Can God Think?

[greylorn]

By the conventional understanding, God is omniscient, possessing all knowledge of all things, past, present, and future.

What we know of as thought involves several different kinds of information processing. It requires memory, which computers possess. One form of “thought” involves mathematical computation, a task at which computers generally surpass humans. But what of creative thought?

By creative thought, I refer to the ability of anyone, you or I, to come up with a unique idea— an idea which we’ve never had before. In this context it does not matter if some Chinese guy already thought of it yesterday on the other side of the world. A new idea can be new to you if you came up with it from scratch, even if Plato thought of it, so long as you’ve not read Plato.

Can God have such a creative thought? Can God think of something which He never thought of before, and thereby create information which He did not previously know?

 

[gavanhe]

From my limited understanding of the issue, God holds all of His creation within His power including my thoughts and your thoughts. From which follows that he will naturally have a knowledge of all your - and everyone’s - future and past thoughts and actions.
To this extent I don’t believe God will have any thoughts that are unique (new) to Him, nor will He have any that are not presently in His “mind”. This will necessarily be a consequence of His omniscience.
In short God knows! I would not presume to offer any knowledge as to His thinking capacity other than to suggest that that is part of His knowledge.
Gerry

 

[greylorn]

Gerry,
Your reply makes sense. Given His omniscience, he cannot invent a new idea or have a creative thought.

It follows that He never could. That pretty much makes God just a magnificent supercomputer at the core of the universe. Do you find that a satisfying concept?

 

[cpayne]

Gerry,
Your reply makes sense. Given His omniscience, he cannot invent a new idea or have a creative thought.

It follows that He never could. That pretty much makes God just a magnificent supercomputer at the core of the universe. Do you find that a satisfying concept?

No, not really. Supercomputers cannot think at all, in the sense that the form or idea of the thing known is not in the “knower” (if you want to call a computer a “knower,” which I wouldn’t). In God, on the other hand, the ideas or forms of all things known are in the Knower perfectly and completely. This separates intelligent beings, such as God, from non-intelligent beings, such as supercomputers. This also means God can think without necessarily coming up with “new” thoughts or “new” knowledge. His mind holds the ideas or forms of all things known; thus He does not have to “proceed to” new truth by discursive reason or by inference, but knows all things directly and without inference. This means His intelligence would be not only perfect (and ours not), but also different in its operation from ours. I think maybe that’s what is bothering you a bit: An intelligence perfect in knowledge and which operates differently than ours is tricky to grasp. Am I on the right track of your question?

 

[Cajetan]

God’s knowledge isn’t ‘creative,’ at least in that sense. The ‘mind’ of God is pure, infinite knowledge at once… there are no ‘new connections’ to be made. God does not ‘learn’ of anything… whatever has ever happened, or ever will happen – ever – God has known forever.

One way to look at it: God is the ultimate, unlimited source of all knowledge and ideas which our limited minds are capable of receiving. There is nothing in that source which can be called knowledge and ideas that isn’t there and hasn’t always been there.

 

[teachccd]

Everytime God had a Thought or a Word, He generates the Son. Now since the Son is consubstantial with the Father, the Word or Thought cannot be any more infinite than it already is. So, can God think? Not in the manner that we do but His eternal Thought is the Son and there was never a time when God did not have a Word or a Thought hence the eternal generation of the Son…teachccd

 

[timotheos]

The act of thinking is, to me, a linear thing, along a time axis. Creative thought assumes you didn’t have a concept of something one second, and the next second you did. God exists outside of time, so I would guess that our understanding of thought would not apply to God.

-Tim

 

[greylorn]

No, not really. Supercomputers cannot think at all, in the sense that the form or idea of the thing known is not in the “knower” (if you want to call a computer a “knower,” which I wouldn’t). In God, on the other hand, the ideas or forms of all things known are in the Knower perfectly and completely. This separates intelligent beings, such as God, from non-intelligent beings, such as supercomputers. This also means God can think without necessarily coming up with “new” thoughts or “new” knowledge. His mind holds the ideas or forms of all things known; thus He does not have to “proceed to” new truth by discursive reason or by inference, but knows all things directly and without inference. This means His intelligence would be not only perfect (and ours not), but also different in its operation from ours. I think maybe that’s what is bothering you a bit: An intelligence perfect in knowledge and which operates differently than ours is tricky to grasp. Am I on the right track of your question?

