1 I BELIEVE IN GOD THE FATHER, ALMIGHTY Kelly James Clark 1. Introduction. The Apostle’s creed contains a ringing endorsement of God’s benevolent and nurturing care for his creatures as well as his awesome power: “I believe in God the Father, almighty...” The theist affirms God’s tender loving paternal care as well as his unsurpassable ability. In that very affirmation, however, lie the seeds for a potent argument against the existence of God. If our heavenly Father cares for his spiritual children as an earthly father cares for his biological children then God the Father is bound by similar moral obligations and enjoys similar permissions incumbent upon earthly fathers. Earthly parents have a prima facie obligation to prevent certain harms from coming to their children; therefore, God has a prima facie obligation to prevent those same harms from coming to his children. God, in contradistinction to merely human fathers, has the ability to prevent harms that a comparatively impotent earthly parent cannot prevent. God, therefore, has an obligation to prevent the same harms that an earthly parent would be obliged to prevent and, being almighty, has the ability to prevent such harms. But such harms have not been prevented; there are countless harms that have occurred that an earthly parent, if present and able, would have been obliged to prevent. Hence, God the Father, almighty does not exist. i In this essay I intend to refute the claim that God would have obligations closely analogous to those of earthly parents. My strategy is not conventional for philosophers. The bulk of the essay is an a priori conceptual analysis of the role of father and what the father/child relationship entails with respect to moral obligations and permissions. I will argue that the Christian will not be obliged to make the same plausibility judgments that the atheologian makes about what God ought to do in this and similar circumstances of horrific evils. ii I shall follow J. L. Mackie’s strategy of assessing the theist’s set of beliefs and values: “Since I am charging the theist with holding