sidewinder

By the looks of things around the world, I'd say Stephen King was the author of God's Great Plan.

Ok, I'll play along. If this plan has always existed then why couldn't your god write or at least have his authors write a book (the Bible) without errors and contradictions?

GPLindsey

Kenny --

Thanks for your response. I haven't mastered how to block quotes from other messages, so I will paraphrase what you said. I looked at the strand you set up, and I was looking forward to joining the debate on whether God was outside of Time on another day. Suffice to say that--IF God thinks and is the creator of his own thoughts, which is what I thought Christians believed--then he is not outside of time. Time is simply the ordering of events, and thoughts can be events for perceiving a procession from past to present to future. Take the analogy of a person in a sensory deprivation chamber for several hours. Putting aside physical clues for the passage of time (their heartbeat, hunger, desire for sleep or physical movement, need to expell you know what) a person in such a chamber would loose track of hours and minutes, but would not perceive the experience as one long NOW. S/he would begin to reflect on the fact that they've thought about Aunt Sadie's awful wedding gift 32 times, summer vacation plans 12 times, etc. This is why the thought of God spending an eternity with his own thoughts in an empty void is so horrifying, and perhaps why Christians are anxious to place him outside time.

However, what most intrigued me about your response was your assertion that most theologians would agree that the Plan and God's thoughts have existed forever and were not created by Him. I was not aware of this. Do you have any links on discussions of this that would expand on this further?

As for your comments about the Plan flowing from God's perfect self knowledge and love is a sufficient basis for his actions--I respect your beliefs. But this just doesn't make much sense to me. I think a loving God could have made a much better universe than the one we live in, and I think I would need Faith to understand what flowing from perfect self knowledge means.

pug846

Kenny said:

Yes, he holds all his attributes necessarily and I would concede that he holds them in all actual worlds, but not all possible worlds. (Explanation to come.)

(from your site link): Maximal greatness is having the properties of omniscience, omnipotence and moral perfection in every possible world. From the argument given, I would deny premises 1 ( ) and 3, which begs the very question we are discussing here. I’m arguing that “moral perfection” is essentially arbitrary, given that, by definition, there is no reason why God’s nature is one way rather than another.

Given God’s nature, I would concede that every actual world his nature is the same and therefore, that “morality” is the same. But, I see no reason why God couldn’t have had a different nature such that murder was morally right. You can’t give me a reason. It could have been. Things like omniscience and omnipotence can be defined in a non arbitrary way – having perfect knowledge is a definition you can understand with having to resort to “it’s part of God’s nature.” However, things like “moral perfection” you can only appeal to moral perfection of God’s nature.

Why? Why couldn’t God’s nature be such that murder is acceptable? Why is this necessarily so? I would concede the above statement as true if you changed possible to actual. You seem to be blurring the line.

But God has changed. God has “done” something. He has loved person X. Is it more perfect to love person X? If it is, then God was less perfect before he loved person X. If it isn’t, then God was better off before he loved person X. A perfect being is by definition perfect, and is in a perfect state. Nothing should change – because he is perfect the way he is right then and there.

So, to bring this thread back on course. God, if He is perfect, couldn’t put forth a “plan” for all of us, and even if He could, it would be arbitrary.

[ January 20, 2002: Message edited by: pug846 ]</p>

Theli

Yes, I see what your saying here.
If god was in a state of absolute perfectness and changed that state even the slightest, he wouldn't be perfect anymore...
And he must change that state in order to act at all. A change from action to inaction or from inaction to action.

Amos

Sorry Theli, this post is mainly directed to GPL but since you accept his argument I would like you to considder the following.

It is because God is omnipresent that God can be omnipotent and it is because of omnipotence that God is omniscient. God does not dwell in the past nor in the future but in this present eternal moment which is outside of space but finds existence in space and eternity. This makes God the essence of creation and therefore the leading edge of evolution and now please tell me how God can not be the three omni's.

However, something cannot be both created and to have existed eternally.

For GPL I would add that God is not created for he has no material existence outside his creations . . . wherefore God is not eternal but infinite and his creations are eternal to make eternity the continuity of infinity. Your argument is based on the wisdom of fools. By this I only mean to say that you try to disprove something because you can't comprehend it.

Amos

Theli

So what your saying is that god knows everything, because he can do everything? And he can do everything because he's everywhere.
Then why not close the circular argument by saying that god is everywhere because he knows everything?

This argument of yours has proved nothing at all. Can you back any of these claims up?

So you are saying that god is a part of the creation, not the creator? Then why call him "god"?

Correction... the idea of god can hold these three omni's. But I didn't make any claim here. You did. This "omni god" of yours is your own theory so you have the burden of proof. And it better be something better than circular assumptions.

Amos

Fair enough, but if you understand what GPLindsey wrote it better be true what he wrote or you will be given a scorpion instead of fish.

The above shows how God, as the essence of creation is the intelligent design behind the existence of creation. Of course the word "God" is an [inspired] human idea but explains the progressive force (intelligence) behind natural selection. I should add here that nature does not have a mind to select (the term "natural selection" shows ignorance) unless it resides within the species to make adaptation possible in a compettive (chaos) biological environment.

Amos

Edited to add that Lord God is divided with 'like God' for the purpose of sense perception to make our senses untrustworthy illusion.

[ January 20, 2002: Message edited by: Amos ]</p>

Theli

Did god just shrink?
So you are saying that god isn't the creator of the entire universe anymore, but just the creator of life on earth?

"God is delineated by Lord God of the species (existence) in which God finds existence through procreation of God in their image."
So humans were designed in order to believe in god?

So you are saying that neither the biblical god or the personal god really exists?
But "god" is the design of the universe. So tell me... why should this design be considered a conscious being?

That's evolution for you.
BTW... why is the term "natural selection" a bad term?

Amos

Because nature does not have a mind of its own to make this selection. The word "selection" points towards an external mind doing the selecting. If this mind was internal it would be "survival" instead of "selection." To be sure, if I was going to speak in favor of evolution I would never make that mistake.

Amos

Datheron

Amos,

Just my two or so cents.

Because the act of creation doesn't necessarily mean that the creator is omni-**** inside that realm which he created. Humans have created computers, but it's quite a hoot to claim that humans know how computers work, especially when it processes at a few billion times faster than you.

Then you're relying on an argumentum ad ignoratum, or argument from ignorance. Just because we don't understand it does not mean that you're automatically correct. Indeed, I do not think that anyone can comprehend a space without time; we can give abstract mathematical rules, we can perhaps provide simple physics equations, but we really do not know what it means - and that includes the one that is claiming that his stance on a timeless Universe is correct.