My conception of God implies that He’d have control over us to the point that, yes, we could decide 160 degrees would be a better number to mark a straight line or the sum of a triangle’s vertices’ angles if He wanted us to. I don’t think you’re trying to disprove God, but rather highlight contradictions in the way certain people believe God to be. Namely, to the extent that God is so devoid of properties resembling a being that it would be irrational to any longer call Him “God”, and just use “universe” to intone the idea.
As to your question beyond the nearly meaningless intricacy of worldplay, God composes the metaphysical bounds that define existance; they are a part of what I mean when I say “God.” Don’t get confused and think that 1 + 2 = 3 is a metaphysical bound of existance; it’s the way we describe one. God is ultimately above these metaphysical rules in my belief, to the extent that He has power over them, but I don’t expect them to be changed by Him.
Yep. Is that a problem?
I suppose that, being a theist, I should just tell you “because God wills it.” But that probably wouldn’t answer the questions clearly or fully. Logic is the way we think; the only way in which we would understand something to work in articulate terms would be to base it on logic, so we’d have a lot of trouble convincing ourselves logic didn’t work–we’d have to use logic to do it.
To the second question, I do believe that natural order is defined by God, so it gains purpose and value by that design; I don’t know what the aims or ultimate justification for natural order are. I think saying, “the only thing we know about something is that God defines it” doesn’t strike at the integrity of religion, nor does religion’s history of being tied to natural phenomena. Can you explain how it could be otherwise? Why does it matter that when science can’t explain something, religion is the only thing people have? Science still doesn’t replace religion; people still look at the sun, rivers, mountains, and loved ones and think about the glory of God, despite knowing how the solar system works, fluid dynamics, plate techtonics, and the biological roots of sexual desire.
Age old indeed. Again, I start with “because God wills it.” The term “evil” is certainly something we use liberally (or at least neocons use liberally), and doesn’t really apply to more than an ideal. So I’ll pretend you’re asking “Why is there suffering in the world?” just to make things a little cleaner. While an anthropomorphic view of God would basically be undermined by this question, in that God would have to decide to bring pain on people, and thus be accountable for doing evil at the same time as being all-loving, a more theologically accurate view of the Christian God (that is what we’re talking about I suppose) isn’t.
Remember that the general monotheistic, intellectual conception of God is also timeless, detached from the value of things like wealth and pain, as well as loving. To use the example of (what I consider to be metaphorical) an afterlife; would pain on earth matter to God if it were transient, even relative to the consciousness suffering, considering God’s timelessness? I think you can use your imagination to see how the idea of God escapes that question once you shed His garb of an old guy pulling strings from a cloud.
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