From: Howard J. Van Till (hvantill@chartermi.net)
Date: Thu May 15 2003 - 09:13:36 EDT
>From: "D. F. Siemens, Jr." <dfsiemensjr@juno.com>
> .... But little men want to have a deity that they can
> understand.
Dave, are we not all on an earnest quest to come to a richer understanding
of God? Does quest that really diminish our humanity?
> So they claim that God cannot know the future because our
> experiential knowledge ends at the present moment.
Is it really the case that the only reason a person might have for positing
such an idea is the limitation of our own personal experience? Is it only
"little men" who portray God as the Creator of a universe that has been
given such authentic being and such genuine freedom that not even God can
know in advance what these authentic and free beings will do?
> But God is
> not me written bigger and maybe a little better, for I think well of
> myself ;-)
Perhaps the God who is "us writ large" is something like this:
We humans value power, so God must be omnipotent -- all powerful, able to
overpower and control any other being.
We humans value the capacity to act, so God must be omnicompetent -- able to
do anything.
We humans value knowledge, so God must be omniscient -- knowing everything,
even the outcome of contingent events that have not yet occurred.
We humans value our presence in a place, so God must be omnipresent --
everywhere.
Etc.
Howard Van Till
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