TheUnbeliever

This morning I had several random thoughts about the existence of God. Having written them down, I now see they're not in any real order... but here they are.

Question One: If God is all-knowing, then he knew before he ever created the universe that he would make Lucifer and that Lucifer would go bad. He also knew that this "fallen angel" would tempt Adam and Eve in the garden and that they would fail God's "test" because of this. God did not instill a sense of "good" and "evil" in his humans, and furthermore purposefully sent the instrument of their downfall to Earth. Finally, God damned Adam, Eve, Satan, and the entire Earth for outcomes that were not their fault and were, indeed, entirely beyond their capacity to avoid.

Where's the love?

Question Two: How is it all-loving to punish someone with eternal torment for lacking belief in you? Furthermore, how it all-loving when you created sin and dissent in the first place? Being the ultimate authority, God would be ultimately responsible for pretty much everything (for I do not believe humans truly have "free will" if we posit an omniscient entity that punishes or rewards us for the choices we make).

Question Three: If God is omniscient, why do these three verses appear in the book of Genesis:

Genesis 3:9 -- “The Lord God called out to the man and and said to him, ‘Where are you?’”

Genesis 6:6 -- "And the Lord regretted that he had made man on earth, and His heart was saddened."

Genesis 8:1 -- "And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters asswaged;"

I. Why does God ask Adam where he is? God should already know that. Some people claim that God is "testing" Adam to see if he'll tell the truth, but then if God's omniscient, he'd already know that, too.

II. Regret implies, at the very least, mistakenness -- yet omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent beings should not, by any stretch of the imagination, make mistakes. Additionally, if God found all that he had made to be “very good,” this implies that there was no problem. If he were omnipotent and omniscient, he would see that Eve was going to sin, and thus, there was a problem (the potential for sin). These two verses not only point out that God made a mistake and regretted it (and Almighty beings do not make mistakes), it also shows us that God made everything and thought it was good -- evidently he could not see the future (which an omnipotent, all-knowing being should be able to do), or he would have seen that everything was NOT “very good,” and indeed, would soon become “very bad.” The Creation was not perfect if it was not going to remain so.

III. And God remembered Noah? When did God "forget" Noah? o_O

Question Four: Many people describe God as "infinite" (not "infinitely old" or "infinitely wise," just "infinite"). Well, to exist is to be something rather than nothing, and to be something is to be something specific. We can distinguish a chair, for instance, from another object because we know what a chair is and what a chair is not. Existence requires limits, and an "infinite" being would have none, which leads me to the conclusion that an infinite God would have no "nature" at all. Comments?

Question Five: How does one resolve the conflicts and contradictions between omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence?

Question Six: God is often described as "unknowable," yet knowledge is claimed about his "nature" (see above). Indeed, claiming knowledge of the unknowable is a paradox in itself, as the unknowable cannot be known -- for then one would already have knowledge of it, to that extent. If God is supernatural, then he would be unknowable and incomprehensible (since "natural" existence is the only one with which we are familiar). Wherefore, then, can we claim to speak meaningfully of God?

It seems the Christian God will, under pressure, collapse into the God of agnosticism.

Question Seven: How well does our language apply to God? Is God "good" in the same sense that a man is good? If so, then God would seem to be finite. If not, then our language is not sufficient for describing God, and God is "good" in some way completely removed from our understanding of the word (thereby emptying it of its meaning). In short, either God is finite, or we should not speak of God at all.

Good luck sorting out my confused and rambling post.

To anyone who replies, thanks for your time and patience...

Jamie_L

Welcome to the world of looking at religion through a critical eye.

Jamie

Jobar

Greetings and welcome, fellow unbeliever.

Excellent questions, all. Let's see our resident theists take a stab at answering them. Luvluv? Albert? 7thangel? Yguy? Care to pick one?

(A personal note- your first question was perhaps the central source of my own atheism. When I realized that God was supposed to know past, present, and future, and to have control of them all- at age 14, I decided that all the Sunday School lessons were bunk!)

Wyz_sub10

I'm quite sure some will tell you that god is onmiscient only once something has happened (or as I recall from my own discussions, *at the precise moment it happens*).

I don't think this is a solid position, mind you, but I recall it being thrust forward in the past.

Conchobar

Genesis 8:1 -- "And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters asswaged;"

I have been arguing that there was too much water, 2.4 billion cubic kilometres to cover the Earth 8 kilometres deep to come from anywhere in Earth. It had to come from some magical place or that above the firmament bollocks.

"God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters ASSUAGED."

Crikey that explains it. God passed wind (i.e. he farted) and all of the water got sucked up his asshole, hence the term ASSuaged.

Thanks for clearing that up.

Conchobar

Conchobar

Question One: If God is all-knowing, then he knew before he ever created the universe that he would make Lucifer and that Lucifer would go bad. He also knew that this "fallen angel" would tempt Adam and Eve in the garden and that they would fail God's "test" because of this. God did not instill a sense of "good" and "evil" in his humans, and furthermore purposefully sent the instrument of their downfall to Earth. Finally, God damned Adam, Eve, Satan, and the entire Earth for outcomes that were not their fault and were, indeed, entirely beyond their capacity to avoid.

The leader of Iraq new that his policies would stir the Kurds and Shiites to rebel, so he went ahead with them, with American support. Then he slaughtered them by the thousands, gassed them, bombed them, starved them. He knew it would happen.

Where's the love?

You can't ask God that question, but you might be able to ask Saddam Husseine, or if necessary his close associate Tarik Aziz.

