Is God a logical contradiction?

[Belacqua]

Is God a logical contradiction? Is saying an [all-powerful] immaterial intelligence [God] like saying a square circle or married bachelor? To the best of my knowledge there are no immaterial things, such as energy waves, that exhibit intelligence. I need help with this. Anyone?

Can you give me a list of all immaterial things known to us? Do any of them exhibit intelligence? Are all immaterial things known to us (as in there can't be anymore)?

The problem with the above: Is it possible there could be something immaterial which is intelligent? Maybe, maybe not imo. This could be like asking "is it possible that a bachelor could be married?" No, it's not possible. But then maybe I'm wrong.

Thanks.

Good questions! I like working on this kind of thing.

One problem that usually comes up when we discuss things like this: there are different conceptions of God among the different monotheisms, and even among Christians. In particular, the Christians at your local church down the street are unlikely to have worked on questions like this one. They are more interested in fellowship and how to behave and those good things. The important Christian thinkers who have tried to answer have reached conclusions that generally sound unfamiliar to the rank and file. 

This means that when I try to describe what the Aristotelian/Thomistic tradition says, or the Neoplatonic Christians say, people are quick to tell me that no Christian they have ever talked to agrees with those guys. Still, unless we want to say that Augustine and Aquinas aren't real Christians, this is something we can look at. 

Anyway...  Maybe the first thing we have to look at is what those guys mean by "intelligent." We say people are intelligent because they can solve puzzles, or find solutions, or discover connections among things that others don't. But this can't be true of God, according to other conclusions they reach about him. 

First: God is absolutely simple. No parts, no divisions. We can't say "God knows X" because this implies a division between God and X. God is one thing, and X is something else, which he knows about. While people "take in" knowledge and draw nearer to truth, God is already absolutely identical with all truth. 

Second: God is absolutely impassible. No changes, no developments, no evolution. So the idea of God figuring something out is incoherent, because it means there was something he didn't "know" and then he did. 

When talking of God, theologians use "omniscient" to mean that he is absolutely identical -- already at one -- with all truths, meaning that he doesn't "know" them, he just is them. To say he "knows" everything is a metaphor, reducing things to the human level. To say God is "intelligent" is also only a manner of speaking, but not at all the same thing as when we say a person is intelligent. 

Another thing to watch out for maybe is the difference between "intelligent" and "intelligible." God is said to be intelligible -- that is something we only know with the mind, like numbers. Not sensible -- something we can detect with the senses. In this way he may be said to be immaterial -- as numbers are immaterial.