Talk:Omnibenevolence

message: I edited the line in the introduction claiming that omnibenevolence was incompatible with omnipotence and omniscience to say that it is "sometimes held to be incompatible with," as, certainly within the Abrahamic tradition, many would dispute this. AncientToaster (talk) 07:25, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Introduction

message: I'm pretty sure the term, and definitely the concept, do not originate in 1980.   Omnibenevolence is one of the traditional attributes of the abrahamic God (at least), along with omnipotence and omniscience.  Killtacular 17:47, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  This article 

message: The first instance I can find for usage of this word in the English language is in "Atheism: The Case Against God (Skeptic's Bookshelf) by George H. Smith (Prometheus Books; 1st Paperback Ed edition (June 1980))" It looks increasingly likely that the author may have just made up this word in order to create a straw man arguement. I can't even find Church usage for it. He has no cite for it either which is odd considering the amount of citations he does use. I am skeptical that it is even a real word. It might even be impossible which is exactly what Smith ends up concluding hence the straw man arguement(Simonapro 21:04, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Etymology of Omnibenevolence  

message: I deleted the controversy section. Omnibenevolence is not an atheist invention, it is used by many Christian philosophers of religion; I included a few authors, but the list is so ridiculously long to include here. Therefore I ask instead, are there any sources that question the validity of this term, or is this objection to a perfectly valid term in the philosophy of religion just based on original research? --Merzul 18:04, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Anyway, I over-reacted a bit, but here is my understanding of the issue. Omnibenevolence can be understood as whatever properties of God that would seem contradictory with the existence of evil. Basically its just a convenient term to avoid dealing with intricate details of theology and focus on the philosophical arguments. One could call this a straw man, but then, even terms like omnipotence and omniscience require more careful understanding. I think in the very technical discussion on the problem of evil, the term omnibenevolence is properly understood by both sides; and they can focus on discussing its implications. Outside such contexts, I can fully agree that the use of this term is inappropriate. --Merzul 11:53, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  It does not appear in modern dictionaries. Oxford seems to have included it but I would like to know when they added it. It doesn't appear to have any Catholic usage. It seems to have some usuage by a Protestant in 1697. Smith does not cite a source for it. If you have other publications that source it then that would be much better. Right now if they don't source it I would suspect that these comments in other publication are a knee-jerk response to the Smith critic rather than an actual examination of the term. The historical record for the term pre-1980, I feel, is poor at best. I still think that the fact that it does not appear in popular dictionaries makes it highly suspect. (Runwiththewind 21:53, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Still, the people who use this term are not exactly amateurs, the whole Catholic and Protestant issue is irrelevant to modern usage. This is a term that should never be used in theology; it has a limited and I think precisely understood meaning in the philosophy of religion; e.g. like this. In any case, the cited sources are Oxford and Cambridge University Press monographs, these are hardly knee-jerk responses to Smith. Still, this article could be moved to something like "perfect goodness", as in the phrase "all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good". I think this is how most sources introduce the problem of evil. --Merzul 22:32, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

text: I really can't say more than the etymology is suspect which is probably the reason why it lacks representation in popular dictionaries. The Catholic example is important because we are saying that the world-wide global Christian Church with a historical record that runs right through to today, does not appear to use it or even make statements on it. It appears first, as you point out, in parts of Protestant reformed theology which appears to be very limited. In terms of the philosophical context you mention, fine, we can attribute the condition to a person by saying that somebody is never bad or something hypothetical like that. In fact it seems that the term has very little to do with God or theology except that some theological characters, such as some Prophets and some Saints can be part of those people who are not bad. I suppose God can be added to that too. Its the OMNI part that probably sounds more God-ish that what the term actually really implies. (Runwiththewind 18:28, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Controversy??? 

