(November 13, 2018 at 7:28 pm)Grandizer Wrote: IMO, the best argument against the Creator type of God (the one with typically omni-max attributes) is that it's logically contradictory in terms of nature and attributes and, by definition, has done logically problematic stuff (like create things without material cause, or exist and act "beyond time").
The frustrating thing about a lot of these discussions is that people end up conflating very different views of God.
For example, creator-type God is logically consistent within a self-contained argument, like the Neoplatonic one, the God of Aquinas, or the God of Spinoza. But so often on these forums we end up running different things together. So if Simone Weil discusses the God of the philosophers, who doesn't "care" about people in the way that our mommies care about us, or doesn't intervene in history the way Ken Ham's cartoon-God does, people will reply, "Oh, yeah, then why did he massacre the Moabites?" As if we have to reconcile one view of God with another unrelated view.
Granted, Christians often conflate the types as it's convenient for them. But if we specify what we're talking about we should be able to eliminate many of the irrelevant objections.
So what you say here, about a God who acts "beyond time" strikes me as a conflation. People who see God as "beyond time" generally say that God doesn't act. He causes things to happen through his nature, but not by taking actions. That would require change and motion, and a God beyond time has neither of these things.
The logical contradictions sometimes go away if we stick to one version.
