The Mind of God (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Friday, October 15, 2010, 15:08 (4935 days ago) @ jclinch

Of course, if you accept that "God" is a being with a "mind" situated in time (though, conspicuously, not in space it seems) then you are forced to consider all sorts of anthropocentic notions like "what was He doing before creation?" and "why didn't He speed up evolution?" Which, of course, leads to absurd paradoxes. The very use of a personal pronoun at all is, in my view, revealing since it demonstrates an unstated premise that that God is a bit like us. Religious people often take this thinking much further and then commit a more extreme blasphemy by supposing that God agrees with them. 
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> The fundamental error, in my respectful view, is anthropomorphism. If God can be said to exist in any meaningful way, the only thing of we can be sure is that God is nothing like us and is beyond anything that we can conceivably imagine. Moreover, God is surely beyond any human notion of volition, morality, goodness, justice, mercy or any of the other attributes that the world's monotheisms typically ascribe to God. And "He" certainly can't get bored!
> -JC, -We are in the same situation that I ascribe to ancient civilizations that appear to be writing about aircraft an missiles, namely that we are trying to discuss something without a frame of reference and within the confines of a woefully inadequate language. How do you discuss something that impossibly infinite? How do you discuss something 'intelligent' without referring to 'mind'? -If we were saying god was a satyr that created all of nature and liked chasing young nubile women around the woods, I would agree with your statements above. However, while I agree that the mind of God is certainly beyond the feeble comprehension of man, I do think that we can garner some insight into it by studying 'His/Her/Its' creation. -Some things are obvious, like that there is order order and structure, yet flexibility. We may not understand all about God, but I do not consider the attempt to be anthropomorphism. It is simply working within the confines of our frame of reference and the limitations of our language.