Author Archives: Ed Pluchar

Existence of God – 35

Existence of God – 35


Before wrestling with what it means for God to be all-loving, we might find some benefit by shifting the emphasis.

Namely, we’ve focused primarily on God, appropriately so, in consideration of the analogy of an author.  We have seen, for example, how the human author shows herself to be all-powerful in the context of the story; so, by analogy and at least to that extent, we may say that God is all-powerful in reality, and there is nothing impossible or incoherent about such a notion.

But what about the story?  What about creation itself?

The first word I would offer is a word of caution:  The analogy should not be applied too stringently.  It is more of a guide, a way, an open door.  It is not a complete map, much less the journey itself.

So, for example, I think it would be fun to ponder the notion of “elementary particles” within any given story, and what, if any, significance there might be here.  Indeed, I do think there could be some.

However, it is important to see two things:  Whereas the analogy is metaphysical, elementary particles are proposed as simply physical realities.  The analogy will not teach us physics – we cannot observe the world of “War and Peace” and discover something about the force of gravity.  (At least not anything which Tolstoy had not already discovered himself, from…observing the real world).

The second is also a basic distinction:  God is the greater mystery, the more fundamentally real subject of our discussion.  The author is not an exact analogue to God – even if we can confirm a truth about the author, it might not necessarily show us something about God.  Rather, God is the One we are groping for, as if in the dark and cavernous space of the entire Universe, and we are hardly able to leap off our own pale blue dot.  The analogy may give us an idea of what we are looking for, perhaps how the search should proceed, perhaps even correct our course from time to time – but it is not the same as contact with the living God.

There is, rather, something wild and lonely and exhilarating about that journey, and it is never enough merely to consider the map in comfort.

So with that arduous caution in place, we’ll take up creation in the next post.


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Existence of God – 3

Existence of God – 3


In our last exciting installment, I said that skeptics (and believers) often have a view of God which is painfully small, especially for human minds.  I noted that those human brains are often seen as bearing no significance at all, none to speak of anyway, when compared with the size of the Universe.  What, then, could set the Universe in motion?  How much greater must that intelligence and power be, compared even with our wild imaginations?

I submitted that this power (whatever its source) is something beyond comprehension, whether it comes from God or else a natural cause.  I think we must say the same for that intelligence – this is almost easier to recognize, though still beyond comprehension – though I do not necessarily mean that we must therefore admit a God.

I don’t know what else you’ll say could manifest that intelligence, but I’m listening.

Even with a view toward modern science (let alone “God”), I am looking through the glass dimly, and still can appreciate what a startling display of intelligence has been required to understand the cosmos, to draw conclusions about its origins and to sketch out what are the laws of physics.  There are people out there inventing mathematics to explain it, and talking about equations so difficult that we might never solve them.

What?

This does not compute with a Universe tumbling into existence on the same mechanics as a roulette wheel.  That Universe would not require or condone complex, logical equations.  It would require a deck of cards and a lot of time.

But that’s not what smart atheists are saying now, so let’s do away with straw men.

Smart atheists are trying to find a way around this:

Premise 1 – Whatever begins to exist has a cause.

Premise 2 – The Universe began to exist.

Conclusion – The Universe has a cause.

Again, the conclusion is not:  ”God exists.”  It is rather, “The Universe has a cause.”

The Big Bang theory does not quibble with this, but some physicists do.  Other physicists say the Universe began to exist, but without a God.

William Lane Craig, the contemporary champion of the Kalam Cosmological Argument, rightly points out that, since the argument is sound, the burden is on atheists to refute one or both of the premises.  If the argument is successful, it would seem to demonstrate a cause which transcends those things by which we define the Universe – space, time, energy, and matter.  It is further suggested that this cause must be personal (that is, a person) because the act of creation would have been a choice, and only persons make choices.

If you would, how would you refute them?







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Existence of God – 3.1 (an aside)

Existence of God – 3.1 (an aside)


There’s a TED talk in which Alain de Botton said (in effect):  I’m not here to discuss whether there’s a God or not.  We know there’s no God.  Let’s also admit that militant atheism doesn’t really get us anywhere.  Instead, let’s move on and talk about how we’re going to live our lives in a world without God.

His primary objective, to restate the paraphrase, was to envision an entirely secular culture, one that might even borrow from the “good things” he had seen religion doing.  An interesting perspective, if you’re curious.

