Quote:16. Those who hold this theory profess to find in it the demonstration of some of the attributes of God. The worlds of the universe being infinitely numerous, God is thus seen to be infinite; vacuum, or nothingness, being nowhere, God is everywhere: God being everywhere, since everything is an integral part of God, He is thus seen to be the intelligent cause of all the phenomena of the universe. What can we oppose to this argument?
"The dictates of reason. Reflect on the assumption in question, and you will have no difficulty in detecting its absurdity."
The Pantheistic theory makes of God a material being, who, though endowed with a supreme intelligence, would only be on a larger scale what we are on a smaller one. But, as matter is incessantly undergoing transformation, God, if this theory were true, would have no stability. He would be subject to all the vicissitudes, and even to all the needs, of humanity He would lack one of the essential attributes of the Divinity, namely, unchangeableness. The properties of matter cannot be attributed to God without degrading our idea of the Divinity and all the subtleties of sophistry fail to solve the problem of His essential nature. We do not know what God is; but we know that it is impossible that He should not be and the theory just stated is in contradiction with His most essential attributes. It confounds the Creator with the creation, precisely as though we should consider an ingenious machine to be an integral portion of the mechanician who invented it.
The intelligence of God is revealed in His works, as is that of a painter in his picture; but the works of God are no more God Himself than the picture is the artist who conceived and painted it.
Quote:"The Pantheistic theory makes of God a material being"Two comments:
1) The Ra material supports the idea that the infinite Creator is not solely a material being.
2) There seems to be a hidden assumption in the question, or answer or both, in that all of Creation is material. It is logically consistent that if all of Creation is everything, including non-material things such time/space, and etc, then referring to everything as God would not make God a material being.
Quote: He would lack one of the essential attributes of the Divinity, namely, "unchangeableness."If God is everything, it does not follow that he is necessarily constantly changing due to the nature of infinite and due to the nature of the concept of infinite universes. Some physics theorize that our physical universe is one of an infinite amount of universes, some with different properties and different laws of natures. The idea of time and change no longer make sense when you have infinite possibilities playing out in infinite alternate universes. Thus, I think the answer assumes there is one, concrete, single universe, with a single timeline, which isn't a good assumption because it may not be true.
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