Hello

[Ryft]

But recently I have begun to question that [Roman Catholic instruction]. The only reason I believed it was because I was raised that way.

"Losing faith in a childish understanding of God is not the same as losing faith in God," Harold Kushner noted astutely [1], and the reason I think one should avoid conflating the two as if they are the same thing. See, there is a noteworthy consistency [2] among testimonials which describe one's conversion to atheism, from the average person to notable figures: they objected to some Sunday School understanding of God, which then ends up serving as the basis of their atheism; and this level of understanding about God remains unchanged, notwithstanding the eloquence with which they articulate it. As Francis Bacon noted, the father of the modern scientific method, "A little philosophy inclineth men's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion."

Let's take as our example your notion that the attributes of omnipotence and omniscience produce a contradiction, specifically the way you describe how this contradiction results. You argue that an omniscient being must know every single detail of its own future, such that "it can only do exactly what it knew it was going to do and nothing else." This limiting constraint, you argue, contradicts omnipotence since it means there is something this being cannot do. However, notice that this contradiction results for a being who is temporally bounded; in other words, you have described a being for whom there is such a thing as a future.

Your argument is good as far as it goes, but where it goes is nowhere at all if it's supposed to regard the God espoused by Christianity (including the Roman Catholic magisteria; see the Thomistic articulations). Although God is said to be omniscient and omnipotent, he is also said to be transcendent; i.e., he necessarily exists independent of the universe (space-time manifold) he created. Ergo, the temporal experiences we understand as a result of being part of this universe cannot be applied to God who exists apart from this universe. God does not move through time, as it were, having a past and a future as we experience. The reason God "cannot" change what we call the future is because God already exists there and is doing precisely as he wills. Since God exists in an ever eternal 'now', he is everywhere present in every moment of reality, his own and the world he created (omnipresent) [3], which is why he is omniscient.

Anyway, greetings and welcome to the forums.

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1. Who Needs God? (2002; 224 pages).

2. To say that X is consistent among a group is not to say that X is universally true of everyone in that group; rather, it means that X is found to be true in such a significant number of cases that the rarity of exceptions end up serving to prove the rule.

3. This is not to be confused with pantheism (the universe is God) or panentheism (the universe is part of God), for he exists independent of and is understood apart from the universe he created, this space-time manifold we call home (monotheism).