From an Agnostic Viewpoint, How Do We Know Is God the Christain God?

[empther]

Having the ability to do something but not doing it is not the same thing as having an unrealized potentiality,

In the natural order, if some X affects Y, it also changes X in some way, but in the supernatural order this is not always true. God’s omnipotence makes it possible to create the universe with no change whatsoever to himself.

Also, God has free will to act or not to act. It has no affect on himself one way or the other. God gets nothing from us that he didn’t already have and he can’t lose anything.

Perplexity’s argument is invalid as usual.

 

[Perplexity]

In the natural order, if some X affects Y, it also changes X in some way, but in the supernatural order this is not always true. God’s omnipotence makes it possible to create the universe with no change whatsoever to himself.

Also, God has free will to act or not to act. It has no affect on himself one way or the other. God gets nothing from us that he didn’t already have and he can’t lose anything.

Perplexity’s argument is invalid as usual.

If I had any confidence at all that you knew what invalidity was, I might be inclined to listen. But, we all know how you roll empther

 

[Perplexity]

It seems intuitively appealing. Am I only strong once I lift something heavy? That seems to be analogous to what premise 2 is claiming. But if it’s possible for me to be strong even without ever lifting something, it follows that my strength is an actual property of myself, not an unrecognized potentiality. It can reasonably be said that my not acting on my being strong leaves a potentiality unactualized in the heavy object (namely the potential for it to be lifted from the ground and raised into the air), but that says nothing about me.

But what about all the relations you stand in, potentially and actually? It’s true that your not acting on being strong leaves an unaztualized potency in the object, but it also leaves your potential to be the lifter unactualized.

To be able to X is to have the potency to X. If you actually do X, then your potency is realized, otherwise, it’s unactualized.

 

[empther]

Originally Posted by empther

forums.catholic-questions.org/images/buttons_khaki/viewpost.gif
In the natural order, if some X affects Y, it also changes X in some way, but in the supernatural order this is not always true. God’s omnipotence makes it possible to create the universe with no change whatsoever to himself.

*Also, God has free will to act or not to act. It has no affect on himself one way or the other. God gets nothing from us that he didn’t already have and he can’t lose anything. *

Perplexity’s argument is invalid as usual.

If I had any confidence at all that you knew what invalidity was, I might be inclined to listen. But, we all know how you roll empther

Observe, friends, that Perplexity doesn’t address the flaw I pointed out in his argument.

Do you trust somebody like that?

 

[billy15]

I’d like to thank everyone here for their (name removed by moderator)ut, as it has helped me, especially Cat Herder’s post concerning the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I think I’ll watch this debate unfold a bit more before I say much else, but I’ve been inspired to read Peter Kreeft’s Summa of the Summa now to learn more for myself, and so far I’m beginning to understand more about the Thomist view on God and Who He is. I look forward to seeing what else is said here in this thread.

 

[greylorn]

Nonetheless, if by “think”, Greylorn means “think in the way that humans do”, then he’s right – God doesn’t “think” in that way. However, that’s an unreasonable limitation on God (just like the other limitation he proposes, on God’s omnipotence, is likewise unreasonable, as you point out).

There are many aspects to the property which humans lump under the category of thought. Most of what we do is unimaginative information processing which is performed by the human brain.

I presume that God, as a spirit being, has neither body nor brain, and that this form of “thought,” such as willing your finger to pick your nose, is not a property of God.

However, what makes humans interesting (on the very few occasions on which they actually are interesting) is imaginative thought. By that I take the common meaning, as the discovery of ideas or concepts which have not previously been discovered.

Some imaginative thought is so only to a particular individual, representing concepts already known— but not to the individual who discovers it on his own. Yet, some such thought must be unique, at least to our planet, else technology and civilization would not progress. Therefore it is clear that some humans are capable of genuinely imaginative thought.

An omniscient being who knows all things, literally, including the future, cannot have a unique, imaginative thought.

You are probably too busy studying dogma to have bothered with biology. Those who study the history of life forms on planet earth find that they progress from primitive to more complex forms, as would be expected if they were engineered by a being, or beings who had no clue as to how to construct life forms when they began, and learned by trial and error.

Both theory and information is consistent with the hypothesis that the Creator is, or the Creators are, extraordinarily intelligent but not omniscient.

“Think” about it, if you can spare a few minutes.

 

[sw85]

But what about all the relations you stand in, potentially and actually? It’s true that your not acting on being strong leaves an unaztualized potency in the object, but it also leaves your potential to be the lifter unactualized.

To be able to X is to have the potency to X. If you actually do X, then your potency is realized, otherwise, it’s unactualized.

