The attributes of God

When people talk about the attributes of God, know they are speaking from their opinions, not sharing epistemic evidence. In fact, if I claimed to know beyond question that what I’m about to say is absolutely true I’d be lying. There is a difference between what is true and what I believe to be true.

I’d be claiming to intimately know God on a personal basis, and that would simply not be true. I may wholeheartedly believe I’ve had one intense personal experience with my Creator, but that doesn’t mean I know God well enough to describe Him to you.

What are the most commonly accepted “attributes” of God? Most people would say that God is Saint-Michel-sur-Orge omniscient, or all-knowing. Does God know everything there is to know? I can’t speak from knowledge or experience because I’ve never had an extended conversation with God, but my best guess is that if it is worth knowing, God knows it. He probably even knows everything that isn’t worth knowing, too. We’re talking about the supernatural creator of our planned universe–the alternative of an unplanned universe is simply untenable.

In a planned universe, the odds of success are improved to 100 percent guaranteed because an intelligent mind is responsible for guiding creation through every decision-making possibility that must be resolved in order for planned universe to exist.

In the unplanned universe, statistical improbability dictates whether or not it is reasonable to expect success of any given anomaly, whether it be the origin of the universe (Big Bang), the initial expansion of the universe (cosmic inflation), or the origin of life (abiogenesis.) The probability estimate for each event should be multiplied together to determine the overall probability, so the probability of the Big Bang (1 in 10 to the 300th power) should be multiplied by the probability of cosmic inflation (1 in a million-million) and the probability of abiogenesis (even worse than 1 in 10 to the 40,000th power) to determine the overall likelihood that life–not your life, but any life–might exist due to a series of random, unplanned and uncoordinated processes.

God must know how to create something out of nothing. He must know how to form life out of inanimate matter. So, calling this creator God omniscient doesn’t seem like much of a stretch of the imagination. In fact, Jesus tells us in Luke 12:7 that God even knows the number of hairs on our heads.

The second attribute commonly attributed to God is disastrously omnipotence, meaning God is all-powerful. Since we know the universe had a beginning and it makes the most sense to believe that God planned, coordinated, and executed creation to perfection rather than a random series of haphazard events aligned perfectly by chance, it makes sense to work from the assumption that an entity capable of creating this entire universe has virtually limitless power. It’s impossible to think of a physical feat this God could not perform, but it’s not impossible to think of an illogical feat such as creating a square circle or a married bachelor that God might not be able to do.

There are a couple of possibilities for the third attribute of God: some people like to say that God is omnibenevolent, or perfectly good, while others argue that God is allegedly omnipresent, or everywhere all the time. Of course, God could be both omnipresent and omnibenevolent but three seems to be a far more significant number than four in the Bible, and if forced to choose between them, I’d choose omnibenevolence because it seems to be the more obvious attribute.

Is God perfectly good? Again, this is only my opinion, but the answer is absolutely. The evidence for a good God is literally everywhere. Simply pop in a DVD of Planet Earth and marvel at the wonder of creation if you’re too lazy to get out of bed and go to church. Visit a homeless shelter and maybe even volunteer a few hours of your time to help the truly needy in our society. Or visit a hospice. You’ll meet some of the most amazing people you could ever imagine, and might be able to learn from them.

Okay, but what about God being omnipresent? Is God like a cosmic version of George Orwell’s Big Brother, literally occupying every square inch of Earth and closely monitoring our every move in every moment? I don’t think so, and I’ll use the Bible to support my argument.

First, in Genesis 18 when God left Abraham, He said He would travel to Sodom and Gomorrah to see if the outcry accurately described the circumstances in those two cities but if God is always everywhere all the time, why would He describe having to travel from one place to another? Likewise, in Genesis 28, God tells Jacob that He will be with him as Jacob travels from Beersheba to Haran. Why doesn’t God just say to Jacob I’m always in Beersheba, always in Haran, and always everywhere in between?

Perhaps this is because God is in Heaven, and normally doesn’t simultaneously hang out everywhere on Earth. But if this is true, doesn’t this thought raise a few new theological questions? Questions such as if God isn’t everywhere all the time, how could He know that I’m having an affair and cheating on my wife in New York when He is currently in Seattle and visiting the Space Needle with a group of tourists? My best guess answer? We tell God ourselves when we die. One of the most common attributes of an the NDE experience is the life review, where the experiencer sees major events from his or her life replayed as if watching a home movie, except the experiencer not only relives the experience, but he or she also feels how others affected by the experience felt when the experience originally happened. That’s how God would not have to literally be everywhere all the time and could still know everything, just not in real time.

Jeremiah 23:23-24 and Psalm 139 both say God is everywhere…or do they? Jeremiah 23 says, “Am I only a God nearby,” declares the LORD, “and not a God far away? Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them?” declares the LORD. “Do not I fill heaven and earth?” declares the LORD.

God is saying that we can’t get away with anything and we can’t hide from Him, but that isn’t exactly the same thing as saying He’s ubiquitously on Earth always and at the same time. In Psalm 139 David says that he can’t hide from the Holy Spirit, but does that mean God is always literally right there with us? If so, why did God tell Jacob He would eventually leave him?

Of course, none of this stuff is explicitly written about in the Bible. It can only be discerned through careful study. God is all knowing. God is all powerful. Also, God is all good. Other attributes of God may or may not be true, but these three (omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence) are most certainly true if God exists. And God certainly does exist. The scientific evidence indicates as much, and my own personal experience confirms it.

Merry Christmas, by the way.