Omnipotency Revisited.

[greylorn]

Must the Creator of the universe necessarily be omnipotent and omniscient?

Would it not be sufficient that the Creator, or Creators, simply be powerful and intelligent enough to have designed and engineered the universe?

 

[fhansen]

Must the Creator of the universe necessarily be omnipotent and omniscient?

Would it not be sufficient that the Creator, or Creators, simply be powerful and intelligent enough to have designed and engineered the universe?

Yes, it just didn’t happen to work out that way.

BTW I’d prefer,
We are what we are, regardless of what we understand.
But that’s just me.

 

[jkiernan56]

Yes, it just didn’t happen to work out that way.

BTW I’d prefer,
We are what we are, regardless of what we understand.
But that’s just me.

Can I ask you a question? In a relationship with another person, can you love someone that you do not know? And is it possible that the more you know that person, the more you love them? I would respond to your comment with … you are what you love through what you know and understand. Christ says “Where your treasure is, there you will find your heart.”

Sorry Greylorn, I saw this new thread that you started from the last one. I am sincerely going to think about your comments and respond back to you.

 

[fhansen]

Can I ask you a question? In a relationship with another person, can you love someone that you do not know? And is it possible that the more you know that person, the more you love them? I would respond to your comment with … you are what you love through what you know and understand. Christ says “Where your treasure is, there you will find your heart.”

Sorry Greylorn, I saw this new thread that you started from the last one. I am sincerely going to think about your comments and respond back to you.

Well…I’m sincerely trying to understand your comments but failing to. If you’d care to clarify I’ll certainly consider your thoughts.

 

[jkiernan56]

Well…I’m sincerely trying to understand your comments but failing to. If you’d care to clarify I’ll certainly consider your thoughts.

Please follow my thoughts and tell me for each one of them whether you agree or disagree … in other words whether you think what i am saying is true or false

You can’t love what you don’t know

What you know you CAN love. I put the CAN in uppercase because i am just putting this in the realm of a possibility … not that what you actually do learn and know you will love

The more you know something or someone, the more you can possibly love them.

My basic point was to try to express for me what a person is … for me a person is what they know and love

 

[fhansen]

Please follow my thoughts and tell me for each one of them whether you agree or disagree … in other words whether you think what i am saying is true or false

You can’t love what you don’t know

What you know you CAN love. I put the CAN in uppercase because i am just putting this in the realm of a possibility … not that what you actually do learn and know you will love

The more you know something or someone, the more you can possibly love them.

My basic point was to try to express for me what a person is … for me a person is what they know and love

Yes…I can’t deny the fact that we can only love what we know . We can convince ourselves otherwise but it won’t be real love.
My point was simply that we can be more than just what we understand, regardless of our beliefs on the matter.

 

[jkiernan56]

Yes…I can’t deny the fact that we can only love what we know . We can convince ourselves otherwise but it won’t be real love.
My point was simply that we can be more than just what we understand, regardless of our beliefs on the matter.

I agree with you whole heartedly that we CAN be more than just what we understand … but for me what we will become will be according to what we know and love. You and I cannot imagine what we will be or look like once we have been conformed to the image of Christ in our own unique way. St John says it best:

"See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.

Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. **We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. **

And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure. " 1 John 1:1-3

 

[grannymh]

Must the Creator of the universe necessarily be omnipotent and omniscient?

Would it not be sufficient that the Creator, or Creators, simply be powerful and intelligent enough to have designed and engineered the universe?

As my kids say, “You snooze. You loose.”

While I’m sleeping yet, here’s a new thread which should get a lot of interesting, thoughtful replies. If anyone does go back to the original “The Omnipotency Contradiction” there is a challenge, post 219, which basically asks one to think about that thread…

Off the top of my head, my answer to this thread’s first question is “of course.” The answer to the second is “of course not”

The odds are that greylorn will ask why. My initial answer is because I am an important, unique, special, thinking, sinful, loving, needing, rebellious, curious, spiritual, physical, creative, humane, logical, distinctive resident of the universe who firmly believes that I have a soul which connects me to God and that life continues in some form after death.