I have a problem with this but can’t quite articulate what it is. I need to reflect on it. Do you have a reference for who originally launched this line of thinking?

 

[greylorn]

Erm, no, I’m pretty sure this is false. Aquinas demonstrates that God is pure act, i.e., unqualified being. This means God possesses all the properties of being without limitation and to their highest perfection.

He is limitless with respect to the material – therefore spiritual (that is, utterly unbounded by physical dimensions) and completely present at every point in space and every moment in time (omnipresent). He is limitless with respect to the vital – therefore capable of actualizing every potentiality which may exist in the world (omnipotent). And he is limitless with respect to the rational – therefore possesses every rational faculty (intellect, will, personality, etc.) to the highest degree possible (omniscient). If Aquinas does not address these properties directly they certainly follow logically from his conclusions.

There are also arguments to the effect that God must be singular (namely because distinction is only meaningful with respect to relative superiority or inferiority, such that another God would have to be different from the first God by way of some defect – the possession of which would make “second God” not really God at all) and all-loving.

I’d be interested in seeing a link to where you’ve made these arguments before. They don’t sound reasonable, and like most such arguments, they probably equivocate on an improper understanding of terms like “omniscient” and “omnipotent.”

Aquinas tried, and IMO failed, to prove the existence of God, but in my limited readings of his stuff I could not see where he defined the God whose existence he sought to prove. That struck me as pretty poor work, so I didn’t spend a lot of time on it. My opinion is that it is impossible to prove the existence of a thing which is not defined, or an entity whose properties are unknown. So, I set no store whatsoever by Aquinas’ logic, though I’ve no doubt that he was well meaning.

I don’t keep links to my threads or posts. Several people with whom I now communicate personally have used the CAF search facility to retrieve my lost arguments. Perhaps someday their value will be recognized and the arguments/thoughts complied more coherently.

 

[greylorn]

Does’t entropy demonstrate this energy is not reusable when maximum entropy is reached? Correct me if I am wrong.

You are correct. Left to its own devices, energy is ruled by the 2nd Law.

By the first law, God cannot create or destroy energy. The first law represents a boundary condition.

The second law is a different thing entirely. It represents a force which determines the direction of energy exchange.

Now use your imagination and consider the possibility that God just might be to able provide a counterforce to the 2nd law. This is the only force necessary to conscious, deliberate Creation.

 

[greylorn]

You must be joking. By omnipotent you seem to be thinking of God as some enormous giant who cannot pet the kitty cat without killing it.

Omnipotence is not a matter of raw power as you seem to think; rather, to say that God is omnipotent simply means that he can actualize all logically possible states of affairs (taking into account time and counterfactuals of creaturely freedom).

Omniscience means that God knows all true propositions. Knowledge of facts does not prevent one from thinking. None of the first five definitions of “think” at dictionary.com entail that an omniscient God could not think. Likewise with the OED. (For example: To form or hold in the mind (an idea, image, or intuition); to carry out (something) as a mental operation…)

If God applies infinite force to, let’s say, a single electron, that electron will instantly accelerate to the velocity of light, at which point it will acquire infinite mass, which creates an infinitely powerful gravitational field, which will instantly suck all matter and energy in the universe into the space centered upon that electron. Thus, the universe will be destroyed.

While theorists adore the notion that God is omnipotent, it is irrelevant, because the property cannot be put to use. Being omnipotent would be like owning a Ferrari and being restricted to driving it in a rocky cow pasture, or forest.

Knowledge of any fact precludes the ability to imagine it for the first time. Knowledge that extends into the future, as attributed to God, would include knowledge of his own thoughts, which would preclude his having them.

Rather that bend and warp simple definitions to suit your opinions about the nature of God, you could admit that God does not need to be either omniscient or omnipotent in order to have created the universe.

 

[Gorgias]

If God applies infinite force to, let’s say, a single electron, that electron will instantly accelerate to the velocity of light, at which point it will acquire infinite mass, which creates an infinitely powerful gravitational field, which will instantly suck all matter and energy in the universe into the space centered upon that electron. Thus, the universe will be destroyed.

While theorists adore the notion that God is omnipotent, it is irrelevant, because the property cannot be put to use. Being omnipotent would be like owning a Ferrari and being restricted to driving it in a rocky cow pasture, or forest.

Hmm. You seem to be making the argument that, if God is omnipotent, then the only way God can actualize that omnipotence is through an infinitely large application of force. (Therefore, you conclude that any application of force by God, results in a destruction of the universe. The universe is not destroyed, therefore God hasn’t applied force, therefore God isn’t omnipotent, etc, etc.) Am I understanding you correctly?

