Universal sovereignty on trial

by Factfulness 169 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  slimboyfat

  In biology organisms have tended to get more complex over time and animals with larger and more complex brains seem to be more intelligent. But are we correct to infer from this that if God exists that he is simply a much more complex being than we are? What does “complex” really mean when you talk about God? Presumably it does not mean God has a larger or more complex brain. For many who believe in God he is not a “thing” that can be described in comparison with “things” in our experience. He stands outside of the universe, outside matter, outside time, outside of “being” as such. This is how God can be said not to be an added complication to reality as we know it, because he stands outside reality as such. He crafted reality and is not subject to it.

  It's like you have a classroom full of 20 children left to their own devices and chaos rules. I suggest we add one more, and you say that will only add to the chaos. But I say let the additional one be a teacher and not a child. In this case the addition of another does not add to the chaos but instead solves it. In a similar way, adding God to our understanding of the world does not add complication, but instead provides order and coherence.
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  Finkelstein

  Being that god is a man made conceptual ideology it cant hold sovereignty over anything except its own inherent concept..
  
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  nicolaou

  He (god) stands outside of the universe, outside matter, outside time, outside of “being” as such. This is how God can be said not to be an added complication to reality as we know it, because he stands outside reality as such. He crafted reality and is not subject to it.

  Here we go . . again. Slimboys Teflon God™. Perfectly crafted so that no definition can stick to it.
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  Coded Logic

  For many who believe in God . . . he stands outside of the universe, outside matter, outside time, outside of “being” as such.
  -SBF

  Surely you'd agree this is a case of Special Pleading. When we talk about existence we are necessarily describing something that is both local and temporal. To say that something "existed no-where for zero seconds" would be the same thing as describing something that doesn't exist.
  

  If Theist want to put forth the proposition that God "exists" outside of space and time then they need to first demonstrate that such a thing is possible - AND THEN they can use that as an explanation. Not before.
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  Finkelstein

  Then god rests only in the human imagination
  
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  slimboyfat

  Yes some who believe in God find the word “exists” problematic because it seems limiting. If God is real he is likely outside time, space, and being as we understand them.

  The idea that the universe and all its laws can exist without something outside of it causing it and sustaining it seems like special pleading.

  Incidentally I argue for God being real, but the particular God I am interested in is the God revealed in the Bible.
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  Finkelstein

  but the particular God I am interested in is the God revealed in the Bible.

  Just another god of many envisioned and imagined by the ancients.

  But I guess because one civilization wrote about what their god and what it had done and the supposed active relationship their god had with them, this particular god is therefore more real and believable.

  God bless Allah and his scribed visionaries
  
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  slimboyfat

  Jehovah stands out because, as Paul says in Ephesians, all families of the earth owe their name to Jehovah.

  Eph 3:14 For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name.
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  nicolaou

  Now you're just goading Slim'. I've made a dozen or more responses to this thread and I've tried to remain civil and on-topic.

  Push someone else's buttons, I'm out.
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  slimboyfat

  You are welcome to your opinion nic. But if I can observe, your conception of what others are able to think or contemplate, without being categorised as ‘taking the piss’ seems to be very narrow indeed. If you think I stand outside the acceptable spectrum of reasonable conversation, then I probably stand in the company of far more than 50% of humanity whose beliefs on God and the supernatural are more exotic and definite than my own. I didn’t ask you to engage with me, but your insistence that I do so on your terms, or be ruled out of order, is an attempt at controlling what it is allowable to think. I’ve made no such restriction on how you should express yourself in order to be worth engaging with.