Wednesday, February 14, 2007

God cannot create a burrito so big even He cannot eat it.

I've been kicking this idea around in my head for a while now, and what better open space to shovel it onto than my tedious blog.

One of my bosses, the bigger of the two, is pretty religious. Very in fact. She gave all of her employees a copy of this book that means a lot to her. It's all about God's love and the value of being moral and virtuous. I'm immediately turned off, but it's important for me not to judge. That paradox established, I started reading, and discovered that this writer is very eloquent, very genuine and very pleasing. Yet, I still have one fundamental flaw with the writer's conception of God, and it's the same criticism i have of most conceptions of God. God "loves us", "pays attention to us", "listens to us", is "always there, we just have to find Him", and is always trying to get us to resist the "enemy" (Satan). Aside from the fact that I think an evil force in the world is silly and juvenile, I find the idea of a God who is on one hand completely benevolent and at the same time good and capable of "listening to us" to be unreasonable. Here's why:

If we assume that God is completely benevolent, then God must be omnipotent. If God were simply very powerful and good natured, God would be potentially fallible. If we have the faith that God is always 100% good all the time, God must not be capable of being governed by any force which could cloud Its judgment.

So, if God is omnipotent, there is nothing greater than God. God is the Alpha and the Omega. God cannot be influenced by anything. If God were vulnerable to being "made angry" or "being pleased", there is some force of the universe capable of acting on God. Something is influencing what God thinks and feels. If this were true, God is not all powerful. God's behavior or thoughts would be subject to forces beyond God's control.

For that matter, God can't "do" or "think" anything at all, since those too would limit God in some way. If God "did something" there would be something that God "did not do". Laws of physics would be in play allowing God to be a certain way and not another. An all-powerful being cannot exist in a world where any governing laws or categories exist outside of It, or those the forces which create and govern those laws and categories are more paramount that God.

So, God cannot love and not hate independently. God must simultaneously love and hate at all times. God must at all times be all things. In fact, there can be no physical separation of anything from God, else whatever separates the two is a force greater than God.

God cannot exist in a world, because in that world there would be existence without God and physical separation from God. God would not be omnipotent. If we concretize God in any way, we establish that God in fact has an boundary, an end. God would not be omnipotent.

It can't even really be "good" or"evil" and remain all-powerful, since both would have to be God. God certainly cannot be omnipotent if it has a polar opposite.

All this sounds like I'm making a go at proving God doesn't exist. Quite the contrary. I've found that I have no problem with a benevolent, omnipotent, all powerful being. It just doesn't run the world. It literally is the world, everything in it, and the entire universe. It is time and timelessness and has no beginning or end.

This is pretty close to there being no God though. For me, if there is a God or isn't, it makes no difference. The world is the same. We either say that there is a God and it's everything, or we say there isn't a God and the world remains entirely the same.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree with you on most counts; the only problem I have with people's conception of God is that they insist on attributing principles that humans can understand to describe said God. If God is beyond our understanding, what is the point of trying to describe it? And if beyond understanding, does anyone have the right to claim anything about God? Doesn't make sense to me, especially after Kierkegaard.

By this right it actually could be safe to say God can love and hate independently, can totally take on any and all paradoxes and let it be true, since he's supposed to be beyond human understanding. I have a problem with this somewhat since I am a fan of metaphysics, and I like logic. It helps. Usually.

In these regards, I'm in the same boat as you in that I just don't understand why the people who insist on faith continually use logic to help define it. I thought, "You just gotta believe, man."

Also, I don't think an evil force in the world is silly and juvenile. I think it's AWESOME. ;)

Anonymous said...

Just wanted to let you know your posts are being read.

And on another note, you have an amazingly complex and sharp way of thinking. Not only this, but when we were having our conversation on male liberation last night, you had a very clear and concise view of what you thought. I'm sure I'd be on the topic of God and the nature of good and evil, then I'd begin thinking about how much I want a bowl of Hurry Curry Katsukaree and who's gonna be revealed as the next Cylon on BSG.