Blessings,
grannymh
:snowing:

 

[greylorn]

I agree with you whole heartedly that we CAN be more than just what we understand … but for me what we will become will be according to what we know and love. You and I cannot imagine what we will be or look like once we have been conformed to the image of Christ in our own unique way. St John says it best:

"See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.

Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. **We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. **

And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure. " 1 John 1:1-3

Dear Kiernan and Hansen;

Your mutual dialogues are off point, but easy to answer.

We can easily love the idea of someone, or of an entity. Several of the women I’ve loved, I really loved the idea of who they were, some of that being a function of their ability to see who I wanted and pretend to be that person. Upon eventually recognizing the person, the “love” disappeared.

As I child I loved Jesus, Mary, Joseph, etc. But what did that mean? Only that I loved the stories I read about them. I loved Lassie and Black Beauty too. The human brain is absolutely capable of loving abstractions, and perhaps that is all it can really love.

From this perspective, we “love” the missing components of our selves. We seek partners who can complement us, who are who we are not and therefore might help us round out our own being. In that context, love is only projected need.

If we found someone identical to ourselves, we would not like that person. If we could love someone identical to self, that would be true love indeed.

Electricity involves electrons moving through wires, carrying charge with them. But semiconductor theory (which makes your computer work) involves the concept of “holes” moving through conductive material. A “hole” is the absence of an electron. Seems strange, but you’ll notice that your computer works happily thanks to holes, the absence of electrons, moving through its transistors. Why? Because holes attract electrons. Put another way, electrons love holes, because a hole is exactly where an electron wants to be.

We human beings come with built-in “holes,” the parts of ourselves which could be, but are not. Our omnipotent-God concept is designed to fill our very large holes. The human love for God is really love for our own potential.

Now we’ve settled that, yes? So you guys can get on track on this thread or find one less distracting. Obviously I don’t know anything about love, so this is the wrong place for such questions. If that’s your focus, go start your own thread.

 

[jkiernan56]

Dear Kiernan and Hansen;

Your mutual dialogues are off point, but easy to answer.

We can easily love the idea of someone, or of an entity. Several of the women I’ve loved, I really loved the idea of who they were, some of that being a function of their ability to see who I wanted and pretend to be that person. Upon eventually recognizing the person, the “love” disappeared.

As I child I loved Jesus, Mary, Joseph, etc. But what did that mean? Only that I loved the stories I read about them. I loved Lassie and Black Beauty too. The human brain is absolutely capable of loving abstractions, and perhaps that is all it can really love.

From this perspective, we “love” the missing components of our selves. We seek partners who can complement us, who are who we are not and therefore might help us round out our own being. In that context, love is only projected need.

If we found someone identical to ourselves, we would not like that person. If we could love someone identical to self, that would be true love indeed.

Electricity involves electrons moving through wires, carrying charge with them. But semiconductor theory (which makes your computer work) involves the concept of “holes” moving through conductive material. A “hole” is the absence of an electron. Seems strange, but you’ll notice that your computer works happily thanks to holes, the absence of electrons, moving through its transistors. Why? Because holes attract electrons. Put another way, electrons love holes, because a hole is exactly where an electron wants to be.

We human beings come with built-in “holes,” the parts of ourselves which could be, but are not. Our omnipotent-God concept is designed to fill our very large holes. The human love for God is really love for our own potential.

Now we’ve settled that, yes? So you guys can get on track on this thread or find one less distracting. Obviously I don’t know anything about love, so this is the wrong place for such questions. If that’s your focus, go start your own thread.

I’m sorry Greylorn for continuing to take your thread off course. I will honestly try to keep the train on the tracks. But if you wouldn’t mind, I wanted to briefly respond to some of your comments above.

