# Reconciling knowing God with a limitless God **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 8, 2011, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reconciling-knowing-god-with-a-limitless-god/573870 "2011-03-08T01:50:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2011, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reconciling-knowing-god-with-a-limitless-god/573870/21 "2011-03-08T21:05:37Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > Without wanting to make any statements in argument of its truth or validity, I think it should be noted that Christianity (in some forms) not only acknowledges this gulf of un-knowability, but indeed considers it a central and essential theme - asserting that humans cannot possibly reach up high enough (and that God solves this by reaching down). The problem is that doesn’t make God less unknowable, since you can’t know that he’s being honest. And the argument that “of course he’s honest, he’s God” fails because that’s a claim of knowledge about something supposedly unknowable. Really; I see little evidence that people actually buy into the theory that God is unknowable in the first place. It’s just an idea used to deflect criticism about God; but as soon as the criticism is over the believers go right back to talking about all the things they supposedly know about God and what he wants. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2011, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reconciling-knowing-god-with-a-limitless-god/573870/22 "2011-03-08T21:34:01Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > Without wanting to make any statements in argument of its truth or validity, I think it should be noted that Christianity (in some forms) not only acknowledges this gulf of un-knowability, but indeed considers it a central and essential theme - asserting that humans cannot possibly reach up high enough (and that God solves this by reaching down). Humans cannot possibly reach up high enough, okay. But if that’s the case, how do we even have the capacity to confidently and accurately know when God “reaches down”. Most importantly, why should God judge us for doubting our own abiliity to do this? Not expecting you to know the answer to these questions, mind you. Just throwing these out there to help clarify my (inarticulately communicated) dilemma. ---
**Author:** ![Blaster\_Master](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/cab0a1/32.png) [@Blaster\_Master](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blaster_Master)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2011, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reconciling-knowing-god-with-a-limitless-god/573870/23 "2011-03-08T22:00:43Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > The problem is that doesn’t make God less unknowable, since you can’t know that he’s being honest. And the argument that “of course he’s honest, he’s God” fails because that’s a claim of knowledge about something supposedly unknowable. > > Really; I see little evidence that people actually buy into the theory that God is unknowable in the first place. It’s just an idea used to deflect criticism about God; but as soon as the criticism is over the believers go right back to talking about all the things they supposedly know about God and what he wants. This is true, but I certainly think its reasonable to think it’s unlikely. Consider an example of a child being taught lessons by his parents. A parent can teach a kid from birth any sort of bizarre set of behaviors they want. For instance, a parent could teach their children that lying, stealing, and violence are all good things. There’s not really anything to stop them from doing that. Yet, remarkably few parents do such things. We are, after all, God’s creation. It just seems unlikely to me that he would want to do whatever the God equivalent is of teaching your kids to be little brats is. Just as I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt about their intentions when learning about them, I don’t see any reason to presuppose God is a liar. I also don’t see how “knowing all the things [we] supposedly know about God” is necessarily at odds with him being unknowable. I think a lot of Christians take it way too far, but we have some pretty straightforward teachings. There are some things I think we really just can’t know, like the exact nature of God, and what it’s like to exist outside of space-time, but I also don’t think that understanding that is meaningful from a perspective of faith. I don’t see how knowing a lot about God, even knowing everything a human can possibly understand about him, implies that there isn’t still plenty more we don’t know or can’t know. In fact, one of the things that really irritates me are concepts in Christianity that basically boil down to “well, it’s a mystery”, particularly when it’s pretty central to the beliefs of a lot of Christians. I think Trinitarianism is a good example of what I mean by that. I really only find that thought process meaningful in situations like “God works all things for good”, but I can’t find the good in it now; it helps to keep me optimistic because in almost every situation when I’ve despaired how that could possibly be true, I later can to understand how my prefered alternative probably would have ended up worse. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2011, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reconciling-knowing-god-with-a-limitless-god/573870/24 "2011-03-08T22:17:13Z")
> [@you\_with\_the\_face](#): > > But how can you compare your understanding about another flesh and blood human who is governed by the same natural laws as ourselves…to your understanding about a formless diety who inhabits a realm of existence completely beyond our intuitive knowledge, and _not_ recognize how puny this makes God look? As you say, even with humans we only know so much. So when it comes to God, that probably means we know nothing. > > If anything, I would think humility would prevent someone from believing that they are capable of knowing anything about such a being. It would be a safer bet than believing otherwise. > > Suppose there is an afterlife. We die and then wake up in whole new plane of existence. How likely is it that any of us peanut-brained mammals will look around and really come away with thinking “Yup, just as I thought.” > > I can’t imagine this occuring at all. And this is ultimately why I have a problem with religious belief. Not only because I find it pointless to believe in something that is completely unverifiable. But also because believing in a God that created this universe and yet does not violate our logic, automatically makes me doubt my ability to figure him out. So why even bother? The “game” as it is established tells me we weren’t put on Earth to believe in this entity. > > Does this make any sense? If I believed that human beings were peanut-brained mammals, then I might well agree with you. But I don’t believe that. I concur with the notion of the great chain of being, or in other words in the ranking of all things by their ability and potential, with minerals being the lowest, then plants, then animals, then humans. (And as is often pointed out, virtually all wisdom traditions until recently agreed that the chain continues upwards beyond humanity.) Now anything that belongs to the three lowest levels is stuck where it is. A rock can only be a rock. A tree can only be a tree. A chicken is permanently stuck in chickenhood. A human being, on the other hand, has the ability to choose what level to exist at and to move to higher or lower levels by conscious choice. Human beings at the lowest levels, such as bullies, thugs, and warlords, could reasonably be said to be little more than animals in terms of what they have chosen to do with their lives. To reach a higher level of existence, a person must be willing to lay aside the endless demands of their own ego and start leaning about themselves and others from a perspective that isn’t ego-driven. The more a person can do that, the higher the level of existence that he or she reaches. And this type of learning, unlike what takes place in schools, has no limits. There is no upper bound on how far it can go. Hence there’s no reason to be intimidated by the fact that God’s existence stretches infinitely far and into realms that no human being has ever reached. It is, in some sense, true in all types of intellectual exploration that you can never truly grasp the essence of the ultimate truth: not in art, not in history, not in science, not in philosophy, not in literature. Yet that doesn’t stop us from exploring those fields. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2011, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reconciling-knowing-god-with-a-limitless-god/573870/25 "2011-03-08T22:18:09Z")
While the universe is not limitless, the part of it beyond the event horizon is unknowable, and that doesn’t mean we can’t know anything about the part of the universe we do see. If you accept that God has actually interacted with us in some way, that interaction forms the basis of knowing at least something about God. Any time you act on what God supposedly said, or tell others to behave the way you think God wants them to behave, you are making knowledge claims. Saying that God wants us to be chaste, backed up by the appropriate Bible quotes, revelations, and holy waffles, is valid even if God is off watching God porn on Saturday mornings. And I definitely agree with **DerTrihs** about the absurdity of claiming that God is unknowable while telling us exactly the ways we are supposed to have sex. if one truly believes that God is unknowable, he’d STFU and perhaps mumble in the corner about the great mystery of it all. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2011, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reconciling-knowing-god-with-a-limitless-god/573870/26 "2011-03-08T22:29:26Z")
> [@Blaster\_Master](#): > > This is true, but I certainly think its reasonable to think it’s unlikely. Consider an example of a child being taught lessons by his parents. A parent can teach a kid from birth any sort of bizarre set of behaviors they want. For instance, a parent could teach their children that lying, stealing, and violence are all good things. There’s not really anything to stop them from doing that. Yet, remarkably few parents do such things. Few parents let their children starve to death or refuse to reveal themselves to their children, either. The parent/child analogy just makes God out to be a neglectful or abusive creator. And the problem only gets worse the more powerful God supposedly is (but then, if God is unknowable then all those people claiming that God is powerful are just by their own assertions making it all up). > [@Blaster\_Master](#): > > I also don’t see how “knowing all the things [we] supposedly know about God” is necessarily at odds with him being unknowable. One follows directly from the other. If something is unknowable, then by definition you don’t know anything about it. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2011, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reconciling-knowing-god-with-a-limitless-god/573870/27 "2011-03-08T22:50:08Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > If I believed that human beings were peanut-brained mammals, then I might well agree with you. But I don’t believe that. It seems you are saying that it’s likely that many or some of us will have accurately predicted what the afterlife is like because you don’t think we are peanut-brained mammals. I take this to mean that we should be able to overcome our disadvantage as mortal beings who are governed by logic and natural laws, and actually _know_ what is on the “other side”…even though the “other side” is completely divorced from reality as we know it. I don’t understand why this doesn’t strike you as a delusion of grandeur like it does me. Fundamentally, the crux is that I readily accept and believe that human beings are “peanut-brained mammals” in the grand scheme of things. After directly observing human behavior for 3 decades and being a student of history, this is the most conservative conclusion I can possibly draw. Seems a much more humbler position than declaring myself or anyone else enlightened enough to know God’s will. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2011, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reconciling-knowing-god-with-a-limitless-god/573870/28 "2011-03-08T22:54:12Z")
> [@Blaster\_Master](#): > > I think the easiest way to reconcile knowledge of a limitless God is to use mathematical projection. **Blaster Master** , your projection example reminds me of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (though Plato wasn’t talking about God). > [@you\_with\_the\_face](#): > > If anything, I would think humility would prevent someone from believing that they are capable of knowing anything about such a being. It would be a safer bet than believing otherwise. Humility does prevent me from believing that I know _everything_ about God; and it does prevent me from believing that I know anything (about God or anything else) with perfect certainty and complete understanding. > [@](#): > > Suppose there is an afterlife. We die and then wake up in whole new plane of existence. How likely is it that any of us peanut-brained mammals will look around and really come away with thinking “Yup, just as I thought.” Not likely at all. In my case at least, there isn’t a “just as I thought,” as I don’t really have an image in mind of what an afterlife would be like. I think it could well be beyond my current ability to imagine. > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > The problem is that doesn’t make God less unknowable, since you can’t know that he’s being honest. And the argument that “of course he’s honest, he’s God” fails because that’s a claim of knowledge about something supposedly unknowable. I can’t fault your logic: If all we know about God is what God has revealed to us, how do we know we can trust the source? (I can’t fault it, but maybe Descartes can: he argued that it is impossible for God to be a deceiver. I found an explanation of Descartes’ argument [here](http://home.wlu.edu/~mahonj/Descartes.M3.God.htm), but I didn’t read the whole thing (tl;dr).) So I guess this is one of those places where faith, or trust, is necessary. Actually, isn’t there an element of trust involved in any knowledge that we have? trust that the sources we learned the knowledge from knew what they were talking about, or that our senses give us accurate information about the world around us, or that our brains are working properly to process that information and give us accurate understanding? ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2011, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reconciling-knowing-god-with-a-limitless-god/573870/29 "2011-03-10T00:51:40Z")
> [@you\_with\_the\_face](#): > > I don’t understand why this doesn’t strike you as a delusion of grandeur like it does me. Fundamentally, the crux is that I readily accept and believe that human beings are “peanut-brained mammals” in the grand scheme of things. After directly observing human behavior for 3 decades and being a student of history, this is the most conservative conclusion I can possibly draw. Seems a much more humbler position than declaring myself or anyone else enlightened enough to know God’s will. Well, it’s not a delusion of grandeur if it isn’t a delusion at all. At the lowest level of reality, namely that of material objects, there is no sharing of the inner life, nor is there any inner life to share. As you move up the great chain of being, you increase the amount of such sharing. Animals can make some tiny amounts of progress in that direction and humans can make more. If the great chain of being extends upwards beyond humanity, we would expect the being at the top of the chain to have the greatest ability to make its interior life known to other beings. Incidentally I’m always a little bit curious about people who make statements such as “human beings are peanut-brained mammals”. I preumse it’s not a literal statement since the human brain’s mass is greater than that of a peanut by a factor of a thousand, give or take. So then it must be same statement that you find the mental ability of human beings to be extremely low. But that begs the question, low in comparison to what? To make such a statement, you would have to have in mind some being with greater mental ability than a human. You could, perhaps, say that you mind the majority of humans to have poor mental ability in comparison to the few greatest ones, but that would seem to run against what you’re arguing in this thread. ---
