Wednesday, July 22, 2009

The Unmoving Mover

I realize I haven't done much lately as far as posting videos or making blog entries. That got me thinking about the definitions I'm often hearing about "God". Hopefully you'll see the connection in a minute.

Not only is the traditional concept of God a logically self-contradictory idea (consciousness without matter, life without birth or death, complexity without evolution, simultaneously all-knowing and all-powerful), it also produces static divinity.

A Static God
If God is everywhere, then there is nowhere he can go. I have the freedom to sit in that chair, but God doesn't because he's already in it. He is omnipresent and omnidirectional . If he knows everything already, then there's nothing he can learn (or change). He can't "want" something, because he's supposed to be perfect (and you can't want what you lack). He is essentially an unchanging, unmoving, inactive idea; an everything and a nothing all at once. Add one to the self-contradictory list.

The theists will disagree, but the basic God-triangle (omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent) produces a static deity. The omnipotence paradox and the omnipotence-omniscience paradox show how God is restricted by simply applying the "omni-" attribute. Another simpler way to look at it is the phrase "a expert of everything is an expert of nothing". You can't judge your expertise against anything if you're already counting everything. Maybe all that means to you is that your god is super-powerful, but to me that means he can't change. Change is good and necessary, especially in a being that's supposed to be a healthy judge.


-STA

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