You mentioned that we can love the idea of someone. But then when you got to know the person more, the love disappeared. I may not be right when I say this, but it seems like a person can only “love” the truth when its beautiful. You loved what you knew at the time. But was what you knew “the truth” in reality or was it “the truth” in your perception? I think more likely it was your perception of the truth and not the reality. Because as you learned the truth or reality of the person, you fell out of love. But that truth was not truth in its beauty and perfection. If that person had exhbited the truth that you found beautiful, I think you might have fallen more deeply in love with them. Because you love truth. You love beauty. You love Goodness. I still think that we cannot love what we do not know. But once we do know truth in its reality … and that reality is beautiful, how can we not be in Love?

 

[greylorn]

As my kids say, “You snooze. You loose.”

While I’m sleeping yet, here’s a new thread which should get a lot of interesting, thoughtful replies. If anyone does go back to the original “The Omnipotency Contradiction” there is a challenge, post 219, which basically asks one to think about that thread…

Off the top of my head, my answer to this thread’s first question is “of course.” The answer to the second is “of course not”

The odds are that greylorn will ask why. My initial answer is because I am an important, unique, special, thinking, sinful, loving, needing, rebellious, curious, spiritual, physical, creative, humane, logical, distinctive resident of the universe who firmly believes that I have a soul which connects me to God and that life continues in some form after death.

Blessings,
grannymh
:snowing:

Granny,
Why would I ask, “why?” thereby becoming a minion to probability theory?

I love your reply, and expect that you will be the first to admit that its beautiful poetry sidesteps the logical sense of the OP. Yet you’ve gotten right to the core of the issue.

In a sense, I think that you are declaring that God must be omnipotent because we need Him to be omnipotent. I sure hear that, for I miss the comfortable beliefs I held as a child of His universe.

I propose that, yes, you are indeed an important, unique, special, thinking, sinful, loving, needing, rebellious, curious,
etc. person, and that who and what you are has nothing to do with the omnipotency or not of the Creator.

And while about it, I invite you to make an interesting shift in perspective: You are a soul, and you have a body.

Suppose that God is not omnipotent, and that He still created the universe? Does that change you, or the universe?

Note that if God is not omnipotent, He might have wanted to experiment a bit with the engineering of biological life, which would nicely explain why that process took 3.5 billion years instead of the proverbial day or two. A non-omnipotent Creator would remove the conflict between Darwinism and Intelligent Design.

 

[fhansen]

Dear Kiernan and Hansen;

Now we’ve settled that, yes? So you guys can get on track on this thread or find one less distracting. Obviously I don’t know anything about love, so this is the wrong place for such questions. If that’s your focus, go start your own thread.

Thanks, I agree, and the first part of my first reply did address the thread, even if it was a bit curt, and I was surprised to to see things veer off focus as well so I stopped discussing it.

Like I alluded to, the creator of the universe could’ve been many things, we as Christians simply believe He revealed Himself to be more. One of the things He revealed, BTW, is something about the nature of love, which is much bigger than simply holes in us or projections or other such speculations.

 

[greylorn]

I’m sorry Greylorn for continuing to take your thread off course. I will honestly try to keep the train on the tracks. But if you wouldn’t mind, I wanted to briefly respond to some of your comments above.

You mentioned that we can love the idea of someone. But then when you got to know the person more, the love disappeared. I may not be right when I say this, but it seems like a person can only “love” the truth when its beautiful. You loved what you knew at the time. But was what you knew “the truth” in reality or was it “the truth” in your perception? I think more likely it was your perception of the truth and not the reality. Because as you learned the truth or reality of the person, you fell out of love. But that truth was not truth in its beauty and perfection. If that person had exhbited the truth that you found beautiful, I think you might have fallen more deeply in love with them. Because you love truth. You love beauty. You love Goodness. I still think that we cannot love what we do not know. But once we do know truth in its reality … and that reality is beautiful, how can we not be in Love?

