Laurentius

AVE


Suppose the Christian God existed, omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient and so on. I wonder:

1. Can he sense his own presence?
2. How does he perceive himself?
3. What identity problems are likely to appear?

I have my own "theory", of course, which I'll put forward provided the issue turns out to interest you. In the meantime, what are your theories?

AVE

Starboy

Laurentius,

Hi Laurentus,

I am God. Just kidding.

Or am I?

Starboy

Laurentius

No, you're not it, Starboy. I just can tell by this blessed place: "Tallahassee, FL USA". Should you be god, you'd be ubiquitous and you wouldn't even sense you were somewhere in particular.

AVE

Laurentius

AVE

For those as nostalgic about absolutes as I am, I’ll restate the question:

<disciple> Master, is there a God or not?
<master> Why, there is. And there is not.
<disciple> Master, you confuse me. I think a straightforward question deserves a straightforward answer.
<master> I’d rather say a straightforward question deserves an honest answer, and the most sincere clear-cut answer I can give you is that there is and there is not a God. You see, for the limited mortals that we are the direct answer may not always be an unambiguous one. But tell me, have you tried to answer this question yourself?
<disciple> I have, master, but to no avail. I keep moving back and forth on the path between fervent belief and absolute denial. It’s like I wake up in the glorious sunset and feel my soul soars in direct communion with God, while at the end of the day I find myself crawling bent under the load of my own abjection and the crookedness of this godless world. I just can’t find a way out, which is why I said I wanted an unswerving answer
<master> But indeed there is and there is not a God. When you question the existence of a so-called “God” entity you wonder whether the notion “God” refers to something real or not, and the manner you answer will depend on how you define “God” and “reality”.
<disciple> I see. I’d rather consider their common acceptations. Let’s say by “being real” we understand something like the way we are here now, and by “God” we think the perfect supernatural being that has created the mankind and the entire universe.
<master> This is a deceiving card you’re attempting to play.
<deceiving> I thought employing common acceptations would ensure the safest and most transparent approach.
<master> On the contrary: common acceptations team with untold assumptions and hidden contradictions. To see that and partially answer your question we’ll take God’s identity into consideration and view it in the light of his commonly accepted characteristics.

<disciple> Yet, master, there’s no less contradictory concept than the traditional idea of God for he represents perfection itself.
<master> And what would a perfect thing be?
<disciple> It should be a self-sufficient fullness, harmoniously taking in everything that represents value and manifesting it to the superlative. For instance, God is “the one who is”.
<master> As opposed to those who are not?
<disciple> As opposed to everything else. God is the only one who perfectly satisfies the principle of identity, whose existence is flawless: he’s constantly the same, immutable, with no end or beginning.
<master> This will exceed the ordinary perception of God since the common man only considers God’s immortality from the perspective of God’s lifespan not having a final point. The very biblical words “in the beginning” reflect the customary feeling that each and everyone, God himself too perhaps, must have started somehow.
<disciple> In my opinion, perfection requires that there be no end, and no beginning either. I don’t see how any start could possibly stand in the vicinity of the infinite.
<master> Couldn’t, say, a lane start here and stretch for ever?
<disciple> Once one sets off on his way to infinity, and plunges (deep) into it, there’s no turning back – it would take him an infinity to return to the starting point.
<master> All right, only that it is an abuse to discuss God in terms of time and space, physical determinations which he must be free from.
<disciple> Obviously, master. It is necessary that God belong and dwell outside his own creation, which he exceeds in all respects.
<master> Once again you’re parting from the common perception of God. Although believers don’t deny God’s ideality, they do not extract him from their substantial universe – on the contrary, they claim God is everywhere, as well as everlasting.
<disciple> But master, you yourself have pointed out God’s existence is boundless of materiality.
<master> Yes, I have. The question is what do you make of it?
<disciple> It is unavoidable that humans regard God as omnipresent. From a corporeal perspective God should completely fill the time and space, which is why God is quite reasonably deemed eternal and ubiquitous.
<master> As a manifestation of God’s perfection?
<disciple> Yes, a consequence of God perfectly filling the existence. In fact, God can be said to be the existence itself, whose coordinates he simultaneously covers, both in time and space, I mean in so far as he is in connection with his Creation – a connection that the Creator must needs maintain.
<master> Are you advancing some kind of pantheism?
<disciple> Not at all, master. What I mean is that God resides both in the past and in the present, as well as in the future – he’s time itself. And space itself. To put it better I should say the time-space continuum makes one of God’s propensities, which he has employed as the frame for his Creation.
<master> You then hold God as having provided both the frame and the contents of the universe.
<disciple> Yes, master. It is a world where God controls and knows all. While God’s omniscience derives from his omnipresence, his omnipotence is simply the expression of his absolute will.