Not the track I’d like to pursue, and thank you. I agree that computers don’t think (I program them for a living), but that statement runs off point. I explained in the introduction to this thread that there are different kinds of information processing all lumped into the notion of thought, and that this conversation pertains to only one of them.

Maybe I should have asked, “Is God capable of the spontaneous creation of information?”

The supercomputer comparison above was to note that if the contributor’s ideas were correct, that’s all God could be.

Your line of reasoning is lumping a lot of generalized information processing into the term thought. If your line of reasoning is correct, then God does every possible kind of information processing except the generation of genuinely new ideas.

Do you like that God-concept?

 

[greylorn]

Everytime God had a Thought or a Word, He generates the Son. Now since the Son is consubstantial with the Father, the Word or Thought cannot be any more infinite than it already is. So, can God think? Not in the manner that we do but His eternal Thought is the Son and there was never a time when God did not have a Word or a Thought hence the eternal generation of the Son…teachccd

With apologies, I must admit that I do not understand what you are talking about. I’m not a mystic.

 

[greylorn]

The act of thinking is, to me, a linear thing, along a time axis. Creative thought assumes you didn’t have a concept of something one second, and the next second you did. God exists outside of time, so I would guess that our understanding of thought would not apply to God.

-Tim

Information processing is sort of linear, yes. And you understand precisely what I meant by creative thought, thank you!

Who says that God exists outside of time? Or outside of spacetime?

 

[greylorn]

God’s knowledge isn’t ‘creative,’ at least in that sense. The ‘mind’ of God is pure, infinite knowledge at once… there are no ‘new connections’ to be made. God does not ‘learn’ of anything… whatever has ever happened, or ever will happen – ever – God has known forever.

One way to look at it: God is the ultimate, unlimited source of all knowledge and ideas which our limited minds are capable of receiving. There is nothing in that source which can be called knowledge and ideas that isn’t there and hasn’t always been there.

May I interpret your reply as, ‘No, God cannot think.’? Or as I perhaps should have worded the initial question, “No, God is not capable of the spontaneous generation of information.”

 

[greylorn]

I thank those of you who have replied to this inquiry, from whom I’ve learned.

A better title for the thread would have been, “Is God capable of spontaneous information creation?”

I wonder if I’d done so, would any of you have replied?

At this point the consensus appears to be that God cannot think, meaning that He cannot have a new, creative thought.

This produces an interesting conundrum. Humans are capable of creative thought, or spontaneous information generation. That means we can do something which God himself cannot do.

Have fun with that. And instead of dogma, how about some SIC? (Spontaneous Information Creation)

 

[teachccd]

With apologies, I must admit that I do not understand what you are talking about. I’m not a mystic.

That’s o.k. No one would “understand” since that is the very nature of God. I don’t think that even the mystics would understand God. I’ll leave it at that…God Bless…teachccd

 

[gavanhe]

I thank those of you who have replied to this inquiry, from whom I’ve learned.

A better title for the thread would have been, “Is God capable of spontaneous information creation?”

I wonder if I’d done so, would any of you have replied?

At this point the consensus appears to be that God cannot think, meaning that He cannot have a new, creative thought.

This produces an interesting conundrum. Humans are capable of creative thought, or spontaneous information generation. That means we can do something which God himself cannot do.

Have fun with that. And instead of dogma, how about some SIC? (Spontaneous Information Creation)

With respect, I’m not sure that I’d be happy leaving it at that. The interpretation of a consensus amongst half a dozen respondents that God cannot think is a misinterpretation of what I in particular and others by inference mean by our replies. God has no need to think for the reason that he already has all knowledge therefore obviously He also has no need of any as you call “spontaneous information generation” as He already has that information.
I would object to the notion that there is something I can do which God cannot.
Gerry

 

[Sam_Maloney]

He imagined us into existence, and if he pleased could create a universe of inteligent manatees that swims between the stars.