That’s all getting a touch poetic for me. Until I learn differently, I’m sticking with the idea that we love our holes. Of course, we don’t know exactly what those are---- imagine an electron zinging around some substrate looking for the perfect hole, and it spies one only 14 atoms away. Well, that’s like spotting a football orbiting Pluto. But the electron goes for it anyway, only to discover that the football-shaped hole is actually a Klein bottle, and that he’ll never fit.

Because the human mind is powerful enough to confuse abstractions with actuality, most of what we love is the product of our imagination. I first felt love for the Creator when I peeked into the eyepiece of a 36" telescope and saw a small “object” in our galaxy, a “globular cluster,” an area of space containing about a million stars. Doesn’t mean that I knew the Creator. But the knowledge that some entity out there was intelligent enough to have created that small aspect of our magnificent universe just twanged something in me.

I felt similarly upon learning some basic microbiology from Michael Behe’s book, “Darwin’s Black Box.” Recommended reading for all who claim to seriously engage questions such as the OP, which we will now all return to, yes?

 

[grannymh]

Regarding Post 8 by grannymh

Granny,
Why would I ask, “why?” thereby becoming a minion to probability theory?

1st probable answer. During the morning after - you realized that your post was as wide open to speculation as sufficient is open to interpretation.

I love your reply, and expect that you will be the first to admit that its beautiful poetry sidesteps the logical sense of the OP. Yet you’ve gotten right to the core of the issue.

May I remind you that on your original thread, some dear friends
did their very best to instruct me logically. Let me try. The logical sense of the OP as in opening poster is true. The OP as in opening post does not limit the tools to be used in replying. Therefore all green things are not grass. Or is it all grass is green especially on the other side of the fence. (from a long-ago, long-forgotten logic class on grass is green)

In a sense, I think that you are declaring that God must be omnipotent because we need Him to be omnipotent. I sure hear that, for I miss the comfortable beliefs I held as a child of His universe.

Yup.

I propose that, yes, you are indeed an important, unique, special, thinking, sinful, loving, needing, rebellious, curious,
etc. person, and that who and what you are has nothing to do with the omnipotency or not of the Creator.

Makes me wonder what I would be if the Creator were not omnipotent.

And while about it, I invite you to make an interesting shift in perspective: You are a soul, and you have a body.

Sorry, greylorn. I already dealt with that issue in a Catholic Church history course in high school. Being somewhat rebellious I paid special attention to the heresies during the first centuries and to the Protestant reformers as persons. The suggested shift in perspective reminds me of dualism and its offshoots. This was addressed in various university classes. At that point, the arguments against this type of philosophical thinking were very clear and I accepted their conclusion. No way am I going to try to remember those arguments. While I may refer to that perspective, I am not going to reinvent the wheel. You have my permission to add "stubborn’ to my resume in post 8.

Suppose that God is not omnipotent, and that He still created the universe? Does that change you, or the universe?

Makes me wonder if I would have been created.

Note that if God is not omnipotent, He might have wanted to experiment a bit with the engineering of biological life, which would nicely explain why that process took 3.5 billion years instead of the proverbial day or two. A non-omnipotent Creator would remove the conflict between Darwinism and Intelligent Design.

Wow! That is truly an imaginative idea. Makes me wonder if I could address it poetically. Being feminine, this granny is not bound to male logic. Note to you younguns. I grew up in an area where the only reason girls went to college was to be a teacher, nurse, secretary, or to get their “Mrs.” degree. Note to dear logical friends, I am actually starting to understand what you wrote. I should add persistent to my resume.

Blessings,
grannymh

 

[jkiernan56]

Greylorn, I have taken some time to think about some comments you made regarding the subject of this thread (from the previous one you started that went off the tracks).

You stated:

**" … infinity-math addresses abstractions which cannot be realized. The bottom line of infinity-math is that when the solution to an equation (e.g - x divided by 0) is infinite, we know that the event described is not a real event. Applying infinity-math to God implies that He is an abstract and non-existent entity."

