# What About God? Do You Think He is Please With Us? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 16, 2001, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-about-god-do-you-think-he-is-please-with-us/65614 "2001-05-16T15:34:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2001, 8:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-about-god-do-you-think-he-is-please-with-us/65614/81 "2001-05-22T08:43:01Z")
Andros: You need to ask the one who said > [@](#): > > If God is able to create unicorns, and such creatures don’t exist, the only logical explanation is that God does not want them to exist. I.e., **he forced the situation to be exactly how he desires it.** Not the one who said > [@](#): > > God might be motivated by some moral precept — Love, for instance — **rather than desire.** And before you say, “Oh, you moron, love is just a human emotion, so you’re anthropomorphising again,” I would pre-respond that God’s Love is not an emotion, but a metaphysical state. And in Opus’s defense how do you know that he is not divinitizing man rather than anthropomorphizing God? ---
**Author:** ![Wrath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ee7513/32.png) [@Wrath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wrath)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2001, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-about-god-do-you-think-he-is-please-with-us/65614/82 "2001-05-22T13:05:56Z")
I once asked a deeply religious born-again who loves technology and science how he reconciles science when it is at odds with religious teachings (the flood, the age of the earth, etc.) and he elegantly answered, “God says, ‘You will come to know me.’” Pool the knowledge here. ---
**Author:** ![andros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2001, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-about-god-do-you-think-he-is-please-with-us/65614/83 "2001-05-22T15:55:40Z")
> [@](#): > > And before you say, “Oh, you moron, love is just a human emotion, so you’re anthropomorphising again,” I would pre-respond that God’s Love is not an emotion, but a metaphysical state. And in Opus’s defense how do you know that he is not divinitizing man rather than anthropomorphizing God? Now, Lib, i didn’t call you a moron. Didn’t even think it. I guess it’s just that I can accept your concept of infinite love, but I cannot understand how the truly infinite can “desire” anything. Infinite and desire are incompatible, AFAICS. ---
**Author:** ![Opus1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/858c86/32.png) [@Opus1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Opus1)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2001, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-about-god-do-you-think-he-is-please-with-us/65614/84 "2001-05-22T22:40:08Z")
Libertarian wrote: > [@](#): > > Omnipotence as the power to do all things does not imply the compulsion to do all things. After all, if God is omnipotent, then He has the power to resist His own desire. Desire is only one of the motivations of our actions. Even among things totally within our own power as humans, we do some things that we don’t want to do, and we neglect others that we do want to do. God might be motivated by some moral precept — Love, for instance — rather than desire. Hmm. I think this ignores the unique nature of God. As an all-good being, I think it stands to reason that what God wants, what the universe needs, what is good, etc. are all the same thing. But I don’t know if this is a provable point, so I’ll let it slide. What I meant to say is that everything that exists exists because God is in some way responsible for it. It doesn’t matter if it is because of God’s desire, or love, or whatever, God is responsible. > [@](#): > > Further, not everything that happens is necessarily God-willed unless God is the unary spiritual consciousness. In other words, it might be that He restrains His own power (for any arbitrary reason, not necessarily desire) in deference to the wills of other consciousnesses. Well, I think this is a giant ball of worms. Like I mentioned, once God can restrict his omnipotence, we’ve really lost a good definition of him. And the paradoxes get even worse. But, I completely agree with you that _if_ we posit a deity who is able to restrict his own omnipotence/omniscience, then its possible that much of what is and isn’t is due to randomness, not God’s will. > [@](#): > > Thus, it is not necessary to presume that God wanted horses to exist. If He had any desire at all towards the existence of animals, it might be that what He wanted was for evolution to occur and produce man (after all, the wait for Him is insignificant) to house His spirit, with horses being merely an irrelevant interstice in His plan. Agreed. Of course, we all know that God _really_ wanted insects to exist, with man being merely an irrelevant interstice in His plan. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Sterra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8c91f0/32.png) [@Sterra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sterra)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2001, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-about-god-do-you-think-he-is-please-with-us/65614/85 "2001-05-23T04:48:47Z")
When I heard WB’s tracers comment I thought he was talking about machine gun fire myself:) For myself, it always annoys me when people classify god as all good. They forget that he is other things too, like just. To simplify him down does make god impossible, however god is not simple. In fact he would probably have to be more complex than everything in the world combined to create it. ---
**Author:** ![Mars\_Horizon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mars_horizon/32/2804_2.png) [@Mars\_Horizon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mars_Horizon)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2001, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-about-god-do-you-think-he-is-please-with-us/65614/86 "2001-05-23T13:52:11Z")
I’ve been _dying_ to say this since this thread began… **All Your God Are Please With Us!** 😃 :: d&r :: ---
**Author:** ![andros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2001, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-about-god-do-you-think-he-is-please-with-us/65614/87 "2001-05-23T15:04:12Z")
> [@](#): > > For myself, it always annoys me when people classify god as all good. They forget that he is other things too, like just. To simplify him down does make god impossible, however god is not simple. In fact he would probably have to be more complex than everything in the world combined to create it. So then, it’s as I’ve maintained . . . an infinite god is infinitely good, infinitely just, infinitely complex. And therefore, infinitely incomprehensible. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2001, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-about-god-do-you-think-he-is-please-with-us/65614/88 "2001-05-23T23:21:27Z")
Strangely enough, Andros, you’ve done a close paraphrase of part of the Athanasian Creed (minus the ascriptions of each individual characteristic to each individual person of the Trinity, but you can’t have everything, I suppose). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-about-god-do-you-think-he-is-please-with-us/65614.md?page=4)