Problems with this section (Agnosticism)

by Frank Paris , Thursday, November 12, 2009, 18:52 (5276 days ago) @ David Turell

I'll break your summary up into individual statements and address each in itself.-"God is eternal and the ground of everything that exists."-True.-"From part of himself he created multi-universes including our universe, or just our universe."-True, but if there is a multiverse, he created the fundamentals of each universe. I can't make any sense of the idea that ours is the only universe that ever was or ever will be. Sounds too "Christian" to me.-In my last post, I finally got around to introducing the concept that theoretically God can break off "pieces" of himself that are more than just fundamental. Theoretically he could break off pieces that are fully conscious, like the angels and souls of Christianity. However, there is no scientific evidence that our particular universe is being moved around by such creatures. This isn't to say that God hasn't done this in other universes. They could be weirder and more "supernatural" that we could possibly imagine. It's just that our universe apparently is not. Hollywood seems to love the idea and imagines in its limited and silly ways universes like that all the time, feeding off the superstitions of people who believe that we do inhabit such a universe, which science has no need of to explain everything that it has observed.-"God is not omnipotent"-In the sense of being able to work miracles that contravene natural laws, true. In the sense that he is not the ground of the fundamentals, false.-"God is not...omniscient"-As Griffin has pointed out, God knows everything that is possible to know and in that sense is omniscient.-"God...does not know the future."-Literally, true, which means that it simply is not possible to know the future. But like an extraterrestrial intelligent species that has observed life in the galaxy for billions of years, he can assess particular situations and based on vast experience can make good estimates of the probability of certain outcomes.-"He has not controlled evolution of either the universe or of life."-True, up to the point where consciousness develops in species. Then he can act as a "lure," "tempting" individuals to move this way and that by exposing his beauty to them. The more conscious a species is, the greater can be the divine influence, and ironically, the greater freedom is experienced by the species. Ultimate freedom is experienced when God takes over the reigns completely. God has then succeeded in injecting his will into the world completely, which I believe is his ultimate goal, and individuals under his sway then experience the greatest possible freedom.-"He is watching and learning as all this develops."-True.-"As consciousness appears he encourages some type of intellectual interchange between conscious beings and himself."-It depends on what you mean by "intellectual." "Mental" would be a better word. "Intellectual" has the connotation of "discursive." I'm not sure to what extent we can receive "dictation" from God, although perhaps we can. Perhaps that's what great artists experience, and what I was trying to say when in listening to certain works of Bach, I thought, "When Bach took up his pen, God took over." And look at the freedom that is expressed in his work!-It might also be possible for God to encourage some type of mental interchange between independent conscious beings, with himself as an intermediary. Maybe God is involved in telepathic communication, if such a thing exists.