How does He do it?

Great Debates
1

Most religions believe that their god(s) can influence the material world (e.g. the Biblical flood, fertility gods, punishments, etc.)

I have two questions about this:

  1. Can physical law be reconciled with divine will? For instance, when God turned Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt, did he do so by transmuting her body’s water molecules into salt molecules (which is contrary to the known laws of chemistry) or did he suddenly make nearby salt molecules migrate into her body (which is contrary to the known laws of physics)? Or did he just “override” the laws of nature when he saw fit to do so?

  2. Supposing that God does need to temporarily “override” the laws of nature to influence the material world, how does he do so? Doesn’t he need at least a partly material nature in order to do this? Is this possible for a divine (spiritual) being? If I want to throw a rock, I just pick it up and throw it. But if God wants to move a rock, he doesn’t literally have hands to throw it, because if he did, it would mean that his hands would be subject to the same physical limitations as human hands, which is contrary to his omnipotent nature (I’m talking about Yahweh here). Does he use something like telekinesis? How can he just “will” an event without having a material presence?

2

There seems to be no end to the ways in which a God Who is Spirit might manipulate waves collapsing.

[ul]
[li]He might employ agents (i.e., His believers)[/li][li]He might take advantage of physical laws you don’t yet know[/li][li]He might affect the sensory interpretation of an event rather than the event itself, perhaps through the amygdala[/li][li]The universe itself might not be real in the same sense that He is[/li][li]He might be hyperdimensional, and thus you have the same perception of Him that Mr. Flatlander would have if you moving things around his plane[/li][/ul]

To name a few.

3

Maybe he uses accupuncture.

4

Eh. If one is inclined to believe in such things, He’s, well, God. Omnipotent and all that. An “explanation” of how He would do that Voodoo that He do do so well would have exactly as much relevance to us as would our explanation to a pre-Greek society of how we put the invisible, non-smelling yet poisonous gas into one side of the cracker and get polyethelene out of the other.

5

At least a possibility, admiral.