Hi George McNaughton,
I will respond to your reply in detail because you raise important questions. I will use
"GM" for when I am quoting you and my reply will by marked by "R".
GM: Well, maybe and maybe not. You assume that everyone believes that God is unknowable.
R: Actually I am not assuming anything. I am merely reporting a fact. All cultures, peoples throughout the world and throughout time have amongst them those individuals who have truly dwelt with the Divine. These blessed individuals are called by the term mystics. They have united with the Infinite Divine and came back to walk amongst us and tell us what they have experienced. These mystics know no borders, no boundaries of race, color, creed or religion. They are the founders and the greatest minds to contribute to the development of their respective faiths. They are Christians, Jews, Moslems, Hindus, Buddhist, they are of all faiths. They all tell the same traveler's tale. They all report that the Divine is beyond human comprehension. That the prophets who wrote the Holy Writ, the Sacred Scriptures, when they refer to the Divine they are describing the Divine through the lens of the human. That the true nature of the Divine is beyond description but that never the less, the Divine has in contact with us finite humans taken on the clothes of human comprehensibility. Read the writings of the Mystics, or at least William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience and Evelyn Underhill's Mysticism: A study in the nature and development of Man's spiritual consciousness. Therein is recorded this fact – the universal human recorded truth: that ultimately and truly the Infinite Divine is beyond human understanding.
Let me quote at length one example of this conception. This is from the Christian mystic Saint John of the Cross, born 1542 and who died in 1591.
"…the soul finds no terms, no means, no comparison whereby to render the sublimity of the wisdom and the delicacy of the spiritual feeling with which she [here he refers to the human soul- a common metaphor, to refer to the soul by the feminine pronoun.] is filled…We receive this mystical knowledge of God clothed in none of the kinds of images, in none of the sensible representations, which our mind makes use of in other circumstances. Accordingly in this knowledge, since the senses and the imagination are not employed, we get neither form nor impression, nor can we give any account or furnish any likeness, although the mysterious and sweet-tasting wisdom comes home so clearly to the inmost parts of our soul. Fancy a man seeing a certain kind of thing for the first time in his life. He can understand it, use and enjoy it, but he cannot apply a name to it, nor communicate any idea of it, even though all the while it be a mere thing of sense. How much greater will be his powerlessness when it goes beyond the senses! This is the peculiarity of the divine language. The more infused, intimate, spiritual, and supersensible it is, the more does it exceed the senses, both inner and outer, and impose silence upon them….The soul then feels as if placed in a vast and profound solitude, to which no created thing has access, in an immense and boundless desert, desert the more delicious the more solitary it is. There, in this abyss of wisdom, the soul grows by what it drinks in from the well-spring of the comprehensions of love, …and recognizes, however sublime and learned may be the terms we employ, how utterly vile, insignificant, and improper they are, when we seek to discourse of divine things by their means." [From Saint John of the Cross: The Dark Night of the Soul, book ii, ch. xvii. As cited by William James: p. 397-398, Image books, 1978 paperback edition of The Varieties of Religious Experience.]
St. John of the Cross refers to an 'abyss of wisdom' that no matter how learned we are the Divine is beyond the terms we can employ from our normal sensory experience.
GM: You also assume that God is something akin to that which the Greek Philosophers conceived of as God.
R: I am not assuming that the Divine is limited to that which the Greek Philosophers conceived of. I am taking the description of the Divine from the Greeks, the Hindus, the Buddhist, the Moslems, the Christians, the Jews, from anyone and everyone who has directly experienced the Divine.
GM: I would refer you to the remark made by George Burns when playing God in "Oh, God." He said tell the ministers that I am offended when they think I am "gas." In other words everywhere, in everything, and nowhere in particular. Your position, would require you to disbelieve God if he/she was standing right in front of you because you are projecting the concept of an incorporeal God. And while the majority of religionists would agree with you that God is incorporeal and unknowable -- not all would agree with you. The person who asserts that he or she has had direct contact with God and received a direct statement or command from God is therefore considered to be biased, confused, ignorant or demented.
R: I did not say that those who have experienced direct contact with the Divine are confused, ignorant or demented. The greatest minds of humanity have experienced the Divine. They are not confused, ignorant or demented. But, biased – yes, to an extent. Since as the mystics have noted that the Divine is beyond direct human comprehension, it must be approached indirectly through the medium of what we humans have – the language of metaphor. We clothed the Divine in human comprehendible terms so we can relate to that which is beyond relationships. Thus, each and every human uses the language and experience that has shaped him and her to map and clothed the mystery of the Infinite Divine. We use metaphors from the finite. Thus a Christian ultimately describes the divine in Christian metaphors, a Buddhist, Jew, Moslem, etc, each use the terms that they have. They are 'biased' by their upbringing and their ability to comprehend. We use what we have. We are all 'biased', shaped by our Culture and our experience. We see the world, including the Divine through the 'Rose colored glasses' of our culture and experience.