message: http://sol.sci.uop.edu/~jfalward/Omnibenevolence.htm I retained this link though it is broken, doesn't redirect, and I can't find any likely replacement through a search of the usual means (including Google Scholar). If it's still broken the next time someone works on this article, please delete if that's the appropriate thing to do. Hananekosan (talk) 21:17, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  External Link ->J Falward UOP 

message: It looks like the neutrality of this article has been disputed before, and with good reason.  If benevolence means, "marked by or disposed to doing good," in other words, giving only good things and allowing only good things to happen, then it is easily and demonstrably false that "The acknowledgement of God's omnibenevolence is an essential foundation in traditional Christianity."  In fact, the verse cited to support "omnibenevolence" clearly states God is the protector "to all those that trust in him," which is clearly limited, not applicable to all or "omni."  God allowed Job's children to be killed, his property to be destroyed, and his health to fade.  Those are bad things.  God allowed the Israelites to wander in the desert for 40 years.  That was not very much fun.  God allowed the Israelites to be taken captive and enslaved, twice.  Again, not very fun.  God allowed Jesus to die, and in fact, Isaiah 53 says, "Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand."  It pleased God to crush Jesus.  Does that sound "omnibenevolent?"  Christians believe that God is perfectly good, but not that He does not allow unpleasantness.  However, as Isaiah above says, there is always something good that comes out of the unpleasantness that God allows, just as a child who cries during an inoculation is unknowingly protected from a far worse and more painful fate.
Importantly, the Christian God is known as one who is not only perfectly good, but perfectly holy.  That purity results in a strong sense of justice:  when one who is pure has been violated, ignoring it is actually not good--it is unjust.  Ask anyone who as been violated.  So, most believers in this God believe that He sends people to Hell to suffer, and some believe that the suffering is eternal.  How a good God can allow people to suffer without Him is clear:  God's holiness is so great that unrepentant people who hate God would suffer far more if they were not separated from Him because they could not stand in His presence without being horribly burned.  In other words, for haters of God, Hell would be a far cooler option.  However, this article, to be unbiased, merely needs to make it clear that people who believe and trust in God's goodness do not use the word "omnibenevolent," because it has a connotation meaning that God never allows bad things to happen, or sends curses, as He did on the Egyptians.  So, this article appears to me, as it has to other commenters, as part of a straw man argument made by atheists who would like to make the case that the Christian God may be either good or send people to Hell.  Pammalamma (talk) 02:05, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  This Article Is Not Neutral 

message: There is a section in this article devoted to a Christian theologian claiming that the Islamic God is not "omnibelevolent". Not only is this obviously biased, but William Craig is not a scholar of Islamic studies and his opinion on the matter is irrelevant.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:CCE0:EC70:CF3:57D2:B544:61BB (talk) 00:31, 29 September 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: William Lane Craig is a scholar of philosophy, and has published works on Islam. In fact, if you "william+lane+craig"+islam look on Google Scholar, you will find 1,270 such works. Many of them are published in notable journals like the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, even a chapter in Cambridge University Press. To say that he is "not a scholar of Islamic studies" is ridiculous. It is better to say that he is not Muslim, which would be correct. But you don't have to be Muslim to write on the topic. If you feel that the article is imbalanced, I think that you should submit a sourced counterargument. I think anything that relates to God's love should be included in this page. I don't think any Muslim scholar actually argues that Allah is omnibenevolent. I understand in the context of recent terrorism attacks, the Muslim God is very much accused of being a hateful God. But perhaps it is a Western bias, that we want to see their God as all loving, because that is how the Judeo-Christian God is: all loving. But this concept is not shared in Islam. Just remember that your views are not necessarily their views. Yes, you can argue the Christian God is not all loving, but the Muslims don't even want to argue that. That is just not how God is seen in Islam. 182.255.99.214 (talk) 09:13, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Obvious Anti-Muslim/Pro-Christian Bias 

message: From the article, "Christian apologist William Lane Craig argues that Islam does not hold to the idea of omnibenevolence.[11] But in fact, one of the 99 Names of God in Islam is "Al-Barr"—The Beneficent." The first part is cited. Yes, indeed, Craig made that comment. The second half is drawn only on a primary source, requires interpretation and is not cited to a secondary source. We appear to be using Wikipedia as a platform to debate Craig via original research exegesis, here, which I don't think should be how this article works. -Miskaton (talk) 18:46, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Islam and Craig 

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thread_title:  i am a lasagne 

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thread_title:  God is the best