DEBATE: Limited vs. Unlimited God

I haven't a clue what you are talking about.  English for dummies is the best way to communicate with me.

Sorry, all I am saying is that if God had a perfect grasp of the physical laws that operate here on Earth, then he could mentally simulate how all those body forms would work out and not have to actually bring them into existence.

I think there were too many possibilities, and God said, "Let's just experiment a bit".

I'm less than convinced that a single entity - i.e. God - did all the designing. For example there are some ghastly predator-prey competitions in the natural world and if God helped both sides then that doesn't put him in a good light.

Maybe way back, there were just a lot of disembodied spirits - if we are immortal spirits, then we were maybe part of that group. Eventually we as a group started to tinker with ways to create a physical existence.....

David

I'm less than convinced that a single entity - i.e. God - did all the designing. For example there are some ghastly predator-prey competitions in the natural world and if God helped both sides then that doesn't put him in a good light.

My interpretation of Genesis is that after mankind sinned, the Kingdom of Heaven had to separate from the physical kingdom and that left the creation vulnerable to natural chaos, entropy, adaptation of various kinds, corruption etc.  I don't believe God created it this way.

I think there were too many possibilities, and God said, "Let's just experiment a bit".

Ah, I am with you here.

My interpretation of Genesis is that after mankind sinned, the Kingdom of Heaven had to separate from the physical kingdom and that left the creation vulnerable to natural chaos, entropy, adaptation of various kinds, corruption etc.  I don't believe God created it this way.

Well I'm haven't been a Christian since about 1970, I'm not sure about you. That means that I don't treat the Bible as in any way authoritative, although it does seem to contain some interesting hints. For example, a number of biblical characters are reported to have undergone NDE's.

I don't really believe in 'sin' in the biblical sense - I mean mankind can't 'sin' in some collective sense - it sounds grand but it really doesn't make sense.

That is not to say there aren't an awful lot of bad people around, attracted like wasps to a honey pot to money and political power.

Even they arguably don't deserve eternal torture as specified in the Bible.

David

I mean I did post this in Philosophy.


Yeah this gets into complicated questions about who/what "God" is. I do think there is a "Limited God" but I don't know how "Limited". Is God an Awareness and merely that, does God have moral cares or is just concerned about Order, is God a loving parent but such a part of Creation He/She/It cannot just "fix" everything...

The God of Classical Theism seems like one that has had a lot of Proof of God pointing toward, with some proofs seeming like nonsense and others making me think...but this entity is so remote it seems more like a metaphysical lynchpin than what we think of as "God". Plotinus even said the "One" isn't meant to be worshiped because by [its] very nature it wasn't going to respond to our cares...

And as you say if God's body is literally creation, in a Pandeist/Pantheist/Panentheist sense it gets even more tricky.

I have a vague notion of what my concept of God might be.

I imagine this proto-consciousness which is self-aware but is also unaware of any other consciousness like itself. Perhaps it has already evolved to the point of self-awareness and has continued to evolve by creating dissociated but not separate conscious entities which are pert of the original and singular consciousness but are endowed, from their point of perception, with free will and individuality. This is how and why that which we call God (but all seem to have a different understanding of what "God" is) evolves and becomes ever more aware. How it comes to know itself.

Ideas such as worship and obedience are borrowed from the kind of feudal hierarchy that developed among human societies. If there is a God, then that God must be all powerful and all human kings and rulers must be subservient. If one has to bend a knee to a human lord, then we must prostrate ourselves before the heavenly Lord. It is all so in-keeping with human social structures and has so corrupted the human perception of a creator God. 

I do tend towards the assertion that the fundamental creative force is Love and that is what we come from and must return to. Thus terms like worship, sacrifice and God-fearing make absolutely no sense to me. How did such a simple message get so corrupted?

1 John 4:8
He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

Following on from my immediately previous post I should add, to bring the discussion back to the original question that, in my view, God is limited to itself but unlimited in its creative scope within itself. Something like saying that human imagination is unlimited. That the mind has no boundaries.

I guess that solipsism applies to God but not to its creations. My mind is part of the mind of God but is not singular because there are countless other dissociated minds which track their own course while always being part of the whole. God thinks my thoughts even though I don't think God's thoughts.

I do find the hubris us human's have regarding our own intelligence to be interesting.

Conversations like these, where we have no real ability to say anything meaningful on the topic, doesn't seem to stop us from trying to extrapolate our 'logic' and existing evidence to offer an opinion.  I can't help but see the opinions as childlike however.

I do find the hubris us human's have regarding our own intelligence to be interesting.

Conversations like these, where we have no real ability to say anything meaningful on the topic, doesn't seem to stop us from trying to extrapolate our 'logic' and existing evidence to offer an opinion.  I can't help but see the opinions as childlike however.

Heh, I feel the opposite. I think these questions are interesting because there's no definite conclusion to be drawn.

Though I do find speculation meaningful...or at least entertaining...so that may be where we differ.

Heh, I feel the opposite. I think these questions are interesting because there's no definite conclusion to be drawn.

Though I do find speculation meaningful...or at least entertaining...so that may be where we differ.

Indeed. Isn't that the point of a discussion forum?

Indeed. Isn't that the point of a discussion forum?

I guess.  Just isn't my type of 'discussion'.  Trying to make logical statements about the nature of something that, if real, is almost certainly beyond our ability to fathom (i.e., our 'logic' would seem a near useless explanatory instrument in this case).  Just seems a bit incoherent.