to call 'argument from nonbelief' a more general label covering both Drange and Schellenberg. But I see now that this would probably count as 'original research.')
2. In the preface to the paperback version of his book (Cornell, 2006, p. viii) Schellenberg says that it is misleading to use the formal statement of his argument suggested at the beginning of chapter 4. According to him this is because, as he implies at the beginning of chapter 4, premise 2 is "grounded in the deeper claim...that if there is a perfectly loving God, anyone capable of explicit and positively meaningful relationship with God who is not resisting relationship with God is in a position to participate in such relationship." Belief is necessary for being in such a position and that's why reasonable nonbelief is problematic. This point is also emphasized in The Wisdom to Doubt, where Schellenberg restates the argument. So I suggest that either something should be said about this point in the article when the formal statement of Schellenberg's argument is given, or that statement should be replaced by the more up to date version in The Wisdom to Doubt.
Cheers!
Teecrosser 16:55, 23 May 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Teecrosser ( talk • contribs)
I noticed a small problem with how the argument is described at the very beginning of the article: "The premise of the argument is that if God existed (and wanted humanity to know it), he would have brought about a situation in which every reasonable person believed in him; however, there are reasonable unbelievers, therefore, this weighs against God's existence." The problem is with the part in parentheses: "(and wanted humanity to know it)". If this is included, then what follows from the two premises is not that God doesn't exist but that either God doesn't exist or God doesn't want humanity to know it. Since the argument is an argument for atheism, for 'God doesn't exist' full stop, something needs to be changed. I suggest that instead of 'and wanted humanity to know it' we put in the parentheses 'and has the traditional attributes' or 'and is perfectly good and loving'. According to the argument God wanting humanity to know God's existence isn't separate from God existing (as the present statement suggests) but part of it because included in the attributes of God.
Does anyone have a concern about my making a change here, or about my earlier suggestions above? If I don't get a response, I'll take it that no one does.
Teecrosser 18:38, 8 June 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Teecrosser ( talk • contribs)
Most of the changes I made were discussed above. A few were done to remove typos or create consistency, and changes to the discussion of Murray and biblical references to Satan were introduced to make that discussion more coherent. I added a sentence to the Plantinga reference near the end to explain the point of the defence he uses when it is applied in the context of a discussion of divine hiddenness. Later I'll try to find some secondary sources to add to the discussion of Drange's argument. Teecrosser 15:10, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
3.4 says "This is the argument that all true atheists are at heart lying [...]". Accusing all atheists of lying is not a counterargument to their position. There are no references to support this accusation and the wording is messed up. I suggest deleting 3.4. -- 84.155.82.251 ( talk) 13:37, 5 February 2015 (UTC)
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In Deism / Pandeism / Pantheism qua theology, the hiddenness of the deity is actually a feature and not a bug. Worth mentioning. Hyperbolick ( talk) 01:03, 5 November 2023 (UTC)