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Feedback 2011
Is God ‘simple’?
Published: 10 December 2011(GMT+10)
Brian H. from the United States writes in response to article
The importance of correct history and theology. CMI’s
Shaun Doyle responds with his comments interspersed:
Everything in our experience is composed of parts. Is God also composed of parts?
Credit: stock.xchng
Dear CMI,
Dear Mr H.
Thank you for your feedback. My comments are interspersed below.
I was reading this article tonight and was in agreement with you until you got to
the part about God being a ‘simple entity’, at that point you lost me.
It seems as though you are arguing that the Creator is less complex than His creation.
How does the fact that God is spirit lead to the conclusion that He is ‘simple’?
To the best of my knowledge we have no idea what spirit is, or how it might work.
Why should we therefore assume that spirit is less complex in internal nature than
matter? Your comments remind me somewhat of Darwin concluding that cells were small
blobs of simple jelly because he was ignorant of what they were made of or how they
work. We might just as easily assume that spirit is more complex than matter as
it is responsible for things beyond the ability of matter i.e. the creation of matter
from nothing.
God has no parts—He is a whole, unified and indivisible being.
When we say that God is simple, we mean that He is not composed of parts, not that
He is easy to understand. God has no parts—He is a whole, unified and indivisible
being. So God is not made up of x amount of ‘spirit stuff’, and He is
not something that we can dissect (physically or otherwise) so as to find out how
He works. What that would actually do is ground God’s being in something other
than Himself; i.e. the ‘spirit stuff’ that He is supposedly made up
of. If God is truly the self-existent one (Exodus 3:14), then what He is composed of cannot be distinguished
from Himself. In sum—God is what He is, and that cannot change.
God’s simplicity is usually used as a way of talking about God’s attributes.
According to the principle of divine simplicity, God is not merely the sum of His
attributes, nor are they additions to His being. The reality to which “the
power of God” and “the wisdom of God” refer is no different—they
both refer to God, God as a whole and nothing but God. They are different linguistic
paths of referring to the same reality, like both “the double of two”
and “the square of two” refer to the same number: four. As such, all
of God’s attributes hold true for his entire being, which means that every
attribute of God also qualifies every other attribute.
In addition we know that God created strictly spiritual beings (angels), and since
God is different from His creation it suggests strongly that spirit is not all the
same; otherwise the difference between God and the angels would be limited to the
amount of spirit they possess.
Very true. This tells us that the word ‘spiritual’ typically refers
to something we cannot usually perceive with our physical senses (even if spiritual
beings can manifest in a way that we can physically interact with them). But our
inability to physically perceive these beings tells us nothing of their metaphysical
composition. Therefore, the word ‘spiritual’ tells us nothing about
the metaphysical composition of either God or the angels.
Furthermore God was able to create a universe of information from nothing, which
suggests that He already possessed all the necessary information in Himself in some
form, before actualizing it. And since God is unchanging it therefore follows that
God must always have had a complexity greater than that of the universe. Which is
not ‘simple’.
This is ambiguous, and I found myself wondering if you were conceiving of the information
to create the universe as some ‘part’ of God which he used, thus actualizing
the universe. This seems to be the case when you conclude that God has this complexity
within himself because the universe has it. However, this commits the fallacy of
reification, which treats abstract concepts as physical realities. You seem to have
given the information within God a tangible existence it cannot have because information
is a conceptual reality, like justice or love. It can have concrete consequences
(i.e. the information coded on DNA configures the system that enables the cell to
operate), but information is itself intangible. The information may be difficult
to understand, but that has nothing to do with the metaphysical composition of information.
Reifying information makes it a part of what God is composed of. If that is the
case, then God would have to have other parts, the sum of which explains God’s
metaphysical composition. However, that means that God’s essence is grounded
in the parts that He is composed of (one such part being the information to make
the universe), and not in Himself. If that is the case, then God is not an independent
being because He has to then rely on these parts for His existence. This obviously
means He is not self-existent either. Neither is He necessary because the parts
that make God up can exist by themselves without coming together to make God. In
other words, if God is not what He is, then He is not God at all.
However, if you simply mean to say that because God has more information (since
He is omniscient) than a finite universe that He is harder to fully comprehend (i.e.
more complex) than the universe, then I agree. But note that that has nothing to
do with what God is composed of because ‘omniscient’ is just a way to
describe God’s whole being with respect to the concept of knowledge.
You wrap up with the idea that God being simple helps to explain how He could be
self-existent, but I fail to see how that addresses the issue at all. It seems rather
similar to the way that atheists attempt to explain how something could come out
of nothing; as if a simple something emerging from nothing is easier to explain
than a complex something coming out of nothing; this misses the point that they
are two completely different states of being: being and non-being. I understand
that you are not saying God came from nothing, but I fail to see how it is easier
to be self-existent if you are simple rather than self-existent and complex.
Since God’s existence and essence are indistinguishable (a principle of divine
simplicity—no attribute is distinguishable from another regarding God’s
being), God just is—his being has no potential for non-existence, and nothing
caused him to exist. That is why divine simplicity explains God’s self-existence.
However, the same can’t be said for angels, who can potentially be non-existent,
evidenced by the fact they have a cause: God.
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
Sincerely,
Brian
I hope this helps,
Shaun Doyle
Writer and Editor
Creation Ministries International
David M. from the United States writes: in response to article
Clergy Letter Project a circus:
I presume you won’t publish this, which would expose your dogmatic attachment
to an ideology which detests the search for the kind of truth which science can
provide. Oh Well. Here goes.
For centuries theology was the Queen of Sciences. She still is, but has lost her
way by demanding that she be both Queen and King. Too bad! The King, scientific
method, is being smothered by false courtiers of the Queen who think they should
do the King’s business. Too bad! That forces the King, in defensive posture,
to attempt to do the Queen’s business, which is none of his business. Meaning,
purpose, right and wrong, these are the Queens’ business, and no scientist
worth the name traffics there in her/his role as scientist. As persons, yes, but
not in the laboratory.
So. Get off it. Let science do its proper thing, which is not theology, which is
finding out HOW things work, not WHY. And, religious folk, you badly mess up the
King’s business when you fake being scientific. Stick with the WHY where science
qua science cannot venture. AMEN
CMI’s Dr Tas Walker replies:
Hi David,
We disagree with the stories that evolutionists make up about the past—stories
about things that they have not observed.
As I understand your intriguing email, you say that science is King in the laboratory.
There are some important philosophical issues that are relevant here, but mostly
we would have no quarrel with you. We call the sort of science that is done in the
laboratory ‘experimental science’, where scientists make observations
on experiments in the present—experiments that can be repeated.
However, what we are discussing on this site are beliefs about the past. Creationists
agree with everything that is actually observed in the present, such as minerals,
fossils, isotopes and strata. But we disagree with the stories that evolutionists
make up about the past—stories about things that they have not
observed.
Your accusation applies to evolutionists in this case because they have a dogmatic
attachment to their ideology and are not prepared to look at alternative explanations.
You will find this article explains this in more detail:
‘It’s not science’.
Your distinction between HOW and WHY was also proposed by evolutionist Stephen J.
Gould. He called it NOMA. That concept is an inaccurate way of describing this debate.
Please see
Stephen Jay Gould and NOMA for why this is the case.
All the best,
Tas Walker
Scientist, writer, speaker
Creation Ministries International, Australia
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