Quotes: Karen Owens on God's Attributes

Thanks for the link! I have thought of that although I did not know there was an entire school of thought on it (I didn't think there was enough support in the scripture for it).

I agree that viewing omnipotence in the manner of process theology does negate this contradiction to some extent - however it still begs the question, omniscient God must know all things and in knowing all things, He must also know all possibilities and combinations to these possibilities.

Perhaps the largest problem with my argument is simply that omniscience assumes an unchanging nature. This is because to know everything assumes that one also knows the best course of being yet a changing nature shows adjustment to fit a situation (thereby assuming a failure to foresee). Of course, this is a problem with my argument because it assumes that omniscience means that God could grasp the best possible course of being and therefore need not actually adjust because He already knew and had the best nature to address these possibilities. (The concept of God changing also begins to sound like theo-evolution - the evolution of God - in process theology).

Of course, the argument for process theology only works by assuming that there is such a thing as free will in the first place (and God has to persuade to make people do what He wants). The three texts of the major monotheistic religions blatantly speak of determinism while making no reference to free will (in fact, if He insists in His persuasion, it certainly blurs into determinism... for who can resist God's persuasion?).

I was a very devout Christian before and actually was a staunch creationist and determinist, so forgive me for using Biblical Christian examples - Romans 9 is a good discourse of determinism and for a one-liner there is Revelations 13:8. Furthermore, if He left it all to possibilities and probabilities, it would mean that He cannot guarantee His prophecies (strangely, the theory of evolution utilises possibilities and probabilities in a more effective manner).

When I was a strong believer, I always believed that the answers were always in the text because omniscient God already knows what needs to be said to convince us all (of course, God did make several edits to the Holy scriptures through the use of His councils... but anyway...). I justified my belief in determinism simply by knowing God knows everything, therefore whatever He determines is certainly for the better good which is better than any number of humans can ever make it.

I feel that sometimes people begin to add fictional attributes and theories to justify the actions of God when in reality He has stated clearly his attributes and philosophies in the scriptures. Indeed, who has the right to judge and justify God's work, actions, and reasoning? He is what He is and as devout followers, one should understand God within the realm of what He has given us to understand Him by - instead of making things up to satisfy our conscience.

Of course, this is only addressing the Christian God specifically and monotheistic religions in general (I know too little about polytheistic religions to comment on them) - if we decide to give them attributes and justifications they never required, then they are no longer the same God that the texts mention.

You make some really good points and I really enjoy all of them! Your note on the Christian God being all paradox is indeed supported by the fact that He seems starkly different between the Old Testament and New Testament. Of course, by considering yourself as a panentheist, paradox comes readily to the nature of God and it is a very refreshing take on the issue to me!

Perhaps many of my arguments may be problematic because they also stem from the fact that I have defined certain things in certain ways only because they seem odd when put in any other way. You noted an extremely interesting concept that free will could simply be that one is the source of one's action. Although it does very well to marry determinism and free will together, it just seems that the concept of free will becomes a counterproductive philosophy to the understanding of God when applied thus.

Certainly, I understand the concept of "I freely choose to act though these actions are predetermined" but then the concept is a misnomer. One is not free unless one is allowed the option of alternative actions (as Dostoevsky's work notes, it is the freedom of choice that allows us to display moral character). If these actions are already determined and unchangeable, then the freedom of choice becomes only an illusion because everything has been predetermined (including the information you will have to make your decision with, which will ultimately lead to the predetermined act).

I haven't read the work in a while but I recall that it helped me to see that the churches today are no different from the Grand Inquisitor (that was, of course, his point during his day as well). Nonetheless, your nice summary gave me a memory jog, LOL! I felt, however, that one of the major failings of the text is simply that it confuses where free will and determinism lie in the continuum. In my reading of the Bible, it is humans that seek free will and God that denies it from them - not the other way around.

It's hard to misinterpret Revelations 13:8: those who will ascend to heaven have been predetermined as the Calvinists held - whatever "freedom to believe" one has is an illusion as those who are not in the book will be led away in some "manner of choice" before their lives are over... these individuals will certainly choose to lead themselves away from the kingdom of heaven and of course God has known that, which is not a problem at all in my opinion, but it is still determinism. (^__^")

As for the point on scripture - the problem is simply that that is all we have to go by to frame our views of God. I agree that one can experience God directly through the world around us, but it is the book that gives meaning to our experiences of God and how we come to understand him.