In a similar fashion, my primary objective in this series is not to prove that God exists.  I did say that I’ve been studying the question, with all of the focus and spare time afforded to a father employed in a field far from Philosophy.  I do say, so far as I can tell, that God’s existence seems to me more plausible than not.  And not just by a little, but overwhelmingly so.

Further, as an autobiographical aside, I don’t believe my purpose is to go about proving that God exists.  I think there are minds at work which fare far better than mine, and their arguments range from simple (as we have seen with the Kalam Cosmological Argument) to quite difficult to follow.

So, as de Botton looks at life in the absence of God, and seeks fulfillment, I now take a contrary tack.  There is a God, a greatest of all possible beings, a mind so powerful and intelligent as to defy all comprehension except His own.  Now what?

The proofs for God’s existence are instructive for my primary objective, and that is why they will show up from time to time.  I do hope to give my agnostic and atheist friends exposure to them, to observe a depth of mind not often found in popular culture.  (EDIT:  There are similarly deep and profound insights offered by atheists and agnostics as well, and taken together with the theists’ insights, these represent thought far beyond what our televisions typically showcase).  I also aim to discuss the subject in such a way that it is not too pious for my A&A friends, though I have been guilty of that charge from time to time.

The very tip of the point of this series, then, is this:  To explore the nature of God through the analogy of an author.  More broadly, this might be called a “conceptual analysis,” which we have already done in brief:  If conditions are such that X exists, then what can we know about X?

In this manner, we learned what we did in 3.0.  In later posts, we’ll introduce the concept of “God as author” and begin to explore what this can tell us about God and how to live our lives.







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Existence of God – 29

Existence of God – 29


We concluded the last post with the question, “Are there objective moral values and duties?”

There’s some potentially treacherous sailing ahead.  It all seems clear to me, but when I’ve spoken to some atheist friends about this, a kind of confusion settles in that seems mysterious, surprising.  I might add “obtuse” if I wasn’t worried about offending them.*

First let’s ask:  Just what does “objective” mean?  Simply this – that a thing does not depend on opinion for its validation.  For example, 2 + 2 = 4, no matter what I think.  I could throw up the wildest, most protracted, Bill Maher-ish argument possible, and still have no effect whatsoever on the fact that 2 and 2 add up to 4, even if an entire studio audience applauded my effort.  Mercifully so.

“Objectivity” can be applied to empirical things, too:  The law of gravity is an objective reality.  No other reality has seen more protracted or violent protests as when a man is falling to the earth against his will, either from a short distance or a great one; still the reality holds.  This qualifies it as objective, even if every person on earth were ready to deny it.

So:  Are there objective moral values and duties?

The example quickest to mind for many – and one offered by WLC – is that of the Holocaust.  In other words, the mass genocide of six million Jews was right, wrong, or of no moral significance whatsoever.

If a person accepts that objective morality exists, she is left to answer either “yes” or “no.”  More on this in a moment.

If a person rejects the notion of objective morality, he is left to answer that the Holocaust was of no moral significance whatsoever, and neither is any other word, thought, or deed.  One could murder millions of people or mow the lawn, and neither carries greater moral significance than the other.

Now, this latter option seems, in all other circumstances, to be obviously false; the former choice likewise has an obvious answer.  You might deny, against all evidence, that the Holocaust occurred, and try to escape the question this way.  But that only seems to admit that there is an objective morality, and that the Holocaust was objectively wrong – else, why avoid the reality?

I suggest that the question of morality becomes confused only when the implications of a God are introduced.  Let’s look back at the argument.

Premise 2 – Objective moral values and duties do exist.

This seems obvious, especially in an extreme example.  Yes, of course they exist; yes, of course the Holocaust was wrong.  There is something about gathering people in a deliberate and discriminatory way, marching them through intolerable conditions along great distances, tearing families apart, forcing them to work long and hard and feeding them just enough calories to stay alive, performing acts of torture, painful medical experiments, and other humiliations on them, and finally killing them en masse and stacking their bodies like sandbags in mass graves – this strikes us as obviously and extremely wrong.

Moreover, if the Nazis has gone on to global dominance, and continued their program of mass killings, we might all have been brainwashed into thinking this was an admirable goal, one which must be supported by every good citizen of the Third Reich.  Perhaps every person would eventually believe the Holocaust was a good thing.  And still, we know it was not.  The answer doesn’t change, not even if all the world thinks it does, no more than it does in simple arithmetic.