Now, given these “facts” on God, would it be possible for him to perceive himself? And how would he find his own identity?

AVE

WJ

DISCIPLE: Yes Master, except that if God's will is for the good of mankind, why is there evil and unhappiness in the world?

MASTER: If there was no thing but absolute happiness, we would not know how to ask such a question, as the question would not be necessary. Nevertheless grasshopper, our free-will is determined. And as such, our finitude was not a choice, it was planned. Therefore, a necessary plan must exist.

DISCIPLE: But how will I ever come to know this plan is absolute?

MASTER: Until mystery purges itself from your own existence, you won't. Essentially, your Being is planned finitude; your existence temporal.

DISCIPLE: Is that analogous to man's planned obsolescence? I mean, if a Being called God does exist, does it mean he chose to create us mere mortals in this manner of finitude and temporality?

MASTER: Ah grasshopper, our logic does not give us the absolute ability to verify our assumptions behind questions such as these. Your analogy, at best, necessarily exists. There are no answers grasshopper; only questions. How can I adequately explain the concept of God if you cannot even understand the nature of your own existence?

DISCIPLE: Can we know some things without knowing everything? No matter, it seems I am left with my own volition. Did I, at the very least, ask the right questions, oh Master?

MASTER: It is not I who you should be asking those questions.

Laurentius

AVE


WJ

I take it the dialogue above is quoted, not your own opinion, because I don't think you would adhere to this kind of argument: Nevertheless grasshopper, our free-will is determined. And as such, our finitude was not a choice, it was planned. Therefore, a necessary plan must exist.
. It's like saying that causality implies the existence of God as First Cause.
Anyway, how do you think it is possible that the existence of God could make sense to himself? I find this quite an impossibility.

AVE

Ron Singh

Dear Laurentius,

I'm not Christian but I will answer these questions nevertheless.

I don't like the word sense. What we call sense is experience. God, by necessity, must experience himself, because he is all that there is to experience.

I charge you with reification in the second degree. You are trying to stick perceiving modules like eyes and ears to what is immaterial. Being without finites that we have, God experiences by being.

--Sincerely, Ron.

Laurentius

AVE

Ron Singh

I'm not Christian but I will answer these questions nevertheless.

Neither am I. Now, should I be a believer would I find myself asking this kind of questions? Highly unlikely.

Being without finites that we have, God experiences by being.

Great, Ron, I couldn't agree more.
So, there's this huge, endless being, called God, stretching throughout the past, present and future simultaneously and occupying everything there is. There's nothing outside of him. He's actually stuck. Since he does not sense, there's no progressive knowledge for him - he is aware of absolutely everything occurring in time and space from the very beginning. There's no change for him.

God is therefore an entity
stuck in its own infinite immateriality,
who does not experience any change
and has become aware of everything there is to know spontaneously, as if in a flash.

Is this a conceivable God?

AVE

[ July 17, 2002: Message edited by: Laurentius ]</p>

WJ

AVE,

I want to give this more consideration and continue the discussion, and yes, those were my words, but I've got to run. In the meantime, can you perhaps explain your idea of causality and the apparent contradiction in my dialoge?

Walrus

Ron Singh

Lorentius,

I hope you aren't implying that such a being as God exists temporally. That is to say, linear with time. Time is merely change. Ergo, God merely experiences all time at once, because there is nothing more than once for God. God exists, without change. God therefor is not subject to time.
I Also cannot help to note the bias you present while begging the question. You seem to suggest that God is some sort of material ether, a substance that invisible and undetectably exists everywhere. Sorry to displease you, but God is immaterial. When we mean that he is omniscient, we mean that he knows all that there is to know. But this is too futile a term for God. He does more than knowing, and that is experience.

There are two types of experience. Indirect experience is me using my senses such as my eyeballs and eyesight to admire a flower. Direct experience is me existing. And none of you know how it feels to be me.

This is how it is to be God. God experiences all that there is. So, instead of passively and indirectly observing and hence knowing all that there is to know, he does more. God directly experiences all that there is, a.k.a he is omniscient. And you are totally right to say that God does not change. BEcause changing the infinite and eternal is impossible.

But now I must assert the rest of the fallicious. God must not be an entity, and I am not privy to the reasoning behind such a statement that you proposed stating that he was. Words like entity are strictly reserved for what is material. And to attach such a word to God is to bound him and box him up as if he were some sort of really big pie.

What is change to us, is not change to God, ergo God experiences no change. We however do. Since God experiences directly all that there is to experience, he is omniscient towards everything. And since God exists in a timeless state of being, in our point of view, he has always known everything and always will know everything.

--Sincerely, Ron.