If we were told a different thing and used a different book, the same world would give us the experiences and understandings of a different entity. If one were brought up on science, the natural world will make you see the beauty of nature as is while if you were brought up on the Quran, it would evoke feelings of the great Allah. This is why that book is so important because it frames our complete understanding of God and the wonders of the world.

To take your question and put it into my view - the world is the way we come to experience God in our lives but the Bible is how we come to know Him for who He is. This is why tagging fictional attributes along, or twisting His words so that we could feel at peace with our conscience, is changing the nature of God.

I loved Him for who He was and followed Him unquestionably - things that people felt compelled to justify away with concepts He never mentioned were things I accepted wholeheartedly that they were for the sake of the world that they have to be so. I carried my Bible with me everywhere and made no secret of it - it would be the top book on my textbooks in secondary school and university. That was until two separate churches came along and messed me up. How could so loving a King allow his disciples to spew so much hatred for those He came to save? And they dared reference the Holy Book to extend their hatred! That shocked me into uncertainty...

Anyhow, to relate back to your final question, I think I will have the great Gandhi speak on my behalf here: "I consider myself a Hindu, Christian, Moslem, Jew, Buddhist and Confucian."

Thanks again for your insightful comments! Always pleasure to read.

LOL, well, it was not random that you found this blog - though it was by your own choice, it was already determined! (^__^)

I understand your preference for determined over predetermined, but I see the "pre" as simply something that was already known before the event occurred. Certainly, I can't see how God works within the fabric of time either but in our own chronology - He has known all things about us and thus our actions are determined because of the options that will be presented to us.

In other words, we will freely choose our actions from whatever is presented to us. In that way, the experiences we have are already determined and basing our actions on these experiences, our actions are ultimately predictable. This is the cornerstone of the social sciences - that given the known conditions and pressures, human and animal behaviour is predictable (if it were completely random then the social sciences cannot exist).

In that way, I prefer predetermined because it seems to "call a spade a spade". We cannot act as if our actions are predetermined only because we cannot know what has been predetermined for us - our very thoughts on predeterminism are themselves determined. However, something also needs to be said for things that influence our actions - and it is external influences (and even internal, considering biological causes of manifest action) that ultimately shape who we are, what we do, and how we think in a predictable fashion.

It is in that manner then that determinism becomes confusing because God himself will know and understand why some stay the path while others stray. Perhaps where I differ from your view is that I see one's ability to cause as caused by other causes. How we cause (or react) in response to something caused unto us is determined by previous causal factors. To give a silly example, if one were to slap me on the right cheek and I was to be influenced by Old Testament teachings (this is the underlying cause) - I'd slap him right back; but if I was influenced by New Testament teachings I would turn my left cheek (or if I properly adopted the teachings of aikido - I'd turn and run!).

It is this string of causation that He knows of that makes the argument that He allows us to freely choose confusing. If He knows all the influences that go into making our decision, He will also understand why people (even very good people) stray sometimes. I believe that the argument that people are making when they say He *makes* us believe comes from the difficult, and at times coercive, choice we have to make - to believe in Christ, or not to believe? Assuming you don't, then you are toast if what He says is true - but the irony is that He knew very clearly why you chose to not go to Him.

To put it in another way: when asked by others, what would you say when you die and see God in front of you asking (a rhetorical question of course!) "Why didn't you believe in Me?", philosopher Bertrand Russell famously replied, "Not enough evidence God, not enough evidence." (Again, God already knew the causal paths to Russell's reasoning and why he did not choose Him - Russell made an honest inquiry to find God and instead of jumping into blind faith, he found no reasonable evidence to support God's existence).

Indeed, one of the founding fathers of America, Thomas Jefferson, put it more succinctly, "Question even the existence of God. If there by one, he must approve the homage of reason over that of blind-folded fear." Unlike Russell, Jefferson's inquiry found the Christian God but the point stands that God must surely approve of an honest inquiry over blind faith (thereby having us think for ourselves).

