I strongly suspect that the panentheistic approach isn't a silver bullet for theodicy problems, but it does have some interesting implications. For example, Scoots asked...
Would we understand a panentheistic God as having created the cosmos, i.e., with some form of intention? Because if we don't, then we still need some explanation for why there's a universe, and if we do then that god would still bear culpability for making a world where horrors would take place.
I think a panentheist could go either way on this one, depending on how he understands the relationship between God and the universe. An epiphenominal panentheist* who says that the mind of God arises from out of the universe, would probably say that God did not create the universe, but instead the universe created God. Regarding the origin of the universe ... who knows? I guess he could ascribe to some scientific theory about the of the universe, or he could dip into some narrative that attempts to explain existence, or he could simply argue that the question of "why" doesn't make any sense with regard to brute existence.
A pattern panentheist* might argue that God is not personal, and is therefore both unable to willfully "create" and, by similar reasoning, exempt from guilt altogether.
But a Platonic panentheist* might say that God is personal and did in fact create the universe. Then, like Scoots says, he would need to justify God's decision to create. If God created the universe, and could have foreseen the horrors that would come to pass, then God should be held responsible for those horrors. I expect a Platonic panentheist would use one of the many arguments that traditional theists have already made attempting to extricate God from creator's guilt. Maybe he would take a line from Romans 9 and say that it's OK for God to create things with the intent of destroying them. I don't like that approach very much. Maybe he would argue this is this is indeed the best possible world, and that the goods of existence outweigh the horrors that seem to remove any possibility of meaning from that existence. I don't like that approach either.
But here's a possibility: what if the idea of "creator's guilt" makes sense when discussing, say, the atomic bomb, but is inherently contradictory when discussing the creation of worlds. Here's what I mean:
Suppose that God is puttering around in God's kitchen, making Mrs. God an egg sandwich and trying to decide whether or not to create a universe. And to simplify things, let's further suppose that God wants to create a deterministic universe, where all events in time can be known based on the universe's starting configuration.
Also, God is making the egg sandwich using eggs from free-range, grain-fed chickens, so there's no guilt to deal with there.
To decide whether a universe is worth creating, God can simply follow the implications of the universe's configuration, thinking it through, so to speak, and decide whether the horrors in this potential universe are justifiable. If they're not justifiable, God will refrain from creating the universe. If they are justifiable, then God can go right ahead and do whatever God wants.
So, settling down in an easy chair, God begins thinking through our universe. God begins with the big bang, or whatever came before that, and proceeds to the formation of earth, and the animal ferocity of life as it evolved. God's mind simulates the universe perfectly, so God knows your person in its entirety. God knows what Abraham will think about Isaac, and what Pharaoh will do about the Israelites, and what you will think about these words you are reading right now. God considers, in every detail, the suffering of starving children, the grief of mothers, lovers, friends, every single detail up to the point that God decides should be the end of the universe.
But wait.
In thinking so exactly about the world, and its people, and their thoughts and feelings, God has essentially created that world.
In information systems terms, the hardware of the universe is the mind of God. The program of the universe is composed of its its initial configuration and physical laws. And because, in our panentheistic model, the mind of God is the only reality we have to work with, the only way to know the outcome the universe is to run the program. Once the program has been run, the horrors have already occurred. God simply can't think through a potential universe without making it an actual universe.
And if that's not curious enough: what if this is the simulation? What if, right now, God is simultaneously considering all possible universes, and the salvation of the universe involves God's ultimately selecting the best possible universe, or - even better - merging all the possible universes into the Best Possible Universe?
Hunh. Things keep getting curiouser and curiouser.
* I just kind of made up the terms "epiphenominal panentheist", "pattern panentheist" and "Platonic panentheist", so you might not want to use them in essays or on dates or anywhere important.
10 comments:
Logically I think that what's theologically termed "creation" could have created itself or have existed eternally in one form or another - that it's no more logical to assign aseity, if I'm remembering that term correctly (meaning self sufficiency of being) to an entity that's more or less seperate from creation than to ascribe that attribute to creation itself.
Is there a connection between your idea and issues of algorithmic compressibility and informational entropy?
To wit, the shortest/only means to describe an algorithm that cannot be compressed (i.e., maximal informational entropy) would involve the actual running of the algorithm. That is, if the universe has low compressibility then the only way to describe/simulate the “algorithm” would be to run/execute the “algorithm.”
