(January 30, 2015 at 11:39 am)IATIA Wrote: The 'omni' issue. If god is not 'omni', then god is no more powerful than Ra, Anubis, Zeus or any other mythological god, ergo, god is mythological also. There are 'gods' that were 'omni' that the theists no longer believe in. I guess they prefer a less powerful god.The Bible paints a picture of god as the Toughest Guy in the Room, especially in the early books of the OT. For example, when Moses is sent to perform some miracles to Pharaoh, the Egyptian sorcerers are able to perform the early ones as well. But over time they find themselves over-matched. Even so, the Egyptian forces are sufficiently unimpressed that they quickly decide that they want their slaves back, chasing the Israelites into the sea and forcing god to perform another miracle to foil them. He's not as intimidating as you'd expect from Omniweh.
It's only over time, as the legend is more established, that he ironically becomes more ethereal and more and more powerful. As with any legendary character, the farther you push him away, the more exaggerated the story becomes. Eventually, he's a completely undetectable being of immense power and influence who uses that massive power to make it seem as if he was never there.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
