Is God a logical contradiction?

[Belacqua]

Well, the reason for this push back is because the Christian god of the Bible is demonstrably not the god of Thomism. The biblical god is a thinking, considering, conscious, active, person-like being who has desires, emotions, a specific plan for every human’s mortal life, and the ability to communicate its thoughts and wishes to us. These qualities seem entirely antithetical to the Thomist “god”, which doesn’t seem to be able to do or be anything. I’m not even sure in what way it qualifies as a god at all.

Yeah, I've tried to be clear that sola scriptura literalists believe in something else. I'm not interested in that, and I think it goes without saying that it's not defensible in any logical way. 

For a lot of Christians, and the atheists who love to oppose them, such a God seems to be the only one they care about. I certainly understand activism to oppose such people's influence on public policy decisions. 

If the OP were asking "Is Ken Ham's God a logical contradiction?" the answer would be so obvious that I probably wouldn't even respond. 

But there is a long and serious train of thought that is better than that, and I don't see why it's so obscure these days. Most of the objections to this tradition that I've seen are based on misunderstandings -- e.g. the endless trouble with what "cause" means in this context. There are fairly well-known authors writing about it. David Bentley Hart and Edward Feser, for example. (This is not an endorsement of every one of their ideas.) So there is some percentage of modern Christians who are aware of this and prefer it to the Ken Ham version. And if the OP is a general question about God, I think it makes sense to work on a tradition that isn't obviously stupid. 

The fact that, in your view, the Thomist God doesn't qualify as a God is evidence to me that most of the fights here have a very particular kind of God in mind.

---

Hehe.

When I think of God I think of Yahweh or Allah who is supposed to be male.

Yes, I think the literalist types think of God this way. 

But again, the philosophical traditions are different. In fact, in Neoplatonic systems like that of Plotinus, gender is a distinction, a separation, that only occurs during the "fall" into materiality. To say that the One or God is one or the other gender wouldn't make sense to them.

[Anomalocaris]

"Are virtual particles matter? " I'm not sure what a virtual particle is.

According to quantum mechanics, quantum fields fluctuate all the time and these fluctuations give rise to transient particles that pop in and out of existence which, during their brief existences, resemble real particles.  They can be experimentally demonstrated to arise just as described by quantum mechanics.   

I would say matter isn't non-matter, it's anything made of atoms, no?

If you say matters are what are made of atoms, then according to modern understanding of the evolution of our universe, for a significant period during early history of our universe, there was no matter because there was not yet any atoms.   Atoms have not yet formed out of the more elementary particles from which they would later be made.   Yet despite the universe starting with no matter, here we are.   So If you take this view, then matter arises out of non-matter, so even intelligence that depends on matter to exist can arise out of non-matter.

I don't understand " we are not particularly good yet at predicting what emergent properties are possible in large system over long time horizons".

An emergent property is a property which a large system of interacting parts exhibits, but which its constitute parts do not.    Intelligence seems to be the archetypical emergent property.   The spiral arms of the Milky way may also be thought of as a sort of emergent property of a large gas and dust cloud.    Emergent properties are difficult to either theoretically deduce or to forecast with computer simulations, because it often depend on very precise understanding of the exact interaction.   So we are not very good at taking a large system of many interacting parts, and deduce how the system overall may behave.    In fact, if you remember the recent issues with Boeing 737 Max 8.   In some ways the disasters of that plane can be pinned to poor forecast of the behavior of the flight system when large number of subsystem interacts.

Some intelligent properties could emerge if you exclude neurons, I agree. But for the complete package material things are needed, like dopamine + neurons to create the non-matter / immaterial properties like thought and memory, is what I'm saying.

Do you really need dopamine, or do you just really need to have the ability for something that can assume different states to be able to communicate its state to something else?   Can the state be in the form of, say, the energy state of a photon?   Can the photon communicate its state by interacting with another photon?   In this case would the role of a neuron plus dopamine be partially fulfilled without any atoms involved?

Immaterial:
philosophy
spiritual, rather than physical.

This kind of immaterial is nonsense as far as existence of entity is concerned.

Spiritual:
relating to or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things.

Hard to make sense of this kind of immaterial without a clearer and more verifiable definition of the "spirit" or "soul"

Spirit:
The non-physical part of a person which is the seat of emotions and character; the soul.

The is part is problematic.  such a seat has not been demonstrated to exist.

Non-physical:
not relating to or concerning the body.

That's rather broad.   If we assume computer intelligence is possible, then that would fit this definition of non-physical, immaterial intelligence.

Soul:the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal.

One can add hypothetical parts to humans beings or animals till the cow comes home.   But that does make any of those parts actually exist.

I think we can clearly see that the definition immaterial just sends us in a circle from "immaterial" back to "soul". 'Immaterial means soul and soul means immaterial.'

The circle is formed by you when you draw lines between separate points that are not intrinsically related.

Also how can something not have a body, including neurons plus other chemicals and be intelligent? A contradiction.

