Christians say, “God is omnipotent. He is all-powerful. He can literally do anything, including giving people superpowers, etc. God can do ANYTHING. He could make pigs fly with a snap of the fingers; he could create infinite universes with just speaking it into existence.” But, at the same time, these same people say, “God had to send his son to die because it was the only way.”
Okay, then God is not all-powerful then, lol. He’s not omnipotent. That’s literally the opposite of omnipotence. If God is omnipotent, then he literally had infinite options. In fact, if he’s this powerful, then sending his son is a really dumb idea and makes zero sense.
I don’t know if this comparison makes sense, but in The Flash TV show, when they were fighting a speedster named Savitar, there was a building with metahuman power dampeners so you can’t use your powers inside this building. Savitar was going to kill Iris West, so what would be the smart thing to do??? Maybe put Iris in this building because Savitar can’t use his powers inside it. Case closed. It would make no sense for this option to be here but then for Team Flash to say, “We know this easier and smarter option exists, but Iris, you dying is the only way we can stop Savitar and save you.”
See what I mean? Point is, if God is omnipotent, then Jesus dying wasn’t the only way. Jesus being tortured so he could feel all the pain of sin was not necessary. If you’re saying this was the only way, then fine, but don’t say God is all-powerful and limitless, because clearly there are limits to God’s own power.
Whenever someone brings God or any other omnipotent supernatural being into the realm of reality and try to have a semblance of a logical reasoning, everything just falls apart and stops making sense.
It is a common belief among evangelicals that the universe and everything in it was created 6000 years ago. Naturally you can tell them that it can’t be right because we’ve found dinosaur bones hundreds of millions of years old. Common response to that is God buried those fake bones to test your faith. On the surface it makes sense because of course omnipotent being can create anything it wants. However once you dig slightly deeper the entire premise turns into a complete farce. You say to yourself, why not 1000 years instead of 6000? Why not 100 years? Why not five years or even five days? Five minutes? Yes, it’s entirely possible for omnipotent being to have created the entire universe five minutes ago put fake memory into everyone and we won’t know it. You can basically just make up stuff and that makes just as much sense.
My point is once entertain the existence of God then anything and everything is possible to the point where having an intellectually honest conversation no longer matters. To me this is a mathematical equivalent of dividing by zero. This is why I believe science and religion are diametrically opposing beliefs that cannot be bridged.
I’m sure my reasoning would bounce off just one question later, but my next question would be that if god knows everything then why does he test people’s faith? He doesn’t need to, since he knows already whether you have faith or not. Also, are hundreds of million years old dinosaur bones really the most brilliant way of testing someone’s faith?