Bree

What Gemma posts echos what I've heard from nearly all the theists who have ever entered my life: God is so great and powerful that no human could ever even begin to understand how great and powerful He is.

My question: why did God make us, His greatest creation (supposedly), incapable of understanding His love for us? What is the point in that? Surely not to weed out the "those going to Heaven" from "those going to Hell" since the only requirement to get to Heaven is to accept Jesus as Lord and Saviour, plus lead a godly life (see Bible for more information). I don't believe the free will answer, either (God gave us free will, and if He were to reveal Himself in His full glory, we'd have no choice [i]but/i] to accept Him as creator of the universe and saviour to all).

God must be very lonely up there, with no one to talk to.

Thieving Magpie

Well, I believe Christians believe that if you understand God in any way shape or form, you are limiting what he can and cannot do, even though he is supposed to be omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and eternally immutable.

In a metaphysical sense, if they believe that, then they have already labelled and constricted him. If the Christian God suddenly started acting different, Christians would not recognize him anymore - luckily for them however, much of what he supposedly does in unverifiable.

By saying the things you have quoted, those writers have already described God, so they are, in a sense, defeating themselves.

Gemma Therese

Bree,

God made us to share His love.

God cannot be understood except by Himself.

Gemma Therese

Celsus

And how precisely does God know that he understands himself?

Gemma Therese

And how is a human, with an extremely limited intellect, supposed to understand how God functions?????

Gemma Therese

Celsus

Christian (Arthur Peacocke) response:

God created a logical universe, and the universe is one manifestation of God. Therefore by understanding the universe we understand (an aspect of) God.

Atheist response:

God is dead. Therefore there is nothing to understand.

Nice way to duck the question.

Joel

seebs

I see this as being like "if God is infinite, why didn't He make us able to count to infinity". At least for now, I'm pretty sure I'm finite in most respects; I can occasionally develop useful models of infinite things, but I don't think I *understand* them.

In practice, I can't even really understand "a billion barrels of oil" - try it some time, it's harder than it sounds to get the concept to stick.

So... I don't think it's because God is lazy, I think it's because "finite thing fully understanding infinite thing" is meaningless.

MHO.

My experience is that I can "understand" God, about as well as I can "understand" trans-finite math. I have theories which appear to work; I don't always have a solid grasp on the tricky bits, and I can spin my head in circles trying to answer questions that I'm not sure are well defined.

Bree

Okay, so humans have extremely limited, God-given intellect and therefore cannot even begin to comprehend God.

How, then, can he blame us for not believing in Him? It's very difficult to believe in something you can't understand. Kind of unfair, don't you think?

seebs

I believe in lots of things I don't fully understand. My intellect is not enough for me to fully understand other *people* - but I certainly believe in them! Physics, likewise, I believe in, even though I don't really understand it.

I don't expect that my understanding of God is very *accurate*, but I don't think we're graded on accuracy. I sure hope not!

Family Man

You know, I can't say I can understand quantum physics, but I am vaguely aware of the concept. Wouldn't it be helpful to establish that there is a god before deciding that he can't possibly be understood?