**Author:** ![vivalostwages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d07c76/32.png) [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2011, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reconciling-knowing-god-with-a-limitless-god/573870/30 "2011-03-10T02:12:43Z")
> [@Blaster\_Master](#): > > I apologize, I probably didn’t elaborate enough, but to put it simply, I don’t expect new scripture. Returning to my previous analogy, I see the purpose of scripture as more or less exposition of establishing order in a manner that we were able to understand. For instance, a 2 year-old who is told not to take toys from other kids or that he can’t have a cookie any time he pleases probably doesn’t understand the reason behind why those rules are given, and it’s pretty difficult to explain to him in a way that he can understand. I see a lot of the early part of the Bible, particular the books of law, as being not terribly dissimilar where God is mostly establishing his relationship to us and telling us how to behave. > > As we go farther, we’ve grown up more, and we can see through an example like the sermon on the mount that Jesus goes through a bit more to try to explain some of the rules and why they make sense. > > But I think we’re past a point where revelations such God or from prophets or from Jesus are the sort of thing that will have that sort of impact. At some point, you stop just accepting rules, and you wonder if they make sense, and you question the authority that is giving them. Where in times past, God could simply exert his authority, in the way that a parent can over a young child, short of God circumventing our freewill, sending a prophet down probably isn’t terribly convincing except to those who already strongly believe. > > And so, I think to expect God to reveal himself to us in the same way that he has in the past is to overlook that, along with growing up and being able to understand more, we also have to learn things differently. In many ways, I liken the state of humanity in being at the point probably most like a teenager, in which we’re in many ways both outright rejecting that level of authority, but also learning through our own experimentation and mistakes. > > As such, the way I think that God continues to reveal himself to us is through us relating to the lesson that he taught us when we were younger and expounding upon them to relate to our current situation. Learning not to take other kids toys when we’re younger relates to a larger lesson of respecting the property and feeligns of others. Moreso, parents don’t just disappear when a kid becomes a teenager, they’re still there to ask questions and sometimes help us out when we REALLY screw up, and many of us do the same thing when we study, pray, and meditate. > > The greater mistake, as I try to point out, is in failing to expound those lessons. When we fail to see the they were explicitly put in place to protect us, or that we fail to connect the smaller lessons together to learn the larger lesson. That, I think, is where many modern Christians lose perspective on the message. > > Again, I disagree, and I think I covered most of the reasons why. Our understanding of God isn’t just from the lessons he’s taught us, but is a summation of all of the lessons we’ve learned from those lessons since then. I think Jesus set a precedent for this when he summarized the law of the prophets. I saw that as an example that, when we were young, we needed a lot of specific things spelled out for us because we really didn’t understand the motivation behind doing or not doing certain things. As we got older and wiser, we are able to understand the reasoning and get a more general rule and learn how to apply it to other situations that may or may not have been explicitly outlined earlier. > > I also see our relationship with God being much the same way. And, truth be told, it’s something that I’ve struggled with immensely over the years because I had a hard time shedding the perspective of God that was put on me when I was younger. It raised a lot of seeming contradictions, because I was viewing this other understanding of God’s laws but as coming from the same child’s eye view of an authoritative parent view. Now that I view my relationship with him differently, those apparent contradictions have mostly evaporated. Most human parents, however, would not dream of putting their children into an oven, locking it up, turning it on to 400 degrees and leaving them in there for all eternity no matter what they did wrong. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2011, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reconciling-knowing-god-with-a-limitless-god/573870/31 "2011-03-10T02:59:34Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Incidentally I’m always a little bit curious about people who make statements such as “human beings are peanut-brained mammals”. I preumse it’s not a literal statement since the human brain’s mass is greater than that of a peanut by a factor of a thousand, give or take. So then it must be same statement that you find the mental ability of human beings to be extremely low. It’s a statement that reflects my belief that we are fundamentally animals. We are higher thinkers, no doubt. We are sentient and introspective creatures. But there’s not _that_ much difference between us and bonobo chimps in terms of our capacities to rise above our natural tendencies. Our mental abilities are exceptional compared to the other animals. But can we read minds? Travel through time? Predict the future with any reasonable certainty? Can we transform matter just by willing it? Can we do anything that physics has pronounced impossible? No, of course we can’t. And at the opposite lowly extreme, can we be cruel and stupid and lazy and willfully ignorant? Yes, we are and can be all of these things. My evidence for this belief is history and current events. It’s easy for someone to declare themselves the smartest person in the room. It’s like, okay, that’s great. But if even we concede that, it’s takes some hubris for someone to say that they can figure out this logic-defying God. Compared to the capabilities of this logic-defying God, this person is barely out of diapers. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2011, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reconciling-knowing-god-with-a-limitless-god/573870/32 "2011-03-10T20:40:48Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > The problem is that doesn’t make God less unknowable, since you can’t know that he’s being honest. And the argument that “of course he’s honest, he’s God” fails because that’s a claim of knowledge about something supposedly unknowable. > > Really; I see little evidence that people actually buy into the theory that God is unknowable in the first place. It’s just an idea used to deflect criticism about God; but as soon as the criticism is over the believers go right back to talking about all the things they supposedly know about God and what he wants. I see no particular reason to argue about this - my point was not (as I said) to defend the validity of the notion, but merely to point out that this is quite the opposite of an overlooked topic in Christianity. ---
**Author:** ![Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aji_de_gallina/32/260_2.png) [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aji_de_Gallina)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2011, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reconciling-knowing-god-with-a-limitless-god/573870/33 "2011-03-10T23:39:36Z")
To the OP: I know god from what He has told us, so He use His power to show us a minuscule part of him (I know that any part of infinite is basically 0 but bear with me). He “dumbed down” His reality to show us. I knwo I only know/perceive/experience a teeny-tiny part of Him. As to God’s love, we are a fruit from that love. Why He loves us utterly escapes me, I only know He does. ---
**Author:** ![vivalostwages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d07c76/32.png) [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2011, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reconciling-knowing-god-with-a-limitless-god/573870/34 "2011-03-11T00:16:13Z")
> [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](#): > > To the OP: > I know god from what He has told us, so He use His power to show us a minuscule part of him (I know that any part of infinite is basically 0 but bear with me). He “dumbed down” His reality to show us. I knwo I only know/perceive/experience a teeny-tiny part of Him. > > As to God’s love, we are a fruit from that love. Why He loves us utterly escapes me, I only know He does. How? ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2011, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reconciling-knowing-god-with-a-limitless-god/573870/35 "2011-03-11T01:05:31Z")
> [@you with the face](#): > > It’s a statement that reflects my belief that we are fundamentally animals. We are higher thinkers, no doubt. We are sentient and introspective creatures. But there’s not that much difference between us and bonobo chimps in terms of our capacities to rise above our natural tendencies. > > Our mental abilities are exceptional compared to the other animals. But can we read minds? Travel through time? Predict the future with any reasonable certainty? Can we transform matter just by willing it? Can we do anything that physics has pronounced impossible? No, of course we can’t. And at the opposite lowly extreme, can we be cruel and stupid and lazy and willfully ignorant? Yes, we are and can be all of these things. My evidence for this belief is history and current events. All I can say is that to me, the evidence of history and current events points exactly the opposite way. Five thousand years ago or a little bit more, the human race lived only in small, tribal societies and technology was only the most crude improvements on various physical instruments that people found lying around. Today we have an internet where people from around the world can post messages and read others in a matter of seconds. We have the ability to heat buildings the size of football stadiums and to fly airplanes across an ocean in a few hours. We can build transportation networks that span continents and do a great deal more. All of this was accomplished in five thousands years, while some animal species have remained stuck in place for tens or hundreds of millions of years. One thing that seperates us from the animals is the ability to think about what would happen if things were different. Oppression happens in many species but only humans have ever thought of writing a constitution to limit the power of the government. Inequality happens in many species, but only humans have ever laid down a philosophical basis for equal rights. I also am not convinced by your listing physical limits, such as ‘no time travel’. Humans can certainly _think about_ what would happen if we could travel through time or read minds. The ability to think about differences and other possibilities is a major step towards overcoming one’s own ego, dropping one’s barriers, and opening real lines of communication to other people and to God, so to me that line of argument can become a plus as well. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2011, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reconciling-knowing-god-with-a-limitless-god/573870/36 "2011-03-11T01:48:31Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > All I can say is that to me, the evidence of history and current events points exactly the opposite way. Five thousand years ago or a little bit more, the human race lived only in small, tribal societies and technology was only the most crude improvements on various physical instruments that people found lying around. Today we have an internet where people from around the world can post messages and read others in a matter of seconds. We have the ability to heat buildings the size of football stadiums and to fly airplanes across an ocean in a few hours. We can build transportation networks that span continents and do a great deal more. All of this was accomplished in five thousands years, while some animal species have remained stuck in place for tens or hundreds of millions of years. Internet aside, we still are hugely fallible creatures who make countless boneheaded decisions everyday, breaking hearts and misjudging others. And too I’m just not all that impressed by technological feats in a discussion about the non-material. I don’t believe our purpose on Earth is to spend our lifetimes trying to figure him out and what he wants. This is an idea that men conceived all those thousands of years when we lives in tribes and caves, you know? And I find it shallow. If Creation is some kind of test or experiment created by God and we’re the subjects, it would be pointless if a huge fraction of the participants knew what was going on. If it’s a test, how rigorous would it be if people had access to a cheat sheet? Not very rigorous at all. If it’s an experiment, it’s not a valid one if people know the hypothesis being evaluated and the behavior that is expected. If Creation is just one gigantic learning exercise, where we’re supposed to go through life as mortals and become spiritually enriched through the experience, how meaningful is this learning if we view it as a simulation rather than the only reality that counts? This is why I believe that our belief is God is immaterial to our purpose as human beings. We’re not supposed to concern ourselves with the unanswerable because any answers we likely come up will be wrong. We need to learn to be okay with this. If God exists, he shouldn’t be mad if we don’t invest a lot of energy in believing in him. And if he is mad, he’s not worth worshipping anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aji_de_gallina/32/260_2.png) [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aji_de_Gallina)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2011, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reconciling-knowing-god-with-a-limitless-god/573870/37 "2011-03-12T00:04:37Z")
> [@vivalostwages](#): > > How? How what? ---
**Author:** ![vivalostwages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d07c76/32.png) [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2011, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reconciling-knowing-god-with-a-limitless-god/573870/38 "2011-03-12T00:50:42Z")
> [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](#): > > How what? How do you know what you claim to know? ---
**Author:** ![Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aji_de_gallina/32/260_2.png) [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aji_de_Gallina)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2011, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reconciling-knowing-god-with-a-limitless-god/573870/39 "2011-03-12T15:19:54Z")
> [@vivalostwages](#): > > How do you know what you claim to know? Public revelation and private experience. I will not discuss this matter any further on this thread which is not about how or why one believes or doesn’t but rather assumes it so that one can answer the OP. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2011, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reconciling-knowing-god-with-a-limitless-god/573870/40 "2011-03-12T15:49:11Z")
> [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](#): > > Public revelation and private experience. > I will not discuss this matter any further on this thread which is not about how or why one believes or doesn’t but rather assumes it so that one can answer the OP. Is there a difference between _belief_ and _knowledge_? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reconciling-knowing-god-with-a-limitless-god/573870.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reconciling-knowing-god-with-a-limitless-god/573870.md?page=3)