“I personally do not believe that the creator of the universe is infinite in any respect because I choose to believe in a God who actually exists.”**

Can you do me a favor and clarify why you do not believe the creator of the universe is infinite in any respect? Because something infinite cannot exist in your understanding? I am having a problem with trying to understand why a God cannot be infinite because of the connection you make between infinity-math and God’s existence. What is the rationale between infinity math not being real and thus an infinite God cannot exist? Why is your idea of God directly intrinsically connected to mathmatics? Once I have a better understanding of this, I can go forward with this discussion.

 

[greylorn]

By request, I’m trying to move an off-track conversation from The Omnipotency Contradiction to this thread, where it may be more on point. I’ve copied posts 374, 375, 377 below, so that interested readers can segue into the conversation.

greylorn:

Post 374

My position is clear and simple. I believe absolutely that we live in a created universe, but do not believe that the “soul” is part of creation. Nor do I believe that it is possible for an omnipotent, omniscient entity to exist. That makes both the soul and The Creator worthy subjects for thoughtful investigation by any and all possible means.

Reply:

Shike:

Post #375

Thanks for sharing your position. I so agree that God and the soul are worthy subjects for thoughtful investigation.

But if the soul wasn’t created… that means that it always was. And when the logic is worked out, it comes to the conclusion that the soul is God. Sounds more like a buddhist soul than anything else to me; no real individuality is possible.

Reply (Greylorn)
I once had similar notions, but my reading of the evidence says that the soul is unique and not created. Of course I’ve devised a theory to fit these observations, but this is no place for it.

I’ve no idea what logic you refer to above. Perhaps you will share it, since I’ve no idea how you personally got from the hypothesis that soul was not created to the conclusion that it is God. Perhaps some definition refinement would help.

Buddhism believes just about everything these days, but my readings disclose that the Buddha’s original idea was derived from his personal experience of soul in a universe which he regarded as the result of entirely natural causes. Buddha believed in evolution, and therefore invented this concept:

The human brain has evolved to such a high level of complexity that its activity produces an epiphenomenon, an analog of the brain itself, which persists after the death of the brain-body system. This "soul" has no legitimate place in the natural universe, After death it finds itself with nothing to do, nowhere to go, except back into another human body. (Did I mention that Buddha was originally Hindu, and believed in reincarnation?) But since the soul does not belong, it will never be happy. Its only path to happiness is to become so powerfully self-aware that after the body's death, soul will be able to voluntarily extinguish its own consciousness. "Nirvana" is not a synonym for heaven, as many ignorant modern-day Buddhists believe. It means, extinguishedness.

Of course you realize that any discussions about the origin or not of soul are silly without a definition of the soul. (Soul as defined within the paragraph above is an entirely different critter than the soul defined by the Old Testament, New Testament, Mormon church, Descartes, etc.) Webster’s is inadequate for the purpose. I do not know if the Church’s definition is any better, these days. I do not even know what its official definition of soul is.

I just realized that this discussion has the look and feel of being off purpose. I know its connection to the Omnipotency Contradiction, but would have a hard time explaining it. If anyone knows of a better thread for such a discussion, perhaps we should take it there.

---

grannymh:

ATTENTION:

Dear Greylorn,

Would you consider going to the thread which you called “Omnipotency Revisited” in the philosophy forum?

The OP is:
"Must the Creator of the universe necessarily be omnipotent and omniscient?

“Would it not be sufficient that the Creator, or Creators, simply be powerful and intelligent enough to have designed and engineered the universe?”

The answers “of course” and “of course not” cannot stand on their own at least not in this forum. “Necessarily be” requires theories as “sufficient” requires interpretation.

Just because the dull geniuses isolated themselves on the fourth floor of our dorm, it doesn’t follow that a Creator necessarily isolated Himself from the Universe. In my humble opinion, in order to fully answer the OP first question, one needs to deal with the soul which is the connecting link between humans and the Creator. In other words, I flat out refuse to be considered in the same class as a determined rock in a deterministic universe.