GM: God in this context for you is an unknowable truth and truth must therefore be a construct of humankind and can never be achieved except in some relative or perceptional way. Such truth may not be of much value, nor is even the quest to obtain such truth of much value. The only upside of your argument is that it frees a person from trying to decide which prophet, priest, or minister is true and to be followed, since all are true and all are false. I would suggest to you that anything or being which is infinite, for practical purposes does not exist. And if it does not exist, then it serves no practical purpose to try and discover it.
R: The physical universe and all it contains is described universally by scientists as infinite. They are not talking about something that does not exist. They are talking about the only thing they know – that which they and their augmented senses can know – the infinite physical universe. Your knowledge of both science and religion seems to be lacking. The physical universe does exist and you are one small part of it.
GM: On the other hand, if God is finite then the whole equation changes. In my faith God is finite but in many senses expanding, just as man is finite, but has the capacity to expand. The problem with the finite God is determining whether or not you should be on his/her side or not and that requires human to do something that they rarely do unless forced and that is to think.
R: There is no problem being on 'God's side' if one believes in an Infinite God/Divine. To be on 'God's side' is to be in search of the truth, to try and understand the nature of the Divine and of reality. As for saying God is finite, do you understand the words that you are using? A finite thing is a limited thing by definition. It is a thing that is measurable since it has limits – there is a place where it ends and something else begins. Perhaps you mean that the Divine manifests itself in the physical finite of the Universe?
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Comments: 6
The sands on the bottom of the sea are finite, although some consider them infiinite. I do not agree that all scientists believe the physical universe is infinite -- in fact, I would guess that the majority of modern physicists do not believe in a truly infinite universe. While I admire some mystics, I do not believe that their concept of the Divine is necessarily the most accurate. I understand the words I am using about finite -- the God I worship had a beginning, whether He has an end -- that is doubtful. I do believe that some things have always existed, or are in that sense "eternal", but these are not God, but rather the building blocks from which man and God are made. I believe that God was once as we are now, and that we may become as God is. I consider myself a monotheisist because "as for us there is only one God", that does not mean there is only one god. In addition, I doubt there is only one universe. I do not have the answer as to what came before the "big bang" , but I do not think either science or religion has the answer to that. No I believe that there is no such thing as immaterial matter, just matter which is of a finer existence. I hope in a God who is always benevolent, therefore I have no hope in an omnipotent or omniscience God -- but I do not rule out the possibility that God may not measure up to my hopes.
In general finite things are created things and are things that eventually die. Although the universe - a bounded infinity is phrase I recall from physics and astronomy - may be an open ended process - contiunal creation or it maybe a singualar event with and end, perhaps for this incarnation of the universe. So if you consider your god to be the equivalent of the universe then it may like the universe have a birth and perhaps or perhaps not - an end.
If your idea of God is less than the Universe - than as any other finite thing it will die, decay, etc.
Ultimately all human concepts of the Divine aka god are just that - human ideas. Your idea of god is unique, from what I can understand of it.
A finite god? Odd idea. But any statement made about the Divine/God is unproveable - including mine. I just took what the mystics who had direct contact with the Divine universally describe in that encounter - that the Divine is beyond comprehension as a reasonable starting point. Any other claims to actually trying to describe the divine is just a human concept - an opinion.
I describe the Divine as the mystics do - that the divine is beyond description.
So long as we acknowledge that we can not prove with any certainty that the god exists let alone what attributes to associate with It - then each to his own faith and beliefs.
My own starts with Judaism - goes into Jewish mystical tradition/Kabbalah and now is heavily into Taoism. Taoism is not anthropromorhic and definately "fuzzy feeling" or 'gas'. It is about cosmic order and the flow of the natural universe.
I don't know anything about Mormon's theolgoy and so had no way to comprehend what it was you were saying.
It still is odd to me - but to each their own.
Within Christianity [non-mormon] as far as i underdstood - Jesus was a human in which an aspect of the divine incarnated into that form - while still retainig at the same time an infinite divine. God the father - was the non-finite aspect and Jesus - the 'son' was a temporary aspect of the divine - during jesus physical lifetime. But ultimately god was considered infinite.