philosophy of science: meaning and functions (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, September 28, 2018, 04:45 (2248 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

DAVID: Quibbling: God is not human. Of course He has our thoughts, but with His degree of creation powers He is thinking at a level we cannot reach. Again, you can't seem to leave your humanizing view of Him, probably ground in your inability to accept His existence at His level of power.

dhw: I agree that God is not human, thank you for agreeing that he has our thoughts, but no thanks for not explaining what you mean by those thoughts being “at a level we cannot reach”. Tony agreed that he may have experienced boredom. So since he is God, his boredom would be at a level of boredom that we cannot reach. So what? Boredom is boredom.

David: You and Tony can believe He was bored. I don't. I envision God as eternal and with the purpose of creating thinking humans, which I suspect He has done many times in he past. I'm happy Tony supported you but as a committee of three our discussions don't prove any truths, just opinions. Since I am not God. His level of thought is something I imagine as beyond any thinking we can do. As God is imagined, we humans can only guess what He is exactly like.

Tony: And even that agreement is limited. For some reason, no matter how many times I say I disagree with that particular word because of the connotations, it keeps getting implied that I am in full agreement. My limited agreement is that as a single entity, God, eternal or not, would have reached a point beyond which it was impossible to grow without the presence of another entity. DHW reworded it as boredom, and I got tired of arguing the point. He can call it what he likes. However, I still think boredom is the wrong word.

David: Thanks for the clarification of your view. I certainly agree about the concept of boredom is totally wrong, as it is a humanizing view of God. I also do not think God has a 'need to grow'. I view him as all He can be or needs to be.

Tony: His name literally means: I am/will be what I am/will be.

This implies that he can change, or grow, to be what he needs to be in order to accomplish his purpose.

When God appears in the burning bush He says I am what I am. My encyclopedic dictionary which is part of the Masoretic text OT I have does not give that definition of God as you do. He is Lord or eternal, and eternal is considered the most proper . Again we are humans who try to describe Him. Another Jewish source I have describes the words for God as meaning Lord, Master, ruler and judge. I see no sense that He needs to grow.