OK, I am going on in a bit of a theological manner, but, I have had a few existential moments lately, so, perhaps that is why. For example, just a few hours ago, I was in a car accident – not hurt, just shaken a bit. A fender-bender.
The previous fender-bender I was in happened when I was taking my puppy in for cancer surgery and a philosophy student on her way to an exam lost control of her car in the snow…yes, a philosophy student.
Today’s fender-bender was minor, but the lady who backed into me in the parking lot did not understand why her car would no longer move backwards – she was so unaware that she had hit my car that she kept trying to back up into it, even as I was standing by her window and waving my arms to try to get her attention.
This sent me musing in so many directions…why do we do what we do, just how limited are we in both our observations and reasoning and why do we project so many of our fears into religions?
Because at the very root of it all, religions are about projecting fears and having them collectively assuaged. They cannot all be true – they are mutually exclusive, so…
Which makes me wonder: why do some religions – at least the most popular ones these days – have omniscient, omnipotent deities?
Yes, one per religion, that is rather definitional – cannot have two omnipotent beings, that would be a contradiction.
But, how did we arrive at this?
Ancient religions regarded Gods as sort of immortal humans with a few extra powers tossed in for good measure, but none of them were considered all powerful, all knowing…and certainly not all good.
Even the Abrahamic faiths are rooted in a view of God that is very much more limited and less unique than what most current Abrahamic worshippers I have spoken to about this are convinced of.
‘God’ did not know that Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. He had to question them to find out. He was shocked that they were hiding from him because they were ashamed of their nakedness…
Then, he rushed off to tell ‘the others’.
That is not ‘omniscient’ – or he would have known, without questioning Adam and Eve.
Then we come to ‘omnipotent’ – that directly contradicts the whole ‘free will’ idea for humans.
This one is a little more complex, so, please, bear with me.
God gives humans free will – to do as they wish, even if it means disobeying him.
But, he is also all-powerful, with the ability to control everything, yet he choses not to control the thought processes of humans.
This is a contradiction: if God wanted perfect slaves (of the mind), he could have created humans to both have freedom of thought and only think in patterns that do not cause him to condemn some of the most eternal suffering.
It is impossible to fully and willingly grant freedom of thought, then punish people with eternal suffering for exercising it – unless you are actually setting people up to fail so you can have an excuse to torture them.
So, why did we ever arrive at a point where we think God(s) are omnipotent?
Certainly not from The Bible – pick the one you prefer, from the Catholic to the Gnostic to the Old Testament: nothing in these religious texts suggests an onmiscient and omnipotent God: so, why do so many people believe that?
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 
Having grown up on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, everything I learned about the USA was just how bad and evil it was. And then there was this campfire song that people sang – well out of the hearing of the officials and their spies. It was called ‘John Brown’s Body’.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown%27s_Body
While there are many versions of this song in English, none are exactly the same as the one that I learned and loved to sing as a kid – but this one comes the closest. Please, enjoy