Modern human omnipotence is unconstrained by the moral laws that bounded God

Evidence

Knowledge, having displaced God, becomes equally omnipotent—with a difference, however. God was bound to be and do good, and while man’s duty, however interpreted, was to follow his example, his omnipotence was constrained by this goodness. God, in other words, remained bound by his own rules and principles, notwithstanding the miraculous state of exception in the way of earthquakes, volcanoes, and the like. Man, on the other hand, was restrained by no permanent laws or principles, making them up at will as he proceeded, reflecting his own freedom and sovereignty. Man’s omnipotence could destroy the Earth on which he stands, but God cannot and will not permit himself to do the same. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 188

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The core inversion — that replacing God with man produces a more dangerous, less moral omnipotence — is a dense paradigm-level claim about Enlightenment epistemology that rewards slow digestion.
• XREF: Connects to the critique of boundless Enlightenment reason in postcolonial theory and to the Weberian disenchantment narrative.