Yet the consequences of an honest inquiry that leads one to the negative is horrifying (if not for the gnashing of teeth)! It is one thing to allow an honest search for "truth" with no strings attached but quite another to favour one outcome of the inquiry over another (it's like research on the health risks of tobacco funded by the tobacco lobby!).

Certainly, you are "free to choose", but your choices are determined because the factors going into your decision is already known (certainly, God may also know what subtle knowledge to add in to influence your decision in the other direction - but He won't do it because He wants you to come to the conclusion by your own freedom). If you never encounter what you needed to reach the conclusion of God, then you've pretty much done yourself in. But is free will to blame for that? Could He not understand the reasons you rejected Him?

In many ways, the concept of free will that is proposed by your insightful comment has a striking resemblance to watching a movie or reading a book. The characters have their reasons to act the way they act, and you understand the information they use to determine their actions, but you can't intervene (let's say you have the power to intervene, but you don't). In some stories, you know the character will triumph while in others you know that the characters are leading themselves to their own demise - basically, you know what's going to happen. But the essential part is that you can understand why the character did what they did.

In the movie or book scenario, many Christians I know usually put God in the director's or author's seat (which would certainly be predeterminism with intervention!) but of course, it seems our discussion agrees that He is in a special audience seat (one that can influence the story if he wanted, but does not - perhaps like a "test panel"). The point is simply this though - seeing how the characters' lives unfold, we come to understand their actions and we can come to understand their plight. The Christian God, on the other, displays no such understanding as He requires that their plight causally lead them to Christ otherwise it doesn't matter how the story ends.

This is likely why people feel that God *makes* us believe in Him and again, gives us the false impression of free will (since there is a preferred outcome to the choices made). Granted, I understand that your definition of free will is different from mine (I truly enjoy this discussion we are having too!), but I hope you understand where I am coming from when I say the concept of free will seems like an counter-productive tag to the Christian reasoning.

I have to say though that I may have unintentionally misled you (sorry!) because I also identify with more than religion. Confucianism is not really a religion because it emphasises secularity and that is why I am glad that Gandhi had it in there (may I ask why you feel Confucianism doesn't carry the same wisdom though? I am brought up in Chinese culture where it's semi-prevalent and didn't know there was something "special" about it, LOL - don't worry, it's excessively hard to offend me in anything, so please feel free to say anything on the topic!).

To clarify my position, I also identify with agnosticism, atheism, philosophy, science and so on and so forth as methods to view the world with. Each have their merits and open up funky possibilities to understand our natural world, not all of them requiring the experience of the divine. Perhaps this post may clarify my position further on these things. (^__^")

I must agree with the importance of practicality and spiritual development, though what that means is certainly a very subjective opinion. Thank you again for all your wise comments! They are very thought-provoking and it's a great pleasure to be in this discussion (believe it or not, despite my questioning I teach Sunday school with a passion).

I have felt compelled to make Christians (perhaps because of my history with the religion) think a little more about their beliefs because sometimes they sit there and willingly absorb frightening information and biases from the churches. I do offer up difficult questions that throw people off course sometimes (except the kids, textbook definitions and arguments for them until they are more mature!) but I feel it's necessary if they are to be serious about their personal experiences with God.

For me, I try to adopt everything and in doing that, I have ultimately adopted nothing (this is, of course, the consequence of relativism)...

On a side note, if you don't mind, I'd added you to my neighbourhood. I am so envious that you get to play BioShock (my computer is too slow and I only have a PS3 (and within the next week, I'll get my Wii) - X360 support is too poor and unreliable in Asia as well as the fact the machine is known to die a lot... that's the main reason why it's not doing well over here, that and the Americano-centric games... gamers here don't generally enjoy console FPS)! Muse is a joy to listen to as well! (^__^)v

LOL, somehow it seems we are arguing only about semantics and definitions because the more I read your comments, the more I realise our beliefs on religion have plenty of overlap and many of our differences seem in some way only to be how we define things.