This gives us Premise 2.  The examples could be multiplied; they are not difficult to think of.

The crux of the argument, then, rests with Premise 1, which we will look at next time.

 

*My tongue is in my cheek, lads.


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Existence of God – 28

Existence of God – 28


We have investigated the Kalam Cosmological Argument for the existence of God, and likewise the notion that belief in God may not require an argument at all, but might be properly basic. The former does not address God’s goodness, per se; the latter assumes it, for the purpose of demonstrating the model, and deals with objections relating to God’s goodness.

In fact, at the end of the last chapter, the quality of “goodness” figures as a defining attribute of God, one that would not be doubted even in the face of terrible evil. From a certain distance, this might be seen as an incoherence; then again, from a distance, a car might look like a cow. If one keeps the distance, but merely circles, one might constantly confuse whether they are seeing a cow, or a car. But if we drive right up, the view should become clearer.

 

First, the argument, again from William Lane Craig:

Premise 1: If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.

Premise 2: Objective moral values and duties do exist.

Conclusion: Therefore, God exists.

 

As WLC notes, the argument itself does not say that God, then, is the basis of objective moral values and duties; however, “such a claim tends to be implicit in premise (1) and emerges in the defense of that premise against objections.”

To illustrate the point – wait for it – the analogy of the author seems to serve rather well. Consider: Begin with an author, a composite of body and mind, and nothing else. Take away the body. All that remains is the mind. [This is like God, “in the beginning”].

Now, if anything in this scenario is “good,” what is it? Of course there’s only one thing it could be, and that is the mind. [If anything is good, God is good].

The author begins her story, and the various things she brings into existence are good or bad depending on their cooperation with her [Whatever God wills is good] and their implicit participation in her goodness [We are made in the image of God, and good inasmuch as we reflect that image].

In this way, we can see how God would be the basis of objective moral values and duties. The argument, then, essentially works backwards to this point. That is, do we observe objective moral values and duties?


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Existence of God – 18

Existence of God – 18


In the last few posts I drew from the thought of philosopher Alvin Plantinga, who has worked in epistemology (study of knowledge) and metaphysics (study of the things that undergird reality, or ultimate reality), among other areas.

In other words, he thinks and writes about what we know, or at least what we think we know.  In fact, it’s that latter clause which is, in a sense, the whole reason that “epistemology” exists.  We might say that Plantinga has tried to figure out what we know, or can know, about the ultimate reality.

And what do you do for a living?

Plantinga began his work when western philosophy was not very friendly to theists – he says that any philosopher who was also a Christian was careful to conceal the fact, and kept his nose buried in his work.  It seems to me that such an environment must have been a kind of crucible for a Christian philosopher, who would have to make his beliefs stand up in a rigorous and hostile world.

He did ultimately reveal his Christian faith, whether or not he ever hesitated in doing so – God and Other Minds, Warranted Christian Belief, Faith and Rationality, among others, comprise his philosophical output.

So what do I want with the man?  A private audience, for a start.

In the meantime, I want to borrow his notion of belief in God as “properly basic.”  Whereas I have borrowed the Kalam Cosmological Argument from William Lane Craig in preceding posts, and dwelt on the implications of the argument, Plantinga offers that we can know God exists without ever having to “prove” it by argument.  He argues that no argument is needed to rationally believe in God.

Indeed, he notes that most people who believe in God seem not to arrive at that belief by argument, by carefully constructed syllogisms.  Rather, it is as if they have another sense, another cognitive faculty which responds to the proposition, “God exists”, as though it were evident without any other support.

You can read Warranted Christian Belief to really dive into Plantinga’s thought; else, stay tuned, and I’ll give you the backwash version.

 


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Existence of God – 14

Existence of God – 14


This helps us understand, at least as a start, how the author is present in her story. She brings her consciousness (complete with talents and passions, ideas and shortcomings) to bear on the story, and therefore is present in it. Can we extend her presence throughout the story? Is she indeed omnipresent?

It would seem that she is, and we won’t stop there; it would seem she is necessarily omnipresent in her story.

