Posted on July 05, 2025.
I've been quiet about my views on religion on this website, but the philosophy of religion is another topic that has occupied my mind every now and then, so I thought I could write about it. I see the concept of an all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful God in contradiction with a universe where suffering is real, in line with the Epicurean paradox. I want to share some arguments I've had that debate the idea of a singular, all-* God as portrayed in Abrahamic religions.
Assuming that an all-loving (omnibenevolent), all-knowing (omniscient), and all-powerful (omnipotent) God exists, I propose the question, "Why does suffering exist when God is full of mercy, aware of it, and powerful enough to stop it?" A religious person tends to respond with "Free will, which God has provided to us humans, is the reason why suffering happens." This claim leads me to three paths of questioning, which I will be referring to with some background in the following paragraphs.
We know that you have unlimited power and are the creator of everything by definition, but I have a complaint - I don't see why you couldn't have created a concept of free will where choosing to cause suffering would not be an option.
Your recommended religion and your moral principles often provide a framework of morality, where we have two or three labels for every action: good, bad, and in some cases, neutral. Although I admit that it's hard for my human mind, I imagine a fourth label that determines an action's morality - not good, bad, or neutral, but something else!
The creator of the conditions of the universe and the determiner of morality, if you could create two or three categories for an action's moral value, why would you struggle with creating another one or even removing one of them: the "bad" category, which they say constitutes suffering?
In addition, you limited our free will to an extent. I cannot wrap my mind around every philosophical concept, solve a very hard mathematics problem mentally, imagine other dimensions than 2D and 3D, or fly on my own, as I'm not capable of ascending with my human body. These are only some examples of what limits our free will. Why could you not restrict our free will further to exclude the ability to perform bad actions that result in suffering? In short, free will without suffering is definitely possible for you when we credit your omnipotence.
They told me that free will causes suffering, but they never answered why we needed free will, or at least I was never convinced. However, they do admit that you gave us free will. So, why did you give us free will then? Why would it be so bad if we humans didn't have free will? Let's say, just like what I defend, free will didn't mean we have to suffer. I would still have no problem with the absence of it.
Was it that you loved us so much, you created free will? Why would your omnibenevolence force you to do that? Are you unable to show love toward passive agents, those who have no free will? But what about angels (in the supernatural Abrahamic context) then? You love them too - they serve you, just like how we humans submit to you, and just like how in our own kind, men want women to! Regardless, such an inability would mean that you cannot be all-loving.
They say that suffering exists because of free will. Yes, that's exactly what I've been countering all along my speech. Let's say they are correct. How could you forget that natural disasters and illnesses also create pain for people of any abilities and ages? I don't think anyone chooses to be affected by natural disasters and illnesses. That sounds like some harmful rhetoric to worsen the stigma surrounding some mental health disorders or stigmatize climate justice. Why are you doing this to us, dear God?
Also, what about hell? Don't you send people there? Why make them suffer if you love them so much? Is it their wrongdoings? Regardless, you're not all-loving, as you claim to be. Personally, I wouldn't adhere to such an entity that enables suffering and sends people to hell anyway - it sounds like hatred to my ears, something that has already pervaded society, not compassion.
When you expect us humans to be your followers, this sounds like an absurd gateway. We live with reasoning, questioning, and logic even though they are debatably human constructs, and you, the creator of humans, must be aware of this, right?
If you want humans to believe in you but punish them when they refuse to, then please, for God's sake, provide a human-logical framework to understand your behavior and prove its consistency, specifically how your omnibenevolence and suffering can coexist.
Then, please don't expect us humans to believe in you if there exists a contrast between your idea of love, the trait you tell us you possess infinitely, and ours. Refer to my reply to the first alternative response. Moreover, I can't grasp how you can love an entity while enabling suffering on them, regardless of the cause being free will or not, with all the power you have.
Abrahamic religions often portray an attempt to subordinate people to God. This power dynamic is nothing unexpected and sets the ground for abidance to social hierarchies, considering systems of dominance and power that already persist in societies. It could be that the singular, all-* God was an oppressive invention, so oppressors can refer to such an entity to empower their rule.
Religion takes control over people by scaring them with the matter of what happens after their death, where a lack of certainty and knowledge overruns and in turn, digs into fear and vulnerability, and by providing relief for these negative mental states.
In this framework, one doesn't have freedom over whether they obey God or not, like Abrahamic religions claim to provide, because disobedience is punished with hell or at least evokes an anxious "What if I go to hell?" in the person's mind, since death is that much of a sticky issue.
This conception of free will parallels the situation where sex workers are perceived as having chosen to do their job but the coercive factors, like internalized misogyny and the obligation to generate income to cope with poverty, are ignored - similarly to how liberal feminism overlooks that choices aren't made in a vacuum. In other words, religion normalizes and distracts us from the coercive factors behind our choices and reframes them as existing as a part of our "free" will.
When we raise children with the idea of religion, of course, they get scared by being reminded of death and supernatural figures, and it becomes much easier to control and oppress them even later in their adulthood. Just like gender socialization builds the basis for the patriarchy, children absorb religious ideas to sustain them even later.
Religion and its understanding of free will reinforce internalized oppression and hatred, as children are discouraged from asking questions and have them invalidated in addition to their fear. Such an invalidation strengthens the notion that existing systems and norms aren't to be questioned, builds fixed conceptions, and perpetuates prejudice.
I feel like the arguments of religious debaters are the visible expressions of what has become internalized unconsciously in the minds of believers to back up the religion's sacred correctness or as implications of its acceptance, thus locking the opportunities to abandon religion even further. Take their argument that all suffering is constituted by humans - it guilt-trips people and helps religion thrive and secure its position because God must be faultless, and people must be exploited.
Religious people who invalidate the experiences of the LGBTQ+ people often brand their marginalized aspects of identity, sexual orientation and gender identity, as choices that are made and downplay the impact of romantic and sexual attraction on how it shapes life experiences, which brings additional burden on queer people because of heteronormativity. This is not a coincidence, considering it aligns within the religious understanding of free will on whether to obey God or not, once again.
The argument that God's love and his disregard of suffering can coexist mirrors the notion that men show affection in a way that conflates with making women suffer, which excuses gender-based violence and the patriarchal dynamics with romance. It echoes the male thought, "It's because I love her and want to protect her," which works as a distraction from the reality that men are trying to restrict women's autonomy and feeds into the idea of women as objects of possession.
To finalize with my personal views, a god that is worth believing is one that is all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful, but sadly, such a god cannot exist in this life, where suffering is real, and only seems like an effort to reproduce oppressive systems with its insufficiency in reasoning. The Abrahamic God is essentially an imaginary but powerful, male figure that intends to deceive humans that liberation from any hierarchy is doomed to fail.
I want to emphasize that this essay wasn't written to insult or belittle any religious beliefs or followers thereof but rather, provide a new perspective that debates the idea of an all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful god, that examines how religion connects to broader systems of power, and that brings forward my experiences of debating religion in online spaces.
As a queer person who has been oppressed on the basis of conformity to religion or others' religious beliefs, I wanted to share this blog post. I feel like we must break apart everything we've been exposed to.