Is God fallible? Can God create a rock so heavy even he cannot pick up? According to the modern version of this ancient wondering, the answer is yes. The answer lies, as with many other things according to everyday capitalism, in money. More specifically, in how money is produced.
For example, the American coins are produced by a single agency (The United States Mint) in a very specific process. Theoretically, though God can conceivably create a second replica coin, it would still be considered fake, even though it would be virtually identical to the original one. So in essence, God can't create "real" money (never mind the church's collection plates). This is supposedly an atheistic argument, as it follows that God is not all powerful as is classically described.
To counter this, theologians might argue that since God has created the world and with it metals and man who enjoys toying with them, he also created (by proxy or as some would term 'inadvertently') the coin and therefore in some sort of a bizarre way there can be no forgery of coins (as they are all the work of God). This might be well received among certain elements in the criminal world, but would be a bit more difficult to grasp by most.
This illustrates what I think the real problem as far as God is concerned: not whether God exists, but how do you define God. After all, how can you agree or disagree about the existence of God, let alone trying to reach any conclusion, without knowing or making a conjecture as to what God is (and isn't). This opens a lot of questions, such as can you actually define God (or anything at all, for that matter), what qualities should God have and what he/she shouldn't, can God be actually addressed in regular human expressions ("he"/"she"/"they") and so on.
As an agnostic, I think the questions may be more important than reaching any 'definitive' answer. Because in questioning God, we also question ourselves, and as far as biology, art, politics, physics, philosophy, psychology and a host of other fields of knowledge suggest, we are no where near an answer. We merely try to ask the 'right' questions.
A similar sense of wonderment, I think, exists in music and its enjoyment. So this post's song comes from Vancouver, Canada's indie singer-songwriter Aaron Cadwaladr, with his own beautiful musings.
Check out Aaron Cadwaladr on his website and MySpace for more info and updates. Buy his debut LP here or on iTunes.
Aaron Cadwaladr - Shape Changing Sky {MP3} (from Shape Changing Sky)
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2 comments:
Beautiful song. Thanks also for the philosophical thoughts. I think of god as "All That Is," because anything less than that can't be god. And that view answers a lot of questions for me.
:)
Thanks for stopping by and your comment.
I find the "All that is" view rather compelling, as surely God would be so vast and above it all (and yet, IS all; where does the religious concept of divine intervention fit in to this view?). This is also a bit of a funny thing because human thought is sometimes quite limited in its grasp and in the concepts it utilizes. In this case "All that is", when we don't even know what is or what is the thing that we perceive as is. I'm not exactly being clear here, am I? :-) Maybe I can just say that I don't mind God being a mystery in a sense that it doesn't answer a lot of questions, but instead it raises a lot of questions. The answers depend and relate to the one who asks the questions.
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