Your view of God and the movies is very refreshing. Would you say that, perhaps, God is the script for the movie? It is the script that breathes life into the world and characters that constitute the movie, though character roles are born and their life experiences set - they have to interpret it for themselves. In many ways, the script is the movie but also transcends it (I grasp this but somehow cannot place it properly into words... ugh, writer's block for a non-writer!).

As with the rejection of the idea that people will be sent to Hell - I completely agree with you. I was really only playing the devil's advocate when portraying Him as so heartless and set in stone. I like how you placed Christianity in our lives, although I have to admit that it is hard not to sometimes give the Bible a rather literal interpretation.

I find that, like you, my understanding of Christianity is slightly different from what is taught by the churches (perhaps I am going to the wrong ones?) and indeed, I still try to live by Christ's examples because the lessons of compassion and mercy are shining examples of what it means to be human (speaking personally, of course).

As for Confucianism, it is about social order - to me, it is ultimately a philosophy of relationships. Perhaps it is difficult to see transcendence in Confucian terms because it does not necessarily have a central theme or object that is readily understandable. Confucianism encompasses a total world view that requires individuals to know their relational roles in society in order to foster a harmonious society. It is partaking and adopting these roles that give the sense of transcendence - a feeling of belonging and acceptance of one's place in the world (a little bit like accepting determinism, perhaps) as well as understanding the structural workings of the social and natural world. In some sense, it could be said that transcendence occurs with the consciousness of being in Confucianism.

I do understand your position as a panentheist and thus why almost everything can lead to an experience of the divine. But I find that to be only a matter of defining a feeling because of how we understand what divinity means. If we were to reassign that feeling to a term called "wowness" - then we would surely be calling the feeling "wowness" and won't associate it to anything divine per se (again, this may be just a matter of semantics).

This concept comes from the idea that different cultures experience emotions differently and these different ways of understanding these feelings lead to different thoughts on the same feeling (take the concept of happiness for example, it's not as universally understood as people might think - how people have understood it and what people have associated to it changes across time and culture. It is important to separate oneself from Western conceptions of these thought processes if one is to really understand other cultural views, there has been too much of a dominance by Western views – which is understandable, given the success of historical conquest and today, globalisation).

In the same way, people who have an experience of divinity must understand what it means and define it as such before they could experience it as divinity (being well-versed in religious thought makes that feeling more readily accessible and understandable). This is what I meant when I said that not all methods of viewing the world lead to the experience of the divine.

Thought experiments into evolution led me to experience the beauty of the natural world without eliciting feelings of the divine, but rather an enlightening awe and appreciation of the simplicity of this seemingly complex world. One could choose to call that feeling divinity, but using only the mental framework provided there is no language to connect the feeling of awe to divinity (in other words, the feeling can easily be associated with something not divine under that mental framework). Thought experiments into Buddhism also didn't elicit a feeling of divinity although experiments into Christianity did elicit that awesome feeling of how wonderful a world God had created. It may seem bizarre but I use thought experiments because I believe it is only through "total immersion" that something foreign can be grasped. Thus, in these experiments I do my best to tune my mindset towards those beliefs and use their explanations to define the world. It took me years to manage to do this, but it’s amazing how many new worlds it has opened up to me.

As for the concept of a Universal Truth - I cannot believe in it only because it hampers the ability to fully understand anything beyond what one seeks as a universal truth. To me, it is not ineffable - it simply does not exist. In all my studies, I have failed to find any examples of a universal agreement on anything - including the often-touted "killing is a universally bad thing". Sadly, it's not. There were (and in some ways, still are) cultures that didn't see anything wrong with taking innocent life because of how they structured their understanding of the world (we may call them “deranged” or “disingenuous” but that’s only because we are imposing our beliefs of “universal truth” on them – if they were to have power and the tables would be turned then our “universal truth” would be shattered and we would be labelled “deranged” or “disingenuous”).

From experience, it seems that taking different views on the same topic and seeing where it points to tends to lead to arrows pointing all over the place (these arrows will also change in the discourse of time as cultures intermingle and wrestle for dominance in their spatial limits). Even the "basic needs" of humans (food, shelter and all the rest of it) have no agreement. It is in this way that I feel the concept of a Universal Truth is more of a hindrance to our understanding of other cultures because it leads us to believe their reasoning must definitely point to some sort of similar truth when in reality it may not.