Blessings,
Anyone as in quoted post – a.k.a. granny

Reply in following post.

 

[greylorn]

Granny,
I’ll deal with your first questions. That will be tough enough. We can deal with soul later. One step at a time.

Having taken only one philosophy course, just to see if I could pass it, I’m not equipped to work up formal definitions for perfectly ordinary words which I used in a perfectly ordinary sense. I’m only trying to deal with real issues, not get pedantic. You understand, I’m certain.

“necessarily” was used as an adverbial form of “necessary,” meaning (primary definition) essential, indispensable, or requisite.

Using bigger words I could rephrase my question to, Are the properties of omnipotence and omniscience requisite to the creation of the universe?

Personally, I think not. Knowing of no reasonable arguments why this must be the case, I was inviting some. I realize that religious people are accustomed to an unlimited creator, and have been taught it since childhood, and are therefore reluctant to get rid of it. But custom is only an emotional reason for hanging onto a belief.

Suppose, for example, that the Church had accepted Galileo’s ideas and recognized that the physical universe itself represented a higher example of God’s reality than the nonsense that Aristotle made up and Church accepted. I’ll wager that the Church would have then recovered Bruno’s teachings and developed a correct theory of evolution before Darwin learned to walk.

I’ll also wager that it would not be teaching the omnipotence and omniscience of the Creator, for two reasons:

1. To a scientist who has examined certain aspects of the material and biological universe, it does not look like the work of an almighty God.
2. The omni-whatever concepts are not logically necessary to the creation of the universe.

Note that there is a certain benefit that would accrue if God were no longer regarded as omnipotent: The serious contradictions between religious and scientific belief would disappear!

If, however, someone can show that it is absolutely necessary that the Creator be omni-whatever, that cannot happen. And remember, dear people, I am not proposing these ideas as any kind of back door into atheism. I believe that we live in a created universe.

I also believe that the popular concepts describing the Creator were invented centuries ago by men who believed that the components of the universe at which earth was the center were fire, water, earth, and air. Would it really hurt to rethink the ideas those old boys selected?

I wasn’t going to deal with your query about soul, but I’m on a roll tonight— oops, this morning. From the atheistic perspective there is no soul, of course. From the classical Buddhist view, soul is an epiphenomenon generated by a non-created machine, which would seem to give it no lease on free will. If the soul is created by an omniscient God who knows every choice the soul will make, it has about as much effective free will as your pet rock.

No need to pass along the circular arguments which attempt to reconcile free will with God’s omniscience. They only exist to keep believers believing. But as I see it, there are only two circumstances which permit you to genuinely own your own will, have your own beliefs, make your own choices.

1. The soul is not a created entity, nor is it an epiphenomenon.
2. God is not omnipotent.

If you really like free will, that is another reason for reconsidering some old teachings. Shall we have a go at it?

 

[greylorn]

Greylorn, I have taken some time to think about some comments you made regarding the subject of this thread (from the previous one you started that went off the tracks).

You stated:

**" … infinity-math addresses abstractions which cannot be realized. The bottom line of infinity-math is that when the solution to an equation (e.g - x divided by 0) is infinite, we know that the event described is not a real event. Applying infinity-math to God implies that He is an abstract and non-existent entity."

“I personally do not believe that the creator of the universe is infinite in any respect because I choose to believe in a God who actually exists.”**

Can you do me a favor and clarify why you do not believe the creator of the universe is infinite in any respect? Because something infinite cannot exist in your understanding? I am having a problem with trying to understand why a God cannot be infinite because of the connection you make between infinity-math and God’s existence. What is the rationale between infinity math not being real and thus an infinite God cannot exist? Why is your idea of God directly intrinsically connected to mathmatics? Once I have a better understanding of this, I can go forward with this discussion.

