My interpretation certainly wasn’t expressed very well. What I tried to imply is that God’s attribute of omnipotence is crucial because anything less than completeness is unworthy of the nature of God. He is the superlative of all attributes. If this sounds like dogma, it is a reflection of who I am as a Catholic.
I am beginning to understand how people think, through the answers that I don’t get. Before about the 3rd century A.D. people had competing gods, who they often fought and died for. Christianity overcame the pagan Gods of the Romans because, like those religions (and unlike Judaism) it had a God in human form, in Christ. Pantheists could relate to that in a way they could never relate to Judaism’s abstract God.
Plus, instead of behaving like the soap opera clowns that Romans and Greeks called gods, Christ had lots of intelligent things to say, and did not behave like an oversexed childish oaf.
But when Constantine came to political power and saw the handwriting on the wall, that Christianity would dominate, he co-opted Christianity, held a council to determine what its dogma should be, and eventually (post council, according to history) came away with a God-concept that could never be bettered by any competing religion that might come along. Smart boy.
Of course he did not know the “mathematics of infinity.” which had not been invented yet, and did not realize that it would be possible to better the concept. But that’s another tale.
So from this thread and the various replies, I am inclined that the matter has nothing to do with logic and everything to do with religious tradition and human self-esteem. It’s like the human need to have the biggest house on the block, the fastest car, or the only true religion. It is all about simple human ego, and that will never change.
So . . . how do you figure that omnipotence is “an unnecessary concept which is poorly supported by the evidence?” You say God doesn’t need to be omnipotent to create the universe. What you seem to be getting at by saying that God needn’t be all-Powerful or all-Knowing (supreme intelligence) is that He is a lesser being, a lesser god than the ontological essence of who He is.
It is unnecessary because the universe could have been created by an extremely powerful and knowledgeable being, or by many of them working in concert.
People who admired the awesome extent and complexity of the universe back when the concept was first devised could not have imagined it as being made of tiny parts like electrons and protons, or how it could have been made at all. So they invented a “one swell foop” concept— the stars get made first (light), all at once; then the earth, then critters, etc., and of course a God powerful enough to do all that with a mere act of will. (Genesis was written
before the omnipotent feature was invented.)
These days an educated Christian has to extend that original limited creation framework to include the instantaneous, by “will” creation of at least a trillion galaxies, way too many planets to count, and in all likelihood a universe full of living critters beyond the imaginings of a crazed SF writer on dope.
If I had to believe in
all that, I’d probably figure on an omnipotent God also. However, what if the universe was created via acts of will and intelligence, rather than brute power? Would it really require omnipotence to create one electron? From there, the Creator might devise a proton, combining the pair into the first hydrogen atom. Not quite so much power would be required to do that, as to will an entire star into existence.
Next, he might create a bunch more of these primeval atoms, and eventually tiring of it, devise a clever way to have them made automatically, much as a modern factory can crank out nails. Before long, he’d have a star, and upon getting the making of that down right, could set about a way to make them automatically.
He might have to manually produce a neutron to make deuterium, which then can make helium. And we now know that a star full of hydrogen and helium will manufacture the other atoms all the way through iron, and that when such stars burn out and go supernova, they will manufacture the heavier elements.
Clearly this kind of process could be accomplished by an entity with the necessary power and intelligence to make a single hydrogen atom, which must be extraordinary by any human imagining, but not necessarily infinite.
You, too, have a dogma that includes reincarnation. Do you deny that you are just as dogmatic in your beliefs?
Yes, I do. There is evidence for reincarnation which includes the entire Hindu and Buddhist religious cultures, thousands of books, some scientific studies, and everyday human experience. It is also part of the Christian dogma, where it is modified and called resurrection.
Unlike omnipotence and omniscience, which are properties that cannot be experimentally verified, reincarnation is oft tested, such as by Buddhist monks whenever an important
lama dies. I’ve tested it myself by finding some amateurs to regress me, and by learning to facilitate past-life regressions for others.
My investigations have been brief and casual, part of a wider range of studies, but others have made a larger career of it. Individuals who have actually been competently regressed usually find their experience to be compelling evidence.
The only factor that dogma plays in my considered opinion that reincarnation is for real, is that my understanding of the purpose of creation places no dogma in the way of my opinion.
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