What does this mean? Let’s assume that she wrote a book with 32 chapters, and didn’t skip any numbers. We can start by saying – as she tells the story, perhaps – that she is present in the context of the story, during Chapter 11. After all, her consciousness is directed toward the telling of the story, and the story does not tell itself. Nothing happens unless she speaks.  If Chapter 11 was told, she was necessarily present as it was told.

Now, could she possibly skip Chapter 25 – just not tell it – and nevertheless have it exist? Of course she couldn’t, not in the context of her story. And so if Chapter 25 does not exist, she would not have been present for it. (We can’t, therefore, demand that she should be present to something which does not exist).

Conversely, if she does not speak Chapter 25 into existence, then it simply does not exist. Our imagined Chapter 25 depends entirely on the author for its existence, if it is to exist at all. (We, existing on the same plane of reality as the author, realize she has “skipped” Chapter 25. But in the context of her story, there simply is nothing there that was skipped).

Or, let’s consider the claim more closely. It seems to me that the challenge to omnipresence is not in location, but in time. That is, how can any consciousness – God’s or otherwise – not only be everywhere at once (easy to imagine, even for ourselves, if time stands still) – but everywhere at once, at every moment?

That is, I can imagine myself – if time could actually stand still – moving about and inhabiting every possible location in space. Then, when I’ve visited them all, we move forward one moment, and I make another circuit through and among all those same points. This, at least, is what we might imagine for the author.

Indeed, let’s slow down, so that later we can “speed it up.”

JRR Tolkien, for example, is omnipresent in Middle Earth. That is, he is present at every location where The Lord of the Rings is taking place, and wherever he is absent, that place simply does not exist. (If there is a location in Frodo Baggins’ mind – the Shire, for example – which Frodo might think about even if he can’t visit it, then it is Tolkien who permits and facilitates that thinking – so that the Shire exists inasmuch as Tolkien permits it to exist, and Frodo can no more imagine it existing than Tolkien permits).

We might say that, when the Fellowship is broken up, and Frodo and Samwise travel separately from the rest, that Tolkien might seem to have a hard time following them simultaneously. But he doesn’t; it need not stress the limits of his consciousness any more than telling a single storyline. And why not?

Because time itself, in Middle Earth, is subject to him (to his will, we might say). He may write Book One and then take a year off, in our time; this will not affect Frodo on his journey. When Tolkien picks up his pen again, not a moment will have elapsed in Frodo’s time (unless Tolkien wishes it to be so – but it need not be so).

Let’s try to lay this out clearly: An author may take 10 years to tell a story which lasts 10 minutes. In the context of her story, that author does not need to delay her characters or their sense of time one bit. Her characters will have no idea, none at all, that it took the author 10 years (in her time) to tell their story; for them, only 10 minutes have passed, and that is all. They are only 10 minutes older.

The converse could be done, as well – an author might, in 10 minutes, tell a story which endures for 10 years. That is, her characters will experience 10 of their own years passing during the course of the story, while the author has scribbled down the whole tale in a mere 10 minutes of her own time.

And back to that original challenge of being in multiple locations at once:  Tolkien could tell us about simultaneous events because he had control over time.  He could tell us about one event, then tell us about another, and simply explain that they were happening simultaneously; and exactly because he willed it, it would be so.  When those characters all meet in the same space and time, they will relate their stories and realize (and not suspect any disruption in the space-time continuum of their world) that their stories were occurring simultaneously.

This shows us how the author can bend and manipulate space and time in her story, and at least one way in which they seem to be related.  The author has existential control over all things in her story; nothing exists without her permitting it.  Moreover, she has control of all “space” in her story, in part, because of her control of time.*  In the next post, we will begin to “speed up” this analogy of space and time, and see how God might do likewise in our Universe.

 

*The interesting thing about our restrictions on time is that we typically expect time to pass in a story just like it does in our world.  That is, we borrow the mechanics of “our” time, and translate them to any story we read (unless we are otherwise instructed).

But we are seldom, if ever, instructed to completely abandon our sense of time.  An author may have her characters traveling through time, or traveling at warp speeds (which is the same thing), and yet the duration of their travel is supposed to have elapsed just as we expect time to elapse on our world.

I suspect there is too much work to be done in constructing a completely new sense of time, to facilitate the adoption of that new time by the readers, and then to make the whole gimmick useful and satisfying enough that the readers will have appreciated the expense of their efforts.  And so we borrow time, which makes my work with this analogy easy:  The author could create a whole new sense of time, but they typically use ours.  In that way, we can see how the author transcends that time (in the context of her story) and how she might compress and expand it, relative to our time, in order to serve her purposes.