JK
I’d like to retract what I wrote on that, thanks to your comments and questions. I apologize. I want to believe that it was extremely early and at the end of a long day when I wrote some of that. I’ll stand by some of the ideas, but not all, particularly not the dumb statement that something which is infinite cannot exist.

If we were to pursue the conversation further, we’d need to define specifically what aspect of God or anything else was infinite. For example, I think that energy (the stuff from which the universe seems to be made) has always existed and is, in a sense, infinite in extent. But what does “extent” mean, when some forms of energy shape the space in which they exist? I sure don’t know, yet.

The issue I have with definitions of God is that they ascribe no limit to any property. Some of these limits do not hold up well when compared to reality— for example, the women and children of Jericho. Why did God order male children to be murdered, and females to be enslaved? How does the clear thinking mind reconcile such orders with the concept of an infinitely merciful God?

There are contradictions to omnipotent action. As I wrote elsewhere, any application of infinite force would destroy the universe. Infinite knowledge in the full context of past, present and future time has already forced theologians to jump through Klein bottles trying to explain how we can possibly have free will if God knows what we’re going to do.

The same conundrum seems to apply to the creation of mankind: Why would God have created all the humans he murdered in Noah’s flood, knowing in advance how angry they would make him? That’s similar to an engineer designing a bridge that he knows in advance will collapse if two cars try to cross it at once.

I’m not trying to go anyplace fancy here, and got carried away with my infinity-math notions. Get out some horsewhips if I do it again, please. And thanks for the feedback.

 

[Shike]

Okay, this will seem highly polemical because of the format. But I am greatful that greylorn has asked questions and stuck around for a while. I’ve learned a couple things, even.

I just decided to comment on most of what he said in the last 3 posts.

I’ve no idea what logic you refer to above. Perhaps you will share it, since I’ve no idea how you personally got from the hypothesis that soul was not created to the conclusion that it is God. Perhaps some definition refinement would help.

A better explanation of why an uncaused cause must be singular and the cause of everything else is better provided by Aquinas… but if it is indeed the case that you’ve already dismissed him as old or whatnot, then you’re doing yourself a disservice.

My definition of created is that which is caused. If something is created, it is caused; if something isn’t created it is uncaused. Something that is uncaused (you put forward the soul) must be eternal if it exists… because if it wasn’t eternal, there would be some point where it didn’t exist. And if there’s nothing to cause it (because as we said it is uncaused) then it would never come into being. But it apparently exists (as you pointed out). So it must be eternal. So the soul is apparently an uncaused eternal “thing”.

When it is deeply looked into, it seems that there can only be 1 uncaused and eternal “thing”. Aquinas calls it God and finds that there are many more interesting things to say about this uncaused and eternal “thing”. I reccomend checking out The Basic Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas by Anton C. Pegis. Within the first 100 pages you will understand (if you understand a couple of the tools Aristotle uses, the biggy is the 4 causes).

Having taken only one philosophy course, just to see if I could pass it, I’m not equipped to work up formal definitions for perfectly ordinary words which I used in a perfectly ordinary sense. I’m only trying to deal with real issues, not get pedantic. You understand, I’m certain.

Thanks for the disclosure. But, philosophy can deal with real issues that are not trivial. I think you think the soul is not trivial, and I reckon logical thinking can bring clarity to the situation (that is what philosophy is). You sometimes need to grit your teeth and define terms to get anywhere as we sometimes say what we don’t mean, or sometimes others have a different understanding than we do. It’s very important.

But custom is only an emotional reason for hanging onto a belief.

Not if there is a good reason for holding said custum; perhaps I don’t know why something is done, but it doesn’t follow that there is no good reason why it is being done.

Suppose, for example, that the Church had accepted Galileo’s ideas and recognized that the physical universe itself represented a higher example of God’s reality than the nonsense that Aristotle made up and Church accepted. I’ll wager that the Church would have then recovered Bruno’s teachings and developed a correct theory of evolution before Darwin learned to walk.