Trying to tie God down with our limited human concepts of what it means to be ‘eternal’ or ‘omniscient’ isn’t likely to increase the sum total of human knowledge or happiness.

 

[greylorn]

With respect, I’m not sure that I’d be happy leaving it at that. The interpretation of a consensus amongst half a dozen respondents that God cannot think is a misinterpretation of what I in particular and others by inference mean by our replies. God has no need to think for the reason that he already has all knowledge therefore obviously He also has no need of any as you call “spontaneous information generation” as He already has that information.
I would object to the notion that there is something I can do which God cannot.
Gerry

Thank you, Gerry.

And it sure looks to me like you are mentally aligned with everyone else on this subject. Is there a difference between saying that God doesn’t think because He doesn’t need to, or that God cannot think? Functionally, no.

After all, although we speak about God from theory, we are talking about an entity which (we believe) actually did things, such as creating the physical universe and a few billion critters on one of the universe’s outlying planets. It seems to me then that it makes sense to consider God as an entity Who functions in space and time. While He may be able to function outside of this framework, the observation remains that in order to create our planet God had to function within its physical space-time framework.

My question is specific. It is, can God think? Not, does God choose to think?

Given the sense of your argument, I’d guess that you anticipate where this question will lead. There is, after all, a fairly obvious contradiction between creative thought and all-possible knowledge. The two are mutually exclusive. Where does this take you?

finally, while I can understand why any catholic would not believe that he can do something which God cannot, why would you object to the idea?

After all, the reasons for God’s creation of man given in religious teaching are of dubious value. What if God created man to do something which He cannot?****

 

[Fran65]

Both of Gerry’s responses are fine ones.

I suggest you spend some time processing them (internally) before seeking other (name removed by moderator)uts.

 

[gavanhe]

Given the sense of your argument, I’d guess that you anticipate where this question will lead. There is, after all, a fairly obvious contradiction between creative thought and all-possible knowledge. The two are mutually exclusive. Where does this take you?

finally, while I can understand why any catholic would not believe that he can do something which God cannot, why would you object to the idea?

After all, the reasons for God’s creation of man given in religious teaching are of dubious value. What if God created man to do something which He cannot?

I would think that all possible knowledge would encompass creative thought otherwise we are only discussing semantics.

The reasons for Gods creation are specifically set out in the bible and expounded upon by Jesus Christ (an historical person).
Gerry

 

[Cajetan]

May I interpret your reply as, ‘No, God cannot think.’? Or as I perhaps should have worded the initial question, “No, God is not capable of the spontaneous generation of information.”

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that God cannot think. Comparing the thought processes of human beings to the thought of God is unsatisfactory. An argument like “this is how humans think, and God does not think like that, and therefore God cannot think” is fallacious. All you’re really communicating is that God does not think in the way or the sense that humans do. Well, yeah; we all agree.

As for your apparent definition of human thinking as “the spontaneous generation of information,” I think that’s pretty problematic in itself as well. I seriously doubt that the human mind, or human thought, is capable of actual spontaneity (even though it often very much seems that we experience spontaneous ideas). Rather, whatever ideas ‘enters’ my mind are the product of the ideas that came before it, and it before it, ad infinitum. What we think is what we are determined to think by the countless visible and invisible causes around us, from all directions.

In short, your definition seems to operate under the assumption that human beings possess some kind of ‘libertarian’ freedom of thought.

 

[cpayne]

At this point the consensus appears to be that God cannot think, meaning that He cannot have a new, creative thought.

I think the “consensus” appears to be that your definition of thinking is too constricted by human sequential inference and discovery.

After all, humans can’t have new, creative thoughts either. What they can do is discover a bit of what God already knows.