There is a great deal of anthropological studies that offer views from another culture and the way they see things can be mind-blowing sometimes (even things that we may consider obvious – there is a Hawaiian seafaring tribe that understands the motions of the sea by believing that the islands are bobbing up and down thus causing disturbances in the body of water, people have introduced scientific reasoning about the gravitational pull of the moon to them but they are quite happy with their own concept because it works for them – they have an amazing ability to tell where there is land in open water by observing movements of the sea as if they had in-built compasses – unfortunately, they will die out within two generations (there were only about eight of them left) and that wisdom may become lost with the last of them).

These differences have effects on physiology too – recent studies have found that people of East Asian origin have a segment of the brain that is clearly more developed than in other brains (this difference is attributed to language and cultural differences that caused their brains to run down a different evolutionary pathway... perhaps these modifications to the brain may explain the in-built compasses of that seafaring tribe too?). There is also psychological support that East Asian cultures are better at mathematics because of the way they are taught to handle and view numbers (in fact, quite a good number of people here still prefer abacuses over digital calculators as those calculators hinder their ability to calculate since they don’t see numbers as 0 to 9 on the calculator – they too are a dying breed as the education system becomes increasingly attuned towards Western mathematics (although talking about numbers in Chinese is maintained (which helps their mental math), schools no longer teach using Chinese numerals because it doesn’t properly prepare them for the “outside world”)). Nonetheless, that is why I don’t believe in Universal Truths because they do more to hinder than help since it closes off the mind to possibilities beyond these “truths” (In legend, Pythagoras is said to have had Hippasus drowned because of his proof of irrational numbers; it was a universally accepted truth at the time that numbers required to be whole or at least split into neat fractions – it made no sense for numbers to be irrational... duh! – we now know that that is not true... doh!).

Indeed, I agree also with your friend’s observation to some degree but again I return to my earlier point of framing experience. How you think about it and what you feel from it depends on what you were taught and how you come to understand the world. Being brought up in Chinese Taoist culture, I never really felt God until I was given the language to do so when I came into Christianity. Before that, my sense of awe for the world had no relation to God, it was very simple-minded and I did nothing to think of the experience being transcendental in any manner (the practice of Taoism is very different from what it’s purported to be, LOL). I didn’t associate the world around me with the Lotus Goddess because that’s plain wrong – there is no framework to experience the divine through the natural world in Taoism because the natural world itself is an object of reverence (the awe attributed to nature is from nature itself – nature is the cause of the awe and there is no need to look beyond that for the awesomeness of nature). It is important to understand that worship in Taoism is very different from worship in the Christian sense thus worshipping nature does not make it divine, if anything, Taoist worship of nature makes it more down-to-earth and strips any sense of divinity out of it. It is quite strongly tied to Confucianism in some respects and they are both intermingled so much in the culture that there is no clear dichotomy.

So yea, I agree with your friend that the experience of God could be separate from the concept of God once you understand the concept of God, but I do feel that there is a causal pattern in that one’s concept of God informs one’s experience of God and it is in this way that they are tied down to each other. It matters not whether God exists or not, but how we approach that question leads us to experience (or not experience) God in our daily lives. One may attribute the feeling of awe to God in all cases but that is whitewashing over all the different sensitivities that go into that feeling – for all we know, there may be even some cultures that don’t awe at all at what we are awing about.

Your view as a panentheist is wonderful and I personally really like it, thank you for sharing it with me and also entertaining my inquiries (I never expected this post to grow so long with comments, LOL)! Ah, I also did notice that you were playing BioShock on the PC – which is why I noted my PC is too slow and I have no X360, the only platforms I can get BioShock for at the moment, LOL. How is the game going? I’ve only heard awesome and more awesomeness than awesome about it! Again, this has been an enjoyable conversation and indeed, in many ways we seem to agree though in other ways we don’t (which is a good thing). I have learnt a lot from talking to you and I will look further into panentheism. I won’t be able to respond to anything for the weekend (and I think I really need to cut down my comment size! I talk too much...), so yea... Have a great weekend! LOL (^__^)v