Reply #120: He's also a bit more capable surely? [View All]

[dmallind]

I mean if I reduced myself to near poverty levels I could maybe bring five homeless people up to that same barely subsistence level. That's it - the limit of my ability to help suffering. And this would mean much lower federal and state tax revenue for government efforts, since all six of us would pay no income taxes while I pay a healthy five figure sum right now - so probably to be equal that would drop one of those people back below the poverty line. I lack the medical skill to alleviate pain and injury, and I have neither the land nor the skill to alleviate hunger, so money is all I could provide. I could help 4 or 5 people tops escape abject poverty and make us all merely very poor.

God on the other hand is omnipotent, and could have simply designed the human tooth to be more durable and less concentrated with nerves to prevent a billion times more suffering than I could in my best hopes. People often answer that we can't expect God to stop cars from hitting kids etc and that is sensible enough, but couldn't we expect an omniscient omnipotent intelligent designer to give us teeth that last our lifetime, or even teeth that grow back again like he did for sharks? How is having fragile dentition an act of free will?