Mao showed similar love in "refoming Tibet", Hitler showed love of the Jews and slavs in ways to terrrible to discuss. Pol Pot showed his love of the educated middle class and merchants by marching tiem off into the fieids and killing hundreds of thousands or perhaps 3 million. Love by tyrants (God, Husseine, Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler, and Mao) is drastic. What would their HATE manifest?

Conchobar

Magus55

You assume the topography of the Earth was the same as it is today. If the ocean floor was higher, and the mountains lower - it doesn't require as much water as you calculated. Then God and plate tectonics lower the ocean floors creating boundaries to hold the flood waters ( as stated in Psalms) and moutains were raised. Maybe thats why the Mariana's Trench is so deep, it acted like a drain to hold excess flood water.

Wyz_sub10

If the flood supposedly occured a few thousand years ago, the difference in topography would be negligible with regards to mountains or the sea floor.

There are so many problems with the idea of a global flood, the situation would still be unsupported even if what you propose is true (which it is not).

You might want to start here:
Problems with a Global Flood

There are also articles dealing with specific arguments used by creationists to defend the idea of a global flood: Flood Geology

Tercel

I'm happy to give you answers if you want them.

Is God "all-knowing"? What do you understand the word to mean exactly? I say this sincerely as someone who has spent much time studying Christian history and the different things Christian theologians have said and taught. I know many Christians just blindly assert God is "omniscient" and mean that God "knows lots of stuff" without actually thinking hard about what it is they are saying. I suggest you have a browse of the part of Greg Boyd's website which deals with Open View theism. That gives a very good presentation of one (just one of many) Christian perspectives on the subject, which I think you could learn much from. I think many of your questions simply vanish in front of such an interpretation of omniscience.
Something I have come to appreciate over the years I have studied Christianity is the diversity of views within the Christian tradition. No matter what your questions on a particular doctrine are, there are Christian thinkers who have beaten you to it - often by 1000 years or more. You need to realise that Christianity is a diverse tradition which has been around for a long time and has incorporated many great thinkers - many of whom disagreed with each other over minor issues, and you need to understand that whatever branch of Christianity you have been brought up with or taught is not the limit of Christianity. If you disagree with some of the things they teach then there will assuredly be other Christians who agree with you.

Who says God damned Adam and Eve? I'm not aware of any branch of Christianity that teaches this.
Indeed, many Christians object to the idea that God damns people for things that aren't their fault. You might be interested in this speech by a theologian on the subject who very much agrees with you.

If you have a look at the link I just gave, then I think these questions would quickly vanish also.

As Greg Boyd explains (see the first link), his view of omniscience far better fits such verses. Alternatively, you could take the "Classical" view of Omniscience and believe that these verses are metaphorical or incorrect. I posted a brief essay recently here on the subject of the different ways in which different Christians have understood the Bible to be inspired and to what degree they have accepted it to be in error.

I would personally agree with such a description. God is infinite insofar as he is unbounded and uncontrained. Consider: If God is the ultimate entity, the thing that was before anything else existed - then he must be unconstrained by anything external to himself and he must be unlimited and without bound since nothing exists to bound him. We call that "infinite".

But what if God's specificness consists of the fact that he IS, that he is the very nature of existence itself and what it means to exist, that he is nothing but a self awareness - the pure knowledge of Being?
(Note this and what follows is my opinion, which is not necessarily shared by other Christians)

There are no arbitrary things about God. There is nothing about him that "could have been slightly different". A chair could have been slightly bigger or slightly darker. The universe could have had slightly more matter or what it had could have been in a slightly different place. But God couldn't have been slightly more anything. He couldn't have been slightly more God or slightly less God or slightly more unlimited etc. All he is an unconstrained self-referential reality. He can't "exist differently" because there is nothing about him that could "exist different" all he can do is exist because that's what he is. He can be distinguished from other things because other things clearly aren't God. I'm not God: I'm not the foundation of everything that exists, I'm not unlimited and unconstrained.

"omnibenevolence" is one that might get many objections from some groups of Christians. (Not me however, so I'll give you my understanding) God is largely non-interventionist. Why? Free will. He has created us to make of ourselves whatever we eventually choose to make and an independent consistent universe in which to do it in. He loves us, but with a "distinterested love" and largely does not interfere when we choose to mess up ourselves or to mess up others. He's not some terrified parent who wants to save their little daring from all the harm they can - but rather he's a loving father who wants to see his children learn and grow. To do that we suffer and understand suffering we do good and evil and understand them, we grow in compassion and love helping others who suffer. Suffering is only finite and limited. One day it will be all over. One day, no human will hurt another, no natural disaster will hurt anyone: It is temporary and limited. Even human parents often cause temporary and limited suffering to their children in order to correct them and make them better people.
Why should God object to temporary and limited suffering? Why should God not allow us to do as we want to and become whoever we want to? Why should God deny us the experience of rejection, hatred and evil? Why do you think he put the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil in the metaphorical "Garden of Eden"? Just so he could make silly laws, or so that humankind could rebel against him and learn and grow from it?

God can only be partially known. His full nature lies beyond our understanding, but we can speculate on what has been revealed.

The answer obviously depends on how you define the "goodness" of man, and on your opinion of God. Personally I'd say that God is good, and if you read the speech by the theologian I linked to above you can hopefully understand in what way I am meaning this.

Tercel

The trouble with Sunday School lessons is that they are inevitably taught by a little old lady or zealous young man who's understandings of Christian theology are like a primary school teacher's knowledge of quantum physics... No matter how many graduates the theological colleges churn out, there still aren't enough to go around.
That, and Sunday School lessons trying to teach fundamentalist Protestant theology have an uphill battle trying to make even five year olds buy into their (in my opinion) logically incoherent doctrines.