If God is immutable, impassable and eternal, why does he do anything?

Eudaimonist

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Well, I don't think God thinks. :)

Sure, that's one way to attempt to deal with the problem. It is fraught with problems, however.

I don't even think that God's knowledge is propositional, as ours is. Whereas our knowledge is mediated through our senses, and we have to break it up into propositional attitudes about objects that may be either true or false, God simply knows entire objects by themselves immediately, directly, and all at once, without having to break his knowledge up into propositional attitudes.

It still seems to me that knowledge of this sort is propositional. God knows that "X is true" and "not X is false", just as we do.

Otherwise, what you are talking about is the perceptual level of consciousness that we might expect some animals to have, like the Zen frog, who does not think, but merely waits for a fly or snaps up a fly. Hardly an intelligent mode of being.

And why is that important? God had presumably conceptualized the Ten Commandments. How could God have done this "automatically"? Abstract thought isn't a sense.


eudaimonia,

Mark
 
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Crandaddy

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It still seems to me that knowledge of this sort is propositional. God knows that "X is true" and "not X is false", just as we do.

But what do true propositions describe? They describe actual reality, do they not? So how can they do this unless our conceptual apparatus and its corresponding mind-independent reality share something in common? If the world were something radically other than and disconnected from our minds, then I have a hard time seeing how we could know anything about it.

I'd say that what they share in common are the immanent forms that exist in natural substances. But I think these forms need to have something analogous to a mental existence themselves in order for our minds to be able to access them.

Otherwise, what you are talking about is the perceptual level of consciousness that we might expect some animals to have, like the Zen frog, who does not think, but merely waits for a fly or snaps up a fly. Hardly an intelligent mode of being.
For creatures like us, this would likely be true. But then, God is not a creature, and his “personal” attributes bear only a resemblance to our own.

(I like your signature, BTW. Big Tolkien fan here. :))
 
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Eudaimonist

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I'd say that what they share in common are the immanent forms that exist in natural substances. But I think these forms need to have something analogous to a mental existence themselves in order for our minds to be able to access them.

My epistemology couldn't be more different, since I don't think that our minds "access" something in the natural world that contains or automatically produces knowledge. Human concepts don't hide inside of entities.

Rather, our minds are capable of making distinctions based on sense perception. Our visual system allows us to perceive a table as a solid object (not merely as a smear of color), allowing us to view a table as a singular entity. With an exercise of imagination, we have some choice of where to draw those mental lines, since we could just as easily choose an atom in that table as an entity, or for that matter the entire Earth on which that table stands. However, once we have made that choice, we can mentally distinguish that entity from what it is not.

We can also identify properties of that entity, such as a table's rectangular shape, and other details (perhaps not exactly property-like) such as that the table is a creation of human beings. We can create mental categories based on these details by isolating certain characteristics for our purposes, and omitting others, such as defining a table as "a human created raised surface for the purpose of supporting objects", but not caring whether tables have a rectangular, circular, or other-shaped top surface.

Through the use of definitions, we can include and exclude various entities under consideration into our categories, and the concepts we produce using definitions can form a cognitive system of inter-relations. We may associate tables with eating dinner, for instance, and thus form a complex "worldview".

None of this requires some mystical (mental-like?) forms to exist inside of entities. To exist is to exist as something, and existing as something means having certain properties and not others. Our senses and minds do the rest. Table-ness does not have to exist inside of a table. The table simply has to fit a useful human-created definition.

In any case, I can see how you would think that God has some sort of automatic knowledge. Your epistemology is something I would describe as "mystical", by which I simply mean that it involves knowledge that is not a product of cognition. I prefer rational epistemologies, by which I mean epistemologies that follows a procedure similar to what I've described above.

(I like your signature, BTW. Big Tolkien fan here. :))

Cool. :cool:


eudaimonia,

Mark
 
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Crandaddy

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Rather, our minds are capable of making distinctions based on sense perception. Our visual system allows us to perceive a table as a solid object (not merely as a smear of color), allowing us to view a table as a singular entity. With an exercise of imagination, we have some choice of where to draw those mental lines, since we could just as easily choose an atom in that table as an entity, or for that matter the entire Earth on which that table stands. However, once we have made that choice, we can mentally distinguish that entity from what it is not.