If so, then I don’t think that your ideas here hold water. You mention a Ferrari as an example of the notion of ultimate power. However, your example fails to work because, by your definition, a Ferrari isn’t a Ferrari unless its tach is pegged and it’s rolling at max speed. After all, a Ferrari is still a Ferrari, regardless whether it’s speeding down a track, winding through a cow pasture, or, as it were, sitting parked in a garage. Why does a God who, as “omnipotent”, has control over all potencies, necessarily be self-contradictory if he doesn’t actualize some of these potencies?

Knowledge of any fact precludes the ability to imagine it for the first time. Knowledge that extends into the future, as attributed to God, would include knowledge of his own thoughts, which would preclude his having them.

You mentioned that you really haven’t given Aquinas a fair shot. You really should. This particular notion of yours is addressed explicitly in the Summa Theologiae (First Part, Question 14, Article 3).

 

[Gorgias]

Some imaginative thought is so only to a particular individual, representing concepts already known— but not to the individual who discovers it on his own. Yet, some such thought must be unique, at least to our planet, else technology and civilization would not progress. Therefore it is clear that some humans are capable of genuinely imaginative thought.

Yet, how can you posit this as “genuinely imaginative”? After all, the person who has a “genuinely imaginative” thought that advances technology isn’t “inventing”, per se, but just “discovering” something that has already been in existence! Therefore, there’s little difference between discovering the principles of electricity, for example, and being the first person to see a mountain – after all, both entail simple unimaginative application of biological processes in reaction to one’s environment, no?

An omniscient being who knows all things, literally, including the future, cannot have a unique, imaginative thought.

I would disagree. I won’t even provide my own framework, but rather, I’ll use your own. The things that you describe as “unimaginative thought” are things that have been thought before, right? Yet, the things that are “imaginative” are things that have previously existed, but yet, hadn’t previously been encountered. However, since you’re positing this in the context of the assumption of an omniscient being, then this being already knows all of the things that any human would have (from their limited, flawed perspective) perceived as having been “imaginative”! In other words, in your own framework, the omniscient being is the only being with imaginative thought – all others are simply “unimaginative”, having simply been the 2nd or 3rd or n’th being to develop the thought!

You are probably too busy studying dogma to have bothered with biology. Those who study the history of life forms on planet earth find that they progress from primitive to more complex forms, as would be expected if they were engineered by a being, or beings who had no clue as to how to construct life forms when they began, and learned by trial and error.

You are probably too busy studying biology to have bothered with philosophy. Those who study philosophy find that the fact that a particular being has limited knowledge doesn’t imply the non-existence of another being who has those same limits.

Both theory and information is consistent with the hypothesis that the Creator is, or the Creators are, extraordinarily intelligent but not omniscient.

This assertion holds – if all beings are considered to be equal. If, however, one does not proceed from this (asserted but unproven) assumption, then the conclusion of “intelligent but not omniscient” does not necessarily follow.

 

[Trevor_Stamm]

You are correct. Left to its own devices, energy is ruled by the 2nd Law.

By the first law, God cannot create or destroy energy. The first law represents a boundary condition.

The second law is a different thing entirely. It represents a force which determines the direction of energy exchange.

Now use your imagination and consider the possibility that God just might be to able provide a counterforce to the 2nd law. This is the only force necessary to conscious, deliberate Creation.

So we have this uncreated energy that experiences entropy, once any degree of energy is used that same energy cannot be reused. Maximum entropy will happen, i.e. the big chill. If this energy is uncreated and thus eternal, why hasn’t it reached maximum entropy given an infinite amount of time?

 

[danserr]

If God applies infinite force to, let’s say, a single electron, that electron will instantly accelerate to the velocity of light, at which point it will acquire infinite mass, which creates an infinitely powerful gravitational field, which will instantly suck all matter and energy in the universe into the space centered upon that electron. Thus, the universe will be destroyed.

While theorists adore the notion that God is omnipotent, it is irrelevant, because the property cannot be put to use. Being omnipotent would be like owning a Ferrari and being restricted to driving it in a rocky cow pasture, or forest.

Knowledge of any fact precludes the ability to imagine it for the first time. Knowledge that extends into the future, as attributed to God, would include knowledge of his own thoughts, which would preclude his having them.

Rather that bend and warp simple definitions to suit your opinions about the nature of God, you could admit that God does not need to be either omniscient or omnipotent in order to have created the universe.

1). Omnipotent- Your reply again insists on thinking of God’s omnipotence in terms of raw power (God is so strong that he cannot pet the kitty cat without using infinite force to do so, which would kill the poor kitty cat).

