The OmniPurple Cat
In the myth of Christianity, God is often described as being All-Powerful, but legend goes that in the Middle Ages some French wizards coined a much sillier word that means the same thing: Omnipotent.
The “Omni” part simply means “all,” so you can put that prefix in front of anything you want to sound more Latin. Want to describe an animal that eats all kinds of foods? Just call them an “Omnivore” to slightly impress your friends. Want to describe something that exists everywhere? You can call it “Omnipresent” to showcase your insufferable arrogance. Or maybe you want to mention that God is All-Good? Try “Omnibenevolent” to save time by adding four more syllables.
The Omni attributes are quite useful to believers who are attempting to describe God, but they are most useful when we nonbelievers are debunking him.
Most believers will grant God Omnipotence (All-Powerful), Omniscience (All-Knowing), Omnibenevolence (All-Good), and Omnipresence (All-Everywhere). To illustrate how these descriptions prove that it is impossible for God to exist, please consider the OmniPurple Cat.
This cat is All-Purple. Top to bottom, left to right, inside and out… purple. Its hair is purple. Its tail is purple. Its whiskers are purple. Its paws are purple. Its eyes are purple. Its teeth are purple. Its guts are purple. It shits purple. The cat is 100%, completely purple.
It’s also half yellow.
Did you see what happened there? Something is wrong. The idea of a purple cat was far-fetched, but it wasn’t impossible until that last sentence. Half yellow? Where did the “all” part of “omni” go?
Once the cat is described as all purple, there is no room for yellow. If it really is half yellow, then it isn’t OmniPurple. And if it really is OmniPurple, then it isn’t half yellow. It can’t be. Just using basic logic we can determine that the half yellow, OmniPurple cat does not exist. At least not as described. We totally debunked its meowing ass.
Now let’s try to debunk God’s meowing ass. God is Omnipotent which means he can do anything (including meow). God is also Omnibenevolent which means he can’t sin. He can do everything and there are things he can’t do. This is a straight up contradiction.
Let’s look at the Sillygism.
P1: God can do literally every action.
P2: There are actions God cannot do, (like sin by killing a purple cat).
C: God is an impossible contradiction that can’t exist.
P2: There are actions God cannot do, (like sin by killing a purple cat).
C: God is an impossible contradiction that can’t exist.
And it’s not just evil actions. There are more impossibilities. Thanks to his Omni attributes, there are several actions he simply can not accomplish. God can’t learn anything new (already knows it all). God can’t leave anywhere (due to his Omnipresence, he awkwardly lingers around after every dinner party). And God certainly can’t do the classic thing of making a rock too heavy for himself to lift. Want to know who can do all of those things? You.
Clump enough smaller rocks together with super glue and eventually you’ll have a rock that is too heavy for you to lift.
This is a specific action that God is incapable of doing even though his super glue is supernatural glue. Since he is described as being able to do all things, the God as described can’t be. Just like the OmniPurple cat that is half yellow, God simply can’t exist.
So why did the ancient dudes give God these essential traits? Scholars probably believe it was a classic “My dad can beat up your dad” situation. In olden times, nearby cultures were making up all kinds of gods with superhuman attributes (source: Priapus’s penis).
They’d invent a god and go to war under their name screaming, “We fight for Priapus’s throbbing phallus!” In an effort to intimidate their opponent they might start to add more and more elaborate powers.
“Our god is in charge of storms!”
“Oh yeah? Our god is in charge of storms and the ocean!”
“Is that so?? Well our god does storms, the ocean, and artisanal cheeses! Ha!”
Until eventually someone said, “Nuh-uhh! Our god is in charge of everything! Now what??”
And it didn’t stop there. The legend kept growing just like Priapus’s engorged cock.
They wanted God to be so perfect and so powerful and so worthy of our worship that they never stopped adding to his powers. Eventually, some church fathers just got bored and plopped these Omnis on him. In doing so, they unknowingly dug a grave for their god.
Believers craved a god so grand,
they accidentally rendered him impossible.
This sillygism was crafted by
the creators of Bad Bible Hub
Joel van Vliet
Mezzo Watts