I don't deny that we have some choice of where we draw our mental lines and how we categorize things, but I think that at some level or other, those lines and categories are, to some extent at least, actually there. At some level or other, something--maybe it's an atom, maybe its a subatomic particle, maybe it's an organism, maybe it's all or none of the above, but it's something--actually exists apart from our minds, and we are able to discover it. Even if our worldviews are mostly made up of our own conceptual constructs, I think those constructs need to have fundamental building blocks that are not constructs of our minds; otherwise, we're just making the whole world up as we go along.

These mind-independent somethings are what interest me. These are what I think need to have intelligible forms in order for our minds to be able to “access” them. Without these forms, I don't think we could form concepts of objects in the world outside our minds because there would be no external, mind-independent basis for such concepts. There would be no basis for a universal something-kind that we could carry over to multiple something-particulars, and so I don't see how constructing any sort of veridical worldview of a mind-independent reality could get off the ground.
 
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GodsGirlToday61

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Hi all, first post here, hope this is the right place for this thread, seemed the most appropriate one I could see that non-Christians can post in.

Been reading around various bits of theology and came across the idea that God is immutable (unchanging), impassable (unaffected by other things) and eternal (outside of time as we understand it). I understand that not all Christians believe this but was wondering how those that do reconcile this with God intervening in the world or even creating it in the first place.

Most Christian explanations I have read seem to suggest that God created the world because he wants some kind of relationship with human beings, either glorification (through the worship of the faithful and the punishment of sin) or love. Doesn't this imply that God gets some kind of gratification from his creation? If that is the case, how can he be immutable or impassable? And how can something eternal be influenced or affected by events in linear time in the first place?

I've never read a better, compact, inspirational, well-reasoned and Grace-filled theology book than Frank Sheed's Theology For Beginners. It isn't an easy read for anyone who would like to do more than pass a multiple choice quiz when they finished, you know, parrot back what was written and you read but in the end you have no more deep understanding of what Frank Sheed is saying about God than a gorilla who uses American Sign Language to get his banana.

I am reading and rereading and reflecting on it, and for someone as well read as I am, I'm enthralled, and deeply grateful for Frank Sheed's mind, and for how much work he put into getting down on paper, as best he could, a theology that enriches rather than replaces a Faith-based life.

I want to buy a few copies for some people I know who have never understood The Trinity and can't proceed without that understanding. I could, on Faith, but with this understanding, I feel dazzled and humbled and amazed at The Beauty of God the Father (as Origin), God the Son (as Idea Come into the world as God's Word, and the Holy Spirit as the Breathe That Proceeds From the Father and Son--and everything else that Frank Sheed shares about God (Three Persons with One Nature).

~ Carolyn
 
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Eudaimonist

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Without these forms, I don't think we could form concepts of objects in the world outside our minds because there would be no external, mind-independent basis for such concepts.

I think that the mind-basis for our concepts is mainly usefulness. We create and keep concepts that serve some purpose in our lives.

Our concepts certainly have something to do with "external reality", since they accurately describe or relate to that reality in some way (such as the concept "computer monitor" with respect to the collection of atoms that acts as a referent), but I don't think that computer monitor-ness exists inside of computer monitors. Rather, computer monitors fulfill the human purpose of functioning as computer monitors, making the concept meaningful to us.

So, I personally think that such an epistemology has no significant difficulties getting off of the ground. It sheds the last vestige of Platonism that even Aristotle hadn't quite shaken off, and for the better.


eudaimonia,

Mark
 
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OldWiseGuy

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Hi all, first post here, hope this is the right place for this thread, seemed the most appropriate one I could see that non-Christians can post in.

Been reading around various bits of theology and came across the idea that God is immutable (unchanging), impassable (unaffected by other things) and eternal (outside of time as we understand it). I understand that not all Christians believe this but was wondering how those that do reconcile this with God intervening in the world or even creating it in the first place.

Most Christian explanations I have read seem to suggest that God created the world because he wants some kind of relationship with human beings, either glorification (through the worship of the faithful and the punishment of sin) or love. Doesn't this imply that God gets some kind of gratification from his creation? If that is the case, how can he be immutable or impassable? And how can something eternal be influenced or affected by events in linear time in the first place?

Where did you (or anyone) get the idea that God is 'impassable'. The bible is replete with the various emotions and attitudes of God responding to the behavior and condition of mankind. I'm guessing from the ancient philosophers to whom God had not revealed himself.
 
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