Omni-Incompetence

The following is a guest post which I wrote for the site Atheist Propaganda (link in title, check out that catchy page layout)which I never posted here because I would have had to either create an entirely new label for it or just jam it in under "other." But now, due to increased rage over similar subject matter and no other place to vent, I am proud to present an "Atheism" label. I considered calling it "Reason" or "Sanity" but decided that I don't really want the titles to come off as that condescending. I want to pieces to do that themselves. So without further ado, here's Omni-Incompetence.


The Christian God is supposedly the epitome of all that is intelligent and good in the universe. He is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, (which I'm not even going to touch upon for now because that one itself is such a complex assertion) and above all, all-good. I've always found it fascinating that Christians can attribute all things good to God, and all things bad to the Devil, and that they can do this all day every day without realizing that God created the endless source of evil they call the Devil. Being creations of God, all good things humans do are attributed to him, but since we are vile, tainted creatures, all bad things are the Devil's doing. But wait a minute! Lucifer was an angel, one of those creatures that God created prior to man for purposes no logic can fathom. Whatever terrible things the Devil has or probably has not done, God is ultimately to blame for His shortsightedness and general incompetence in creating the bastard in the first place.

Assuming that God is all-knowing and all-powerful, He would have known from the very beginning of the Universe that Lucifer would turn against Him. The very moment He was sitting in Heaven and thinking to Himself “I'm going to create a retinue of angels to carry out my work, even though being all-knowing and all-powerful I can manage my own affairs effortlessly, no matter how infinitely complex they become,” from the moment that thought occurred to Him, He should have known all possible outcomes and consequences. He would have known that creating Lucifer would lead to the corruption of mankind, causing Him to eventually send the flood, and later His only son to attempt to “redeem” us. Any God who actually cares about His creations might have examined those consequences using His infinite foresight, and decided that maybe that one angel, Lucifer, could be made just a little bit better, or maybe not made at all. But we all know what happened, God made Lucifer, who became the Devil, who continues to plague us all to this very day. But it's OK, He has some divine plan that no human can possibly comprehend, but which will make the whole thing work out better than if no evil had been created in the first place. Somehow.

Of course, there is an alternative; God really is all-good, but just not all-knowing and all-powerful. Maybe He's just some well-meaning guy who ended up with a job He really can't handle. I'm not sure who I would pray to if I had to chose, the benevolent but incompetent God, or the all-powerful God who just doesn't give a shit about humans. Fortunately there is a third option: simply reserve your prayers until you find a deity that actually deserves them, then thank him that there are so many to chose from.