Here I am running a hypothetical dialogue with Mawson the author of “Belief in God” on issues related to God’s necessary attributes and their coherence.
Me: I think we should use better terms to describe God’s existence ‘inside’ or ‘outside’ time?
Mawson: what is the problem when we consider the binary possibility of either ‘inside’ or ‘outside’ time?
Me: that would give the notion that either he is outside time, so prayer of the people would have no effect, or he is inside time, so he would not know the future, and both options would be problematic for an omnipotent and omniscient God.
Mawson: as you already read, I went with atemporal view and claimed that God exists outside time, but how would you introduce a third option in between and address the issue of personal interaction with people?
Me: If I have to choose between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ I would choose ‘outside’ time, but will claim –to be coherent- that he interacts with time. I would think that God knows that tomorrow I would face big problem in understanding chapter 4 of Mawson and that I would call my God and ask him to make me understand this chapter, and that he would answer my call. So, I think God’s eternal knowledge –and his being outside time- does not mean that he can not interact personally with people.
Mawson: and would that scenario violate your being a free person?
Me: I think, No. I find no contradiction is claiming my full freedom, yet at the same time claiming that God knows in advance what would I do based on my complete freedom. And I think this is the best way to raise any kind of incoherence between omnipotence, omniscience, eternity and perfect freedom.
Mawson: that is OK, but you need to understand Abdul that I did not adopt the ‘full’ version of atemporal God as theists might present it, rather I adopted the partial version of it, and joined the temporal group in advocating that God did not exist at all times simultaneously.
Me: Yes, I would go with you in that aspect, and would also think that atemporal version should not have the clause of simultaneousness. However, if I agree in general with your treatment of time, I would disagree to a greater extent your treatment with space in relation with God.
Mawson: I thought I was consistent in claiming that God can not exist before Big Bang and that the universe we observe today is the body of God, because God is omnipresence and there is no space where God is absent from.
Me: and that was the difficult part that which attacks the coherence the most. I can not imagine myself being a part of body of God. Does that mean I was present from eternity? And that entails there is no such thing called creature and creator, they are the same. I think somehow wrong interpretation of omnipresence, coupled with wrong definition of section of a matter led you to claim that.
Mawson: but again you might have noticed that I avoided both terms of ‘incorporeality’ and ‘omnipresence’ and replaced them with ‘transcendence’ and ‘immanence’ to make more sense.
Me: I am not sure If I have understood these two terms properly, however, I was thinking that your version would raise issues more than the issues that it would close. But I appreciate your disclaimer that our limited finite knowledge might not be able to capture the details of an infinite being.
Mawson: If you do not fully agree with me on those issue, I think –at least- you would agree with me in the ‘perfect freedom’ attribute of God, where I justified this freedom based on his perfect power and perfect knowledge attributes.
Me: you are right, here I have to agree with you. But, continuing from there are bringing the issue of perfect goodness made issue more complicated. Here, other participants, rightly brought the problem of evil fresh to the fore.
Mawson: Yes, that is a big issue which theists always face in defense of an omnibenevolent God, and we will have more appropriate time to discuss it later. However, I addressed this issue in the present context through distinction between subjectivism and objectivism and also discussing morality, and I stressed on the root cause of this confusion generating from our inherent lack in knowledge and power. Absolute knowledge and absolute power leads to perfect freedom and perfect goodness.
Me: Yes, with that I have no choice but to second you. However, I was thinking in a simpler justification. How about thinking that an action of God might seem ‘evil’ on the surface and relative to a person, but this same action is of perfect goodness when thinking about it globally. Thinking about a rainfall as an act of God is perfectly good because this rain carries with it enormous benefits for human, animal, etc. However, this same rainfall might caused a car accident to Mr X and caused Mrs Y to slip break arm while walking on a muddy ground. To Mr X and Mrs Y this rainfall might be evil. A theist could justify even further and say that God had punished Mr X for being disobedient to him, and have tested the patience of Mrs Y to reward her in the ‘world hereafter’.
Mawson: So, based on the discussion above, I am assuming that you would for sure ascertain the necessity of God, but I am interested to know of which type of necessity you are considering.
Me: Here, again I have opted for somehow a strong form of necessity and attempted to go for an aggregate necessity for the existence of God. I second Anselm in claiming that the existence of God must be of the strongest form. And this claim requires that the necessity associated with it must be of the strongest form as well. If that is the case, then I would think that the traditional metaphysical necessity for the existence of God is a weak one and not sufficient alone. There has to be more than just metaphysical type. And hence, I tried to justify the necessity of God -in addition to metaphysical- the other types like physical, moral and logical. For that I have made an elaborate posting in the definition forum.
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Do not become weak (against your enemy), nor be sad, and you will be superior (in victory) if you are indeed (true) believers. [Quran aal-Imran (3):139]
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