@Paul:
Yeah, I like your summary better. Saying that God created the universe simply pushes us over to the question of what created God.
@Richard:
Hm.
I think the seed of the universe, before the big bang, could be thought of as containing minimal informational entropy (or maximum information), supposing that it was impossible to compress it further.
So if the universe is deterministic, any fact about it - for example, the fact that I scratched my chin ten seconds ago - would actually be implied by the state of the universe at time 0. So I think what I'd want to say is that if one were trying to compare universes for goodness, one would be forced to consider what was going on at every point in space at every point in time, eliminating the possibility of a shortcut.
I sure do say "So" a lot.
That's funny... so do I! There it was needed, but no kidding, I have to keep editing "so" out of my sentences as the first word.
Also "always" and "never" I've personally found good words for me to avoid. I tend to want to use them for emphasis but then they beg the question of exceptions, which, when I think about it, there usually are.
Do we need to assume that God would have tested the algorithm in the most efficient way possible, and that therefore God would have had to actually create the universe to see what would happen?
It seems to me that you or I can think through a simple algorithm and know how it will be played out without having to run it on actual hardware. If we could do that with a simple algorithm, I don’t know why God couldn’t do it with a complex one. But then, come to think of it, that’s a bad analogy, because our brains constitute actual hardware as well.
But surely a god––even a panentheistic one––would have a mind that could operate independently of matter, right?. After all, God could only create matter with a mind that existed independent of that matter. And if that’s the case, then I don’t see why that same god couldn't think through the algorith of the cosmos (using its nonmaterial mind) before “running” it on the hardware of actual matter.
One reason we could claim that such a mental exercise wouldn’t work is that the results would take too long for the god to think through before going through with the actual creation. That presumes we can compare the speed at which our panentheistic god thinks with the speed of events as they play out in the actual universe. Of course, since we’re just supposing a god that can be exonerated of evil anyway, I suppose we can say that the thoughts would have taken as long as the working out of events. So the most efficient way to find out what would happen would be to let it happen in the actual creation.
But I don’t think that solves the problem either. Wouldn’t it still be wrong for a god to be too impatient to think through the playing out of events––at whatever speed it could––before going through with the creation? If it was irresponsible for Bush to go to war without fully thinking through the consequences, surely it would be even more irresponsible for God to create the entire cosmos under similar circumstances.
One potential way out would be to say that the cosmos goes on forever, and that our panentheistic god obviously couldn’t think through “forever” before going on with creation; to that, I would say that thinking through a few billion years should have been sufficient to demonstrate the horrors that the world brings about.
Then we have to suppose that maybe our panentheistic god just isn’t smart enough to think through all the events that would occur in the universe. But then, that would mean we’re dealing with a god who badly misjudged how the world would go. That’s problematic, to say the least.
By the way, I think maybe you wrote “pantheist” a couple of places in the post where you meant “panentheist”…
@scoots:
"But surely a god––even a panentheistic one––would have a mind that could operate independently of matter, right?. After all, God could only create matter with a mind that existed independent of that matter."
I don't think that the panentheistic model requires that God have a mind independent of matter, or, turned around somewhat, that "matter" exists as something distinct from God. I think the panentheist would be more likely to say that the construct that we call matter is actually made of God.
Along those lines, if nothing exists outside of God, it would be difficult for God to simulate creation in such a way that it didn't actually have the moral implications of a real creation. The word "simulate" loses its meaning.
"our panentheistic god obviously couldn’t think through “forever” before going on with creation; to that, I would say that thinking through a few billion years should have been sufficient to demonstrate the horrors that the world brings about."
This is really, really interesting in terms of computational theory, and I need to make it its own post.
Matthew wrote: if nothing exists outside of God, it would be difficult for God to simulate creation in such a way that it didn't actually have the moral implications of a real creation.
I don’t see it. Just because all matter is a part of God, that doesn’t mean every part of God is matter. (Would that be pantheism?) I still don’t see why a panentheistic god couldn’t simulate the world in a part of the god’s mind that wasn’t matter.
I just came over from Paul's blog. I see why he likes you so. I am currently having a faith crisis. Do you mind if I link you? I enjoy your perspective.
@enemy:
Sure, link away.
Sorry to hear you're having a faith crisis, those can be uncomfortable. =P
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