Not being able to think of how things can be a certain way is insufficient to make it a contradiction for things to be that way.   You have to spell out why in principle  things can not be that way for asserting this to be that way to be a contradiction.    In our kind of intelligence it is not the neurons and chemicals that is fundamental.   It is the roles they play that is fundamental.   It seems quite conceivable how stuff not made of atoms can still be made to play analogous roles, as I suggested with the photon example.   So it seems conceivable non-material entities, by your definition of material having to be made of atoms, to be intelligent in a way that is fundamentally reminiscent of us.

[GrandizerII]

God is not intelligent in the way that people are intelligent. Because in people, intelligence involves learning, connecting, solving unknowns, etc. 

God doesn't know in the way that people do. When we say "I know X," there are two things -- me and X. The knower and the known are two.

Then in what way does such a God have a "mind" (or whatever divine equivalent to it is)?

In other words, in terms of knowledge, how is it different from a "virtual library" that contains all known information?

Furthermore, this God you describe seems so static and impersonal that there's no way this is the kind of God a Catholic monk actually believed in. In Thomism, how does the Trinity and Incarnation and all the standard Christian doctrines that presuppose divine personhood come into the picture?

[Belacqua]

Spiritual:
relating to or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things.

Spirit:
The non-physical part of a person which is the seat of emotions and character; the soul.

Non-physical:
not relating to or concerning the body.

Soul:
the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal.

A traditional way to approach this is good old hylomorphism. Where hyle is matter and morph is shape, function, etc. 

You are made mostly of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. But you are also you. How the matter -- the non-living elements -- are structured to make you into you is what the old guys would call your soul. 

So the immaterial is not found separate from the material. The immaterial is just the way the material is put together, the laws of nature that decide that, the habits and memories and actions that make you different from what your body would be like if you were dead. When they say the soul leaves the body, they mean the corpse is still there but the you-ness is gone. 

Christian dogma, if I remember right, says that somehow your soul (your form, functions, habits, memories, etc.) will be transferred at death to a different kind of matter. A spirit-body. But they are clear that this is an article of faith, not provable by logic. I personally don't see how it could happen.

---

Then in what way does such a God have a "mind" (or whatever divine equivalent to it is)?

In other words, in terms of knowledge, how is it different from a "virtual library" that contains all known information?

Furthermore, this God you describe seems so static and impersonal that there's no way this is the kind of God a Catholic monk actually believed in. In Thomism, how does the Trinity and Incarnation and all the standard Christian doctrines that presuppose divine personhood come into the picture?

To answer all your questions here would require a 900-page book of theology. And I'm not the guy who can write that. 

I guess we'd just have to start with something like "Thomism for Dummies" or something like that. Not that you're a dummy, but it's a really big topic.

[LadyForCamus]

Well, the reason for this push back is because the Christian god of the Bible is demonstrably not the god of Thomism. The biblical god is a thinking, considering, conscious, active, person-like being who has desires, emotions, a specific plan for every human’s mortal life, and the ability to communicate its thoughts and wishes to us. These qualities seem entirely antithetical to the Thomist “god”, which doesn’t seem to be able to do or be anything. I’m not even sure in what way it qualifies as a god at all.

Yeah, I've tried to be clear that sola scriptura literalists believe in something else. I'm not interested in that, and I think it goes without saying that it's not defensible in any logical way. 

For a lot of Christians, and the atheists who love to oppose them, such a God seems to be the only one they care about. I certainly understand activism to oppose such people's influence on public policy decisions.

If the OP were asking "Is Ken Ham's God a logical contradiction?" the answer would be so obvious that I probably wouldn't even respond. 

But there is a long and serious train of thought that is better than that, and I don't see why it's so obscure these days. Most of the objections to this tradition that I've seen are based on misunderstandings -- e.g. the endless trouble with what "cause" means in this context. There are fairly well-known authors writing about it. David Bentley Hart and Edward Feser, for example. (This is not an endorsement of every one of their ideas.) So there is some percentage of modern Christians who are aware of this and prefer it to the Ken Ham version. And if the OP is a general question about God, I think it makes sense to work on a tradition that isn't obviously stupid.

For me, I suppose it comes down to the question: what is the definition of a god?  What makes something a god? What are the minimum necessary attributes or characteristics that qualify something as a god, and is there any evidence or reason to believe that such a thing, which fits that hypothetical description, actually exists?

The fact that, in your view, the Thomist God doesn't qualify as a God is evidence to me that most of the fights here have a very particular kind of God in mind.

To be fair to the atheist community here as I’ve come to know them, many of the theists who have come here for debate have come with that very particular kind of god in mind.

[vulcanlogician]

Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker's Guide)

“Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist,'" says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says Man, "The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

[Belacqua]

For me, I suppose it comes down to the question: what is the definition of a god?  What makes something a god? What are the minimum necessary attributes or characteristics that qualify something as a god, and is there any evidence or reason to believe that such a thing, which fits that hypothetical description, actually exists?