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Existence of God – 13

Existence of God – 13


We have said what omnipresence is not; let’s see if we can hone in on what it positively is.

What do we mean, for example, when the person we are speaking to is staring off in the distance and we say, “You look like you’re 1,000 miles away.”  (Or, “Earth to Suzy!” – but this is more obviously out of fashion).

Or again, think of the phenomenon of video conferencing. One party may be in New York, the other in San Francisco (or Tokyo, or Berlin). Yet we see and hear them – are they present? How would you explain your answer?

If so – take it back one step. Imagine you are only able to talk on the phone. Is the other party present to you?

Now both of those require communication, so let’s bring it back yet another step. Say you have an infant, and the child is now fast asleep. You walk in to enjoy the moment (and to make sure the baby is still breathing). Are you present to the child, who is unaware of your physical presence, and is not communicating with you?

So “to be present” seems to include (but not require) communication; it seems to include (but not require) physical proximity, or a representation of one’s self in physical proximity to the other; it seems to include (and perhaps require?) awareness of the other, even a kind of active observation. Perhaps other things besides.

You may even be thinking back to the last post, and saying to yourself: Well, I can be in multiple places at once. I might be in Peoria, and in a video conference with people in Johannesburg, Calcutta, and Detroit.

Perhaps you can; the wider the net, the easier to make my point.

Because we see that, while you can project a representation of yourself all across the world (think of television stars appearing on millions of television screens at once), this is a kind of loophole. Such images do not represent our full presence, our true consciousness. That, almost by definition, is a yes or no question – Are you fully present here? – and if it is “yes” in one place, it is “no” in every other place.

So, presence might be seen as a function of consciousness – whatever your consciousness attends to, there you are present.

 

I have one grizzly challenge to this idea, which may only serve as a distinction.  Let’s say you are stationed at a military base in a foreign country.  You are on the phone with your spouse, and so “present” to your spouse.  Your consciousness attends to that person, and not, say, to the grumbling person behind you waiting to use the phone.

Suddenly there is an airstrike, and you are killed.  How can we maintain that you were present somewhere else, yet vulnerable to death here, at the base?

It would seem that your body is the “host” of your consciousness.  Your consciousness might attend to anything at all – a person across the ocean, a person across time (if you are reading the biography of Alexander the Great, for instance) – but it depends, in the ordinary sense, on your body for its function.  The body is an “accident” of your consciousness, in the philosophical sense, and so is vulnerable to physical “accidents” of time and space.  (Your body is, itself, the “base” of operations for your consciousness).

The distinction here shows us how the author is free to be omnipresent; and it becomes all the more clear, I think, how this can be possible for God.







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Existence of God – 12

Existence of God – 12


If God can be compared with an author, how shall we think of God’s omnipresence?

This may be one of the more difficult “omni-” attributes that we have to think about.  We’ve thought a bit about omnipotence, and we have omniscience waiting in the wings; these two are already “invisible” traits.

That is, if I say to you, “Superman is stronger than any human being,” you don’t have any trouble with that.  His strength is not necessarily apparent, but lies in wait, and we only see it when he’s doing something.  Then, we compare what he can do with what the strongest human beings can do, and we see that he is stronger than they are.

Or take the root of omniscience, intelligence*.  Let’s say I invite you into a room full of Stephen Hawking look-a-likes.  They are chatting amicably, and amid the computerized chatter I ask you to pick out the real Hawking, who is one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists in the world.  You can’t easily tell which one is he – his intelligence lies in wait.  But a good way to find out might be to ask them all to give a quick exposition on whether black holes lead to new universes (they don’t, according to Hawking).

Now ask either Superman or Hawking – where are you?  The answer will be a single location in three dimensional space.  You can only be in one place at one time.

Presence as an attribute, in other words, does not lie in wait (unless you’re a ninja).  It is the obvious thing about you, that you are somewhere, and only there.  It can be an alibi or a damning piece of evidence – but it can’t be both at the same time.

How then is God omnipresent?

We are often – I am often, even until the present moment – tempted to imagine a vast ghost of a being, invisible to us, perhaps like a really thin gas.  This ghost permeates the Universe, though we have trouble with this, and not just because it’s eerie.

