The God of It

In a perfect world we would not need to have this debate at all, but seeing that the US Presidential Election are coming round and half the people voting do so based on their religious beliefs, allow me to piss them off.

When faced with the two most incompatible super powers of their god, I ask myself whether the omnipotence can override the omniscience?

If he knows already what he will do (omniscience), did he choose to do it (omnipotence), or did he know that he was going to make the choice? If he knew that he was going to make the choice, did he make it at all? If not, then he did not have the free will and is not omnipotent anymore. If he didn't know that he was going to make the choice, then he is not omniscient either. This can go in circles all day long, and the question I want answered: Can he change his mind?

If you are a Watchmen fan you will know about the difficulty Doctor Manhattan has in relating to human beings as he can see the past, present and future all at the same time. (Just like Death in the Terry Pratchett novels.)

Towards the end of the movie he decides to leave humanity behind and spend a bit of time alone on Mars. This illustrates the foreign and strange personality and intelligence of a god quite clearly. He has no way to relate to humans as he can see their fleeting and insignificant lives against the backdrop of a whole universe that is there to explore and control.

With the power to accomplish anything, would you still even try?

I remember an argument with my sister a good couple of years back regarding the sex of god, she insisted he was a man because the mysoginistic bible writers said so. End of case. It was bad enough looking at a blue glowing penis for 3 hours, would you want to do that for the next few millenia in heaven?

We tend to anthropomorphize god and ascribe feelings and viewpoints to him based on our own belief systems and mores/values, which are pretty flexible and change over time. If you really believe in the existence of a god with the powers that you want him to have, you would have to admit that he is beyond comprehension and take the agnostic viewpoint.

That being said, it makes whatever he/she/it may be much closer to a complete and utter alien lifeform that we will never be able to understand and turns god into a a Lovecraftian intelligence that will devour us just as easily as save us. It would only use us for its own pleasure and amusement.

This god would be beyond any comprehension as it is literally able to move through time. It would be the most strangest and weirdest thing that we have ever encountered.

The religious can counter that their god is personal and cares and looks after them every day, but lacking any proof to the contrary, I can only think that this makes him the ultimate voyeur in charge of his own Truman Show.

This strange and incomprehensible being/intelligence will have no human morals or values as we understand them. And we still haven't answered the conundrum I posited earlier.

With no human morals or limits, would you really want to depend for your future on such a being? Would you really want this kind of stange alien life to have control over you?

We may just as well start praying to Cthulhu.