That sounds reasonable to me. And I'm pretty sure we'll never get a coherent definition from the fundamentalists. That's why I don't spend my time on them. 

In classical theism, or the God of the philosophers, there is a fairly well-agreed definition. With variations among the various thinkers:

Absolutely simple, absolutely unmoving, absolutely good, absolutely act with no potential, absolutely unique. 

The apophatic and negative theologians have a good point, though: because we are people and are limited in our thinking, definitions are usually misleading. So for example if I say "God is good," I think I have a conception of what good is, and what God must be like in order to match that concept. But they say that since any human idea of goodness will be too limited, even such a simple statement is bound to block my understanding as much as it clarifies. We didn't evolve to perceive absolutes, and it's hard to think them. 

To be fair to the atheist community here as I’ve come to know them, many of the theists who have come here for debate have come with that very particular kind of god in mind.

And if they think that posting here is an effective way to fight against stupid fundies, then more power to them. I've never said they shouldn't. 

I don't enjoy that, so I don't do it. 

Back in my hometown -- a tiny town in Kansas -- the fundies were getting noisy, so my sister got on the school board and ran the textbook committee. She was always the practical one in the family.

[GrandizerII]

Spiritual:
relating to or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things.

Spirit:
The non-physical part of a person which is the seat of emotions and character; the soul.

Non-physical:
not relating to or concerning the body.

Soul:
the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal.

A traditional way to approach this is good old hylomorphism. Where hyle is matter and morph is shape, function, etc. 

You are made mostly of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. But you are also you. How the matter -- the non-living elements -- are structured to make you into you is what the old guys would call your soul. 

So the immaterial is not found separate from the material. The immaterial is just the way the material is put together, the laws of nature that decide that, the habits and memories and actions that make you different from what your body would be like if you were dead. When they say the soul leaves the body, they mean the corpse is still there but the you-ness is gone. 

Christian dogma, if I remember right, says that somehow your soul (your form, functions, habits, memories, etc.) will be transferred at death to a different kind of matter. A spirit-body. But they are clear that this is an article of faith, not provable by logic. I personally don't see how it could happen.

---

Then in what way does such a God have a "mind" (or whatever divine equivalent to it is)?

In other words, in terms of knowledge, how is it different from a "virtual library" that contains all known information?

Furthermore, this God you describe seems so static and impersonal that there's no way this is the kind of God a Catholic monk actually believed in. In Thomism, how does the Trinity and Incarnation and all the standard Christian doctrines that presuppose divine personhood come into the picture?

To answer all your questions here would require a 900-page book of theology. And I'm not the guy who can write that. 

I guess we'd just have to start with something like "Thomism for Dummies" or something like that. Not that you're a dummy, but it's a really big topic.

So is every other topic that has been discussed here, Belaqua. I'm not sure why you feel you have to write this many pages to answer any of my questions, as you've been quite good at summarising things in an articulate and adequate manner.

Anyhow if I ever have time, I'll give Aquinas a read and see what hes really saying.

[Belacqua]

So is every other topic that has been discussed here, Belaqua. I'm not sure why you feel you have to write this many pages to answer any of my questions, as you've been quite good at summarising things in an articulate and adequate manner.

Anyhow if I ever have time, I'll give Aquinas a read and see what hes really saying.

Sorry, I didn't mean to be snippy. It's hard to tell on here who's serious, sometimes. 

The short answer is that things divide into natural theology and revealed theology. Supposedly in natural theology we can reason from known facts (e.g. things in the world depend for their existence on other things) to know some truths about God. That he exists, that he must be unchanging, etc. 

Revealed theology is all the stuff we could never get to from reason: the Trinity, the virgin birth, the resurrection. In a sense they are admitting that none of this is the least bit logical! But since Catholics, for instance, accept both reason and revelation, they need both types. 

Careful thinkers will keep these separate. What they call the God of the philosophers is a lot closer to the God of natural theology. 

Catholics weave them together, to show for example how the underlying Cause of things -- the Ground of Being or whatever (natural theology) -- manifests itself to people in three ways (revealed theology). As I say, it's really beautiful, especially if you've been reading Dante for a long time. 

Here are a couple of books for the smart layman, that give a good introduction. These would be enough to decide if you wanted to pursue it more. 

David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God

https://www.amazon.com/Experience-God-Be...340&sr=1-3

Edward Feser, Aquinas A Beginner's Guide

https://www.amazon.com/Aquinas-Beginners...oks&sr=1-1

Again, sorry if I seemed unresponsive before.

[Tom Fearnley]

Anomalocaris: You've summarized things so I can understand *most* of what you're saying. But our second definition of immaterial meaning non-matter was a charitable one which we shouldn't really use. I think if we go with the original definition that is actually used by Christian apologists like William Lane Craig we can see that words like "immaterial", "soul" and "spirit" are meaningless, hence a "meaningless/nothing intelligence" is, perhaps, a contradiction for how can an intelligence be meaningless when we have a good understanding of the word intelligence? How can intelligence come from nothing?

Belaqua: Thanks for the rather unusual explanation.