For a start, can this ghost see?  Where are its eyes?  Is it entirely composed of “spiritual” eyes?  Or, are its eyes focused on us, and the long train of its flowing being extends from here out into space?

Or would we insist that God is not in space – therefore not omnipresent – because we don’t have any direct empirical evidence of him?  The opposite is a bit jarring to think about:  Some exterior physical presence existing in such a way that you are always and constantly aware of it.  (I imagine the body of a nondescript white male in 19th century clothes multiplying himself along the streets of, say, London).  This would make us all speak and act as though we were paranoid, no?

If the being has to be imagined “in” space, that is, as part of physical space, then maybe we have the wrong idea.

Rather, I suggest that the author is omnipresent within the context of her story, and we might take our cue from her.

Now, the author is something completely apart from her story and even our human authors are not made of up of the same “matter”  as the content of their stories.  So there is an implicit – shall we say necessary? – separation between the author and her story.

In this sense – as we saw with God – the author does not maintain a “physical” presence in her story.  I am grateful not to have to misconstrue her in such ways (I’m a married man, after all).  Isn’t she, nevertheless, present in her story?  If so, in what way?

 

*Here I use “intelligence” to mean something like “an ability to know.”  Of course it can also connote “an ability to learn” or something suggesting that the objective of learning has not been achieved, but could be.  This distinction will enjoy (or suffer) more treatment in future posts.







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Existence of God – 11

Existence of God – 11


(Not going to lie, it took me three tries to type out that subject.  You might really be in for it this time).

In our last post, I compared God to a common author, and applied the analogy to the classic riddle, “Can God make a rock so big He can’t lift it?”  This, of course, is a challenge to the coherence of a property like “omnipotence” (being all-powerful).

William Lane Craig gives us more to think about, however, than omnipotence alone.  If the KCA is successful, it also gives us a God who transcends space, time, matter, and energy.  Furthermore, God is the “First Cause” of the Universe, the one who brought it into being.

How does this comport with our analogy?  ”Nicely,” it would seem.

Who or what else, for example, can be said to bring a story into existence except its author?  The story does not write itself…

We quickly run into a kind of obstacle, perhaps only a matter of scope.  In our world, it is obvious that any given author is not THE first cause, but has a prior cause (the author’s parents, for a start).  So, for the purposes of our analogy, we are speaking of the author and her story as a kind of closed system.  In the closed system, the author simply exists.  Then, she begins a story, and she is indisputably the first and only cause of that story.

So the author speaks (or writes), and with mere words, a new world comes to exist.

And she may write of men and women, for example, animals of all kinds, trees and rivers and mountains.  Her story may follow the passage of a few moments, or days, years, even eons.  It may take place within a single building, or span continents, planets, galaxies – even other dimensions.  The driving forces of her story may be merely physical (the classic “man vs. nature” kind of story), or else she may tell of great movements in human civilization, or hitherto impossible technologies, and have in motion all manner of interests and objects.

That is, she speaks into existence the kinds of matter, time, space, and energy she wishes.  (And she might create other realms as well).

Does she not, then, transcend all of this?

To borrow some biblical ideas – are not 1,000 days like a single day for her, and a single day like 1,000?  Can’t Chapter 1 take place over the course of a single minute, and Chapter 2 the course of a century?

Hasn’t she called the sun into existence and commanded it to shine?  Whatever animals exist – hasn’t she also called them all up?  And the characters – hasn’t she fashioned them herself and, we might say, in her own image?  (Can an author ever create a character she cannot, in some part, relate to?  A good psychologist might have something say about this).

Is it any actual effort at all for her to be present at all places of her story at once?  (She does not even need to multi-task – after all, the story goes nowhere without her, and by necessity must wait until she attends to it).

This is enough to set the mind reeling, and perhaps your mind is doing better than mine in seeing the potential usefulness of the analogy.  But come humor me and my tortoise’s pace.   You may have noticed, for example, that I give a few examples of omnipotence, which we have already introduced as an attribute of God, and here at the end I switched to the attribute of omnipresence (being present everywhere).

The KCA does give us the impetus to think of God as transcending – rising above or going beyond the limits of, says Webster –  the Universe.  This would seem to get us started on omnipresence; we’ll consider it at greater length in the next post.

 

 







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