This of course demands the obvious question, so God is incapable of controlling his power? Actually, you seem to admit this and then claim “but God can’t use infinite power, so he might as well not be infinite.” Even were that true, though, it is not an argument that God actually is not infinite.

Most importantly, though, you ignored my central point, specifically, that you misunderstand omnipotence. Omnipotence is not a matter of raw power. It is the ability to actualize logically possible states of affairs.

1. Omniscience. You say that God can’t be omniscient because can’t learn something for the first time. This is the same as saying that God can’t be omniscient because he can’t not know something, and then know it. Obviously God can’t not know something and then know it, this is what omniscience means!

So you are saying that God can’t be omniscient because he knows all true things, which is obviously absurd.

I don’t think that God needed to be omnipotent to have created the universe, I think that he is on other rational grounds. And I think the main problems with your objections to God’s omnipotence and omniscience are based on a poor understanding of those terms.

 

[Cat_Herder]

If God is pure act, then there are no unrealized potentialities in God. That is, there’s nothing that God could have done which he has not done. But, this quickly reduces to absurdity:

1. God is pure act. [Premise]
2. If God is pure act, then if God could X, God does X. [Premise]
3. Therefore, if God could X, God does X. (2), (1), M.P.]
4. Therefore, if God does not X, God could not X. (3), Trans.]

This does not follow.

To demonstrate, turn on your computer and log in as root (or NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM for you Windows users). Any Unix administrator worth his socks knows you should never log in as root because root is pure act. The root user can do anything that it is possible to do in the computer system, even to transcend the system timer and overwrite all of the data with 0s or 1s until the hard drive fries from overheating. Thus, one little typo and you could blow up your computer. (For this reason, Windows doesn’t even let you log in as the System account, instead relegating you to the somewhat weaker built-in Administrator account.)

Now by your logic, the moment I log in as root and press one keystroke, my computer will explode. The problem with your reasoning is that I have a will. I do not have to exercise all of my rootly powers. I can choose how and when to exercise them. That doesn’t change the fact that root is pure act, it simply means that the root user can choose how and when to exercise said acts.

 

[greylorn]

Hmm. You seem to be making the argument that, if God is omnipotent, then the only way God can actualize that omnipotence is through an infinitely large application of force. (Therefore, you conclude that any application of force by God, results in a destruction of the universe. The universe is not destroyed, therefore God hasn’t applied force, therefore God isn’t omnipotent, etc, etc.) Am I understanding you correctly?

No.

IWhy does a God who, as “omnipotent”, has control over all potencies, necessarily be self-contradictory if he doesn’t actualize some of these potencies?

I neither said nor implied any such thing. My point is simply that the “omnipotence” property is not relevant to the creation.

You mentioned that you really haven’t given Aquinas a fair shot. You really should. This particular notion of yours is addressed explicitly in the Summa Theologiae (First Part, Question 14, Article 3).

Another night. I recall looking at those arguments many years ago, and they were incorrect. However, since my brain is very bad at recalling falsehoods (I cannot even remember my own lies) I struggle with most philosophy. Also, I do not recall argument chains, not even my own. This means that you are asking me to repeat an old process which was not especially rewarding the first time.

I have refuted several of T.A.'s arguments here on CAF before, but was met with the customary barrage of dogma. There seems no point in repeating that silly exercise.

I would be willing to engage an argument that you presented yourself, from your own mind, not from a paraphrase. Specifically, address the OP. How do you personally KNOW that the attributes assigned to God by Christian theologians are correct.

If you can do this from a knowledge base other than belief and dogma, and refrain from quoting a favorite authority figure, then, game on.

 

[johnnyjones]

Judaism accepts Jesus as a historical person. He is also mentioned in the Talmud. This actual person , Jesus, embraced the Abrahamic God (and claimed to be equal with him). Actually there is proof of the one true God, it is just rejected by Judaism for various reasons. One, to preserve Judaism and keep it at it’s purest form. Two, a different type of messiah than Jesus is expected by Judaism. Denying all the fullfilled prophesies of Jesus takes a lot of translational and restructuring gymnastics of the highest level.

 

[Shike]

But what about all the relations you stand in, potentially and actually? It’s true that your not acting on being strong leaves an unaztualized potency in the object, but it also leaves your potential to be the lifter unactualized.

To be able to X is to have the potency to X. If you actually do X, then your potency is realized, otherwise, it’s unactualized.

Good point. sw85’s analogy is probably not the best (although his post before the one you comment on here is very good).

The important thing to do in such a conversation is to nail down the aristotelian principles of potentiality and actuality and see how they are being employed and/or denied in the thomistic arguments.

