God is simple, not complex.

[Trolle]

How can one determine if God is simple or complex since these things are relative. What are we to compare God's simpleness or complexity to?

 

[AllanV]

Even if it is, infinite information storage still requires infinite complexity.

Computers operate with 0 or 1 and look at what is achieved. The device can be built big or small it depends on speed and capacity.
Most of the best designs copy nature in some way.

 

[Rick O'Shez]

Atheists seem to have this basic misunderstanding that God is complex.

I find it very difficult to keep up with all these different ideas about God that theists keep coming up with, which is why I have converted to ignosticism.
Complex, simple, loving, not-loving, personal, impersonal, mono-, pan-, pana-, endless permutations on the 3 omni-whatsits, well, oi dunno, it's enough to give you a headache.

 

[Parsimony]

Computers operate with 0 or 1 and look at what is achieved. The device can be built big or small it depends on speed and capacity.
Most of the best designs copy nature in some way.

Right, but my point still stands. I see no reason why anyone should have a problem with God being infinitely complex in the first place.

 

[Gambit]

Don't you lose the meaning of 'God', then?
Seems silly.

No.

 

[Gambit]

Yeah, but isn't complexity more interesting than simplicity, ergo we are more interesting than God.

"Simplicity is difficult for twisted minds." - A Course in Miracles

 

[Gambit]

If we intuit infinite predicates, we can intuit infinite parts.

The intuitive mind perceives wholeness, oneness. The analytical mind breaks wholeness and oneness into parts. If you are truly using your intuition, then you would perceive the unity that lies behind the world of multiplicity.

 

[Gambit]

This is not true in the slightest bit. Go to an atheist forum and witness the dislike towards Dawkins. Dawkins is not the authority on atheism and what you are doing is essentially creating a false situation

I have heard this argument not only on this forum but also on atheist forums.

 

[Sha'irullah]

I have heard this argument not only on this forum but also on atheist forums.

I am not making an argument. I am heavily questioning your sincerity right now

 

[Rick O'Shez]

"Simplicity is difficult for twisted minds."

Nice. Sounds a bit Buddhist actually.

 

[Gambit]

If God is omniscience, then His mind contains an infinite amount of information (He would know all of the numbers as well as all of the answers to all possible equations). His mind (and therefore Him as a whole) would contain an infinite number of bits and would therefore be infinitely complex. How can something/someone without parts of any kind contain any information (or at least more than 1 bit of information)?

The term "information" literally means the process of being "in-formed." Human beings are informed (or receive information) from something other than themselves. God does not.

Whereas humans know themselves by way of information, God does not. He is wholly identical both with his intelligible nature and the intellectual act by which he knows his nature. (source: pg. 167, "God without Parts: Divine Simplicity and the Metaphysics of God's Absoluteness" by James E. Dolezal)

 

[AllanV]

Right, but my point still stands. I see no reason why anyone should have a problem with God being infinitely complex in the first place.

God is the one who livens the whole system up. God wills it. God is a life giving Spirit. The complex system is laid out and then it is livened up. But what is the complexity, the word or spokesman brings it and this is the spirit that is in Jesus as scriptures relate.

This is how we as humans operate. We have energy by the will with belief and the complexity comes in the various emphasis of emotion that is placed on the words spoken.

 

[Ouroboros]

The intuitive mind perceives wholeness, oneness. The analytical mind breaks wholeness and oneness into parts. If you are truly using your intuition, then you would perceive the unity that lies behind the world of multiplicity.

Sounds awfully lot like pantheism! LOL!

 

[Gambit]

Merely defining God as simple is meaningless especially when attempting to answer any question regarding the mechanics behind God and creation.

God creates by knowing his essence as imitable.

By identifying God as identical to his properties the concept of God becomes nonsensical. No more than identifying a person as human by morally good or tall.

This is only because you lack the intuitive capacity to perceive this.

 

[Gambit]

That life is God. (Using God since it's widely associated with the source of all that exist) I am saying it IS all that exists. With no life anywhere, nothing and no one would exist.

I see. You're apparently a pantheist.

 

[Gambit]

The Eastern Orthodox Church positively rejects the doctrine of absolute divine simplicity and instead believes God in his essence is utterly incomprehensible and unknowable..

So, you believe God is composed of parts?

 

[Gambit]

With all due respect, how do you know that?

Theology has traditionally been defined as "faith seeking understanding." I'm seeking understanding. Apparently, you are content to bask in the mystery of ignorance. That's your prerogative. But this raises the question: Why are you participating on a religious debate forum?

 

[Unveiled Artist]

I see. You're apparently a pantheist.

I never considered myself an pantheist. In my signature, when Anne talks about God is life, she is personally talking about her Creator not pantheism.

The Creator is in the food they ate, the water they drank, the air they breathe, the earth they trod and died on, the sleep they slept, and the everywhere and everything. God is life is not just a pantheistic point of view.

It means God IS life not God created life. More powerful whether or not He be a creator or, I don't know, the Sun.

 

[NulliuSINverba]

Atheists basically attack a "straw man" God.

<<<yawn>>>

Theists haven't demonstrated that a Straw Man God exists, let alone any other.

The first explains nothing although some prominent atheist physicists (Krauss and Hawking) have attempted to argue that the universe will spontaneously create itself from nothing.

Actually, invoking God doesn't explain anything either. It's the cosmic equivalent of "Because I said so."

 

[NulliuSINverba]

Theology has traditionally been defined as "faith seeking understanding."

Unless the understanding contradicts the faith, of course. In such instances, faith always trumps understanding, correct?