What do you think?
Is God capable of learning anything?
by nicolaou 37 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
-
-
daystar
It depends upon what you mean by "God". I'm not being snarky here. But you'll have to define the term at least a bit first.
-
Narkissos
I guess so, but every time he learns something he pretends he knew it all the time.
-
nicolaou
Well there is no god of course, I suppose I was just trying to make the deists and believers in an 'Almighty Creator/God of the Bible' think a little bit. I mean if he cannot learn anything then how can anyone believe he won't make the same mistakes again?
If he can learn would does that say for his supposed omniscience?
-
bikerchic
Isn't God all knowing?
What could he possibly learn from us mere mortals?
The bigger question:
Is there a God?
-
BlackSwan of Memphis
Daystar has a good point:
Define God/dess (god/dess) first and then we can go from there.
It depends on the perception of what/who God is before we can answer the question.
I talked with someone else about this recently and they seem to think there is no reason even biblically why God can't learn.
If a person believes that God means all knowing, never erring being, then no, God to that person would not be something/one that can learn.
If a person believes that God is a term to describe something/one that is some form of conscious energy that sparked the universe than it leaves room open for just about anything I guess.
meagan
-
daystar
See, my concept of what God is is so different as to make him not God by most definitions. Something I call God may as well just be called Everything Which Is and Is Not, the All, the Nothing, or simpy It, and bears very little resemblance to the God that most people are thinking about when they say that word.
In that way, It contains everything, is everything, etc. If my conceptual God existed objectively, your question would be illogical as It contains the "veils" of nonexistence or unmanifestation as well as absolutely everything else.
I guess this god has more in common with The Force than the Judeo-Christin God.
Then again, this god really doesn't exist any more than any other god, as anything more than an image upon a projector screen.
-
BlackSwan of Memphis
I guess this god has more in common with The Force than the Judeo-Christin God.
Agreed.
So can the Judeo-Christian God learn? I don't see why not. If according to the bible we were made in the image of God and we continue to expand our knowledge why couldn't God continue to do the same?
meagan
-
Terry
Can't deal with God per se.
I can deal with what has become "God".
Primitive man could not properly comprehend the forces of nature to which he was exposed.
Things happened. Why?
Man is pretty self-involved. Man is an agency for change. Man causes things to happen.
Pretty soon the concept of "all-things-which-happen-do-so-because-of-agency" arose.
Man attributed happenings to agents of intelligent (invisible)cause.
Man could dream. In man's dreams he could "see" people who had died. It became easy to consider that life could still be "life" beyond death. If so, there could be other kinds of life and other kinds of intelligent society controlled and headed by something like a supreme leader.
This is the God we have inherited from our mythic past.
Local occurances could be "because of" local deity; local gods.
It was a gradual development of man's god-consciousness which led him to believe god was not numerous.
(Even Christendom clings to a self-contained multiplicity).
As man's view of god has changed; so has man's description of God.
Man learns from experience. Man learns from trial and error.
The description of God in the Garden of Eden is a primitive view of a God who walks and talks and is surprised and expresses all sorts of human emotions.
As time passes God becomes more distant and works through agents such as angels and prophets.
Today we don't hear anything at all from God and deal only with agency and hearsay.
I said all the above so that I could answer the question :Is God capable of learning anything?
The answer is this. Mankind today has evolved a superhero God. God has to rival the best science has to offer. Science is predictive. So must God be. The tension comes from having to explain why God allows evil. That is presented as a learning process FOR MAN vis a vis God.
Man learns of God and then chooses.
What God learns devolves down to this: what will man's choice be?
Since man is considered as "fallen" you might say that God waits around trying to anticipate how crazy mankind will respond to his offer of clemency.
GOD is a useful construct for society. With it, through faith, mankind can "relax" the fear that chaos controls the destiny of the universe. Man can then engage in a take-it-or-leave-it dance with himself as to how deeply he buys in to surrender to the God concept.
Usually it is only by his words and fantasy that man surrenders. When reality intrudes and push comes to shove there is little doubt man abandons God except in the abstract as a banner and slogan.
God learns only what man learns: MAN is strongest when weak.
T.
-
kid-A
Given that god is a projection of the human psyche and that there are literally thousands of gods that have been dreamed up by man througout hominid evolution, it can certainly be said
that a given 'god' can evolve according to the prerogatives of the religion or culture that defines it's mandates and 'sacred' pronouncements. Certainly the god depicted in the gospels has a dramatically different character and temperment from the one depicted in the old testament.
However, I believe any christian would argue that god, as an eternal being with no beginning and no end, would not be capable of 'learning' any new information since it would inevitably already know any possible future event or development.