The conclusion of the existence of an entity that is Pure Actuality is not a boring concept of some entity frozen in time, a being that has exercised all capacities. Rather the conclusion of Pure Actuality is a being that we know is there, yet transcends the complete appropriateness of our words (but not entirely!). Thus, roughly, what is being denied of a being that is Pure Actuality is being affected by any outside source when doing anything, it is not that the being doesn’t have any potential, but that the being doesn’t have the principle of potentiality (they are not the same thing as far as I can tell; potency is often used as an older school term for potentiality but is often confused with potential).

If you see the principles of actuality and potentiality in a fulfilling kind of relationship as part to whole, then the notion that God cannot do anything because he lacks the principle of potentiality… well, it doesn’t follow.

This is all another way to describe Absolute Perfection, depending on the angle one takes.

 

[greylorn]

Yet, how can you posit this as “genuinely imaginative”? After all, the person who has a “genuinely imaginative” thought that advances technology isn’t “inventing”, per se, but just “discovering” something that has already been in existence! Therefore, there’s little difference between discovering the principles of electricity, for example, and being the first person to see a mountain – after all, both entail simple unimaginative application of biological processes in reaction to one’s environment, no?

I recommend a broader perspective.

Yes, principles of electrical behavior awaited our discovery, not our invention. However, anyone who has made a serious study of science knows that considerable leaps of mental insight and imagination were required to understand these principles well enough to formalize them.

I guarantee that if I were to sit you down with a complete description of the preliminary rules of electrical behavior, Ohm’s Law, Ampere’s Law, and Faraday’s rule of induction, that you would not be able to sit down in a test chamber and derive Maxwell’s equations.

Your idea applies even better to mathematical principles, because not even God can create them. They can only be discovered.

You belittle the value of imagination. I propose that if you took the trouble to get one, you might better appreciate those who’ve taken the trouble. It is not difficult.

I would disagree. I won’t even provide my own framework, but rather, I’ll use your own. The things that you describe as “unimaginative thought” are things that have been thought before, right?

Wrong again. In earlier times when traffic was lighter, I was younger, and road-gators were infrequent, I’d read books while driving cross country on interstate roads. This was possible because I could prop a book on the steering wheel and read while my peripheral vision watched the road. The brain component handling curves, keeping the car on the road, and alerting me to slow traffic or potential danger, ran entirely on automatic, thinking unimaginatively but not repetitively. I cruised through turns I’d never seen and still have not, passed vehicles to which I paid no particular attention, etc. Totally unimaginative, yet so far as my brain was concerned, nothing it had seen before.

Yet, the things that are “imaginative” are things that have previously existed, but yet, hadn’t previously been encountered.

Totally wrong! I see that you have no appreciation for imagination. You are missing something.

Consider art or music. Do you really believe that Beethoven’s glorious 9th Symphony existed before he composed it? (Please don’t bring in the “God already knew it” dogma.)

However, since you’re positing this in the context of the assumption of an omniscient being, then this being already knows all of the things that any human would have (from their limited, flawed perspective) perceived as having been “imaginative”! In other words, in your own framework, the omniscient being is the only being with imaginative thought – all others are simply “unimaginative”, having simply been the 2nd or 3rd or n’th being to develop the thought!

Wrong again! You, not I, are positing in the context of an omniscient being. The Creators in whom I believe are of limited intelligence (if you regard an I.Q. of a billion or so as limited) and are the most imaginative entities imaginable.

They are so good that we have yet to figure out how plants work.

Those who study philosophy find that the fact that a particular being has limited knowledge doesn’t imply the non-existence of another being who has those same limits.

Sensitive, aren’t we? No need to be.

This assertion holds – if all beings are considered to be equal. If, however, one does not proceed from this (asserted but unproven) assumption, then the conclusion of “intelligent but not omniscient” does not necessarily follow.

IMO any nit can see that no two humans are equal in any respect, but I realize that intellectuals often have trouble making simple observations. The 2nd paragraph of the preamble to the Declaration of Independence begins with the equality lie and disintegrates into the drivel which is at the root of human social confusion.

If you want to argue the point, you will need to clarify how you got from statement to conclusion.

 

[greylorn]

So we have this uncreated energy that experiences entropy, once any degree of energy is used that same energy cannot be reused. Maximum entropy will happen, i.e. the big chill. If this energy is uncreated and thus eternal, why hasn’t it reached maximum entropy given an infinite amount of time?

By organizing energy into useful little lumps, God has reversed the normal flow of entropy. You might check out “Maxwell’s Demon” on Wikipedia, just for fun. It would help you understand the relationship between energy and entropy.

If you reach that understanding (it was not easy for me) you will immediately understand the relevance of the simple notions I am proposing.