by jadaco » Wed Jan 16, 2008 3:57 pm
Cool. I agree in a lot of ways. I was having a similar conversation about this (free will relating to happiness, and conflicts with omniscience) a couple nights ago.
First off, let me address this, "We know God exists, so how can we explain this obvious fact without contradicting ourselves or the Universe we live in?" Close, but this quote gives a more accurate summary:
"In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an Atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God. I think that generally (and more and more as I grow older), but not always, that an Agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind."
- Charles Darwin
That said, my view is a little less specific to God, lying in the more general "intelligent design" argument. I don't think the view has to try to avoid contradicting ourselves or the Universe, considering the complexity of each serve as the raw evidence in that view. Darwin went on to bring up some interesting conflicts with intelligent design that I'd love to talk about, but I don't want to sidetrack too far from the original point, and I somewhat address those potential conflicts below.
I think the issue lies in people trying to attribute God with everything (or everything they want him to be). Problem is, how could anything be everything at once without conflicting with itself in some ways? Also, does "all-knowing" mean he knows everything that's going to happen, or just that he knows everything that can happen (which still has some limits)? None of this is new, but I don't think it often gets the weight it deserves in people's minds before they move onto other concepts. Granted, this is where you venture into areas that could be considered beyond our intellect. Still, I roll my eyes at the classic, "our imperfect minds can't fully understand God" response when used as a cop out.
Can God comprehend existence without God? Maybe that's the whole point. People get caught up in righteousness and hell fire, but could it just be the difference between presence and absence? If God made humans "in his image," is that possibly the point of free will? Could that image be more about choice and self-awareness than physical appearance or some subjective idea of purity?
I'm jumping around, but the problem I see with people often saying that God could have created lots of happy people with free will is that it assumes God created people just to be happy. That sometimes gets, "well if not then God's an ass hole," and hey, maybe that's the case. I just can't help but think that an attempt at combining free will and happiness still results in telling people what happiness is, which conflicts with true free will. People seem to have the capacity to be as good or bad, happy or otherwise, as they want to be. And if there's some higher intellect behind it, is it necessarily just some sick experiment, or as simple as an issue of "happy or not"?
If there's a God, is it possible to be happy entirely without him? Is it possible that he wants to know that too? There are some notions going on from this relating to a dimensional hierarchy, but I've blathered on long enough for one post.
On the other side of the screen, it all looks so easy.