Someone on SpiritualForums.com recently posted a link to download a PDF titled "Is Jesus God?", and, curious as always, I downloaded it and gave it a read. Other than two things, it contained no argument or line of reasoning I had not heard before. One of those two was interesting (a discussion of the logic of Yeshua's resurrection), but the other contained such inane leaps of logic I felt compelled to discuss it here.
At the end of the PDF was a 20 part logical Proof of the Divine. It began quite well (though not in any way that hasn't been used before before) with the idea that a universe with a definite beginning must have a Cause. From there it goes logically through the nature of such a Cause, but around Step 15 it starts to break down and make unfounded assumptions. I'll repost the final few steps here.
12. All the causes cannot be finite (non-ultimate) causes.
Therefore,
13. The personal moral existing Creator-Cause is infinite (i.e.,
ultimate).
14. The infinite cause must be eternal because eternality is infinity
applied to time (and no meaningful statement can be made about
space without reference to time).
15. An infinite eternal Cause could not change (since anything He
would change into, He would already be).
Therefore,
16. The Creator-Cause must be all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-
perfect (otherwise He could change).
Therefore,
17. A personal, moral, infinite, eternal, immutable (unchanging), all-
knowing, all-powerful, all-perfect Creator-Cause exists.
18. Such a Being is worthy of worship.
19. A Being worthy of worship can be called God.
Therefore,
20. GOD EXISTS.
Point 15 is really the core of why I cannot accept the ideas of Monotheism. The idea of an unchanging Divine, and the ideas of perfection that follow in 16 and 17, is the root of the idea of human imperfectness and sinfulness; God is infinite and we are finite, so if God is also perfect and perfection is infinite, we as finite beings must be imperfect. This is the genesis (pun intended) of Original Sin.
But what such a mindset misses is the unconscious limitations this perspective places upon the Divine. If the Divine is infinite and eternal (as stated in point 14), then the Divine must contain It's creation, since to not contain it creates a finitism; it says that this is something "God" is not. Yet if God contains Creation, God must also change, since change is the defining characteristic of Creation, and especially of Life. Therefore immutability cannot be an aspect of God, and mutability cannot be imperfect. Therefore we must be already perfect, since we are not separate from God.
The real leap of logic, however, is in #18. The idea that we should or need to worship the Divine is completely dependent upon the idea of God's separateness and our imperfection, yet as I stated above, the whole idea of our imperfection and separateness creates a limitation upon God, and therefore must not be true if God is infinite and eternal.
But this does not even touch upon the whole idea that worship of the Divine is a requirement. A requirement implies that worship is something that God needs or desires. If it is a need, it implies that somehow God would be lessened or damaged or hurt by not getting it, and how could that which is unlimited, eternal, and omnipotent be lessened, hurt, or damaged? The very idea that such could happen is a limitation in and of itself.
So therefore, worship must be required out of God's preference, yet why would such a preference exist? It must only exist if God created it. So what purpose does such a creation serve? It would imply that there is something God would prefer that would not manifest, and why would God create the desire for something and the situation where the desire could manifest, yet did not? This implies powerlessness on God's part, another impossibility.
The usual monotheist rebuttal of this is that God gave us free will so that we could come to God out of choice rather than out of compulsion, yet such a construction requires separation of God from Creation, which creates a limitation upon the Unlimited. For us to choose what God does not want us to choose would require God to have no part in our choices, which would require that we are separate from God. If we are separate from God, then there is something God is not, which is a limitation and therefore impossible.
What it comes down to is that the constructions of Western Monotheism require a limited and anthropomorphized Divine. While such idea do have an internal logic, they hinge upon assumptions that I find completely unfounded. Thus I have personally discarded the WM God and forged my own paths and ideas.
JCS
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