It is Aristotle through Aquinas, but not wholly that the Church accepts. If it is nonsense, the burden is on you to show where and why. But remember, the Church isn’t in the business of science (although it supports and promotes some wonderful scientific research), it is mainly concerned with the purpose of life; you don’t need to “know” the laws of physics to reach the goal. Not to say that science is un-important.

… continued.

 

[Shike]

I’ll also wager that it would not be teaching the omnipotence and omniscience of the Creator, for two reasons:

1. To a scientist who has examined certain aspects of the material and biological universe, it does not look like the work of an almighty God.
2. The omni-whatever concepts are not logically necessary to the creation of the universe.

1 - by saying that you’ve just overstepped the bounds of science and into the realm of philosophy and religion.
2 - The omni-whatever concepts aren’t necessary in the sense that the universe wasn’t created with infinite power… but the omni-whatever concepts are necessary to the being outside (causually) the universe (I refer to Aquinas through Pegis). A omnipotent God does not need to use all His power to create a finite universe. So in a sense, we do agree. But in another sense we do not.

Note that there is a certain benefit that would accrue if God were no longer regarded as omnipotent: The serious contradictions between religious and scientific belief would disappear!

I wasn’t aware that there were any serious contradictions, or any for that matter between science and religion.

If, however, someone can show that it is absolutely necessary that the Creator be omni-whatever, that cannot happen.

I refer to Aquinas through Pegis (you won’t regret reading it).

I also believe that the popular concepts describing the Creator were invented centuries ago by men who believed that the components of the universe at which earth was the center were fire, water, earth, and air. Would it really hurt to rethink the ideas those old boys selected?

Nope, I agree… any arguments that rely on the earth being the center of the universe or the components of the universe being fire, water, earth, and air should be rethought. Scientific knowledge back then wasn’t as great as today. But we have had the same human hardware.

No need to pass along the circular arguments which attempt to reconcile free will with God’s omniscience. They only exist to keep believers believing.

It’s much more complicated in scope. Take God out of the picture and you’ll see that we experience free will but the general trend of science has been pushing a wholly deterministic model. Believers and unbelievers alike have to deal with this.

But as I see it, there are only two circumstances which permit you to genuinely own your own will, have your own beliefs, make your own choices.

1. The soul is not a created entity, nor is it an epiphenomenon.

1. God is not omnipotent.

1 - There’s the soul as uncreated again. Does that mean uncaused? If it does, I call the bogus card and refer to Aquinas through Pegis.
2 - I don’t see how this solves the problem of free will other than pushing it back even farther. The problem of free will lies in causation; if you remove “God” from the picture and there are still “things” existing, then they are “things” that cause other things untill our own existence… dang nabbit, there’s that causation thing again.
3 - I claim ignorance on the solution, but believe I have free will since that is what I experience.

The issue I have with definitions of God is that they ascribe no limit to any property. Some of these limits do not hold up well when compared to reality—

Perhaps a typo, either way I don’t understand.

Why did God order male children to be murdered, and females to be enslaved? How does the clear thinking mind reconcile such orders with the concept of an infinitely merciful God?

Where does this come into a philosophy discussion? This is theology… but it’s a good question that I don’t fully understand. But one insight might be that the human author of Joshua could have other motives than the reader, perhaps the human author wanted to show God’s faithfullness to His chosen people.

There are contradictions to omnipotent action. As I wrote elsewhere, any application of infinite force would destroy the universe.

Here we go. This is what I was getting at above. God doesn’t have to use infinite force everytime He does something, He’s smart enough to use caution.

The same conundrum seems to apply to the creation of mankind: Why would God have created all the humans he murdered in Noah’s flood, knowing in advance how angry they would make him? That’s similar to an engineer designing a bridge that he knows in advance will collapse if two cars try to cross it at once.

This is more of theology than philosophy. It’s a good question; it revolves around the literary style of Genesis.

Thanks for everyone’s time!
ciao,
Michael