Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Does God believe in Meta-God?

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How can God know whether he's omnipotent? Or omniscient?

What if there's another god, so powerful and sneaky that God doesn't even know that she exists? We'll call her Meta-God. And so far, she hasn't done anything to interfere with God or the physical world- she's just stayed up in her own meta-dimension, which not even God knows about.

So maybe, Christianity gives us a good representation of what God has done in the world, and who God is- but it's only as accurate as God's own beliefs about his power and his ability to do the things he has promised. What if suddenly, Meta-God intervenes and does something that NO ONE could have predicted?

Sure, God raised Jesus from the dead, and God loves people and totally plans to make a new heaven and new earth and there will be justice and all that- but what if Meta-God appears out of nowhere and screws up all God's future plans?

Who knows what kind of future Meta-God will give us?

We don't know anything about who she is at all. She's never even done anything to hint that she exists.

Maybe God believes himself to be all-knowing and all-powerful, but he's not. Actually Meta-God is, but there's no way God could know that.

Psalm 93:2 says, "Your throne was established long ago; you are from all eternity." And sure, maybe that's true, as far as we know, and as far as God knows.

But what if? Then us Christians are screwed. Actually everyone is screwed. We just gotta take our chances with Meta-God.

Image source.

So... what do we do? Is there a Meta-God or not? We can never know.

I don't know about you, but I'll just keep living my life normally, with no concern at all about Meta-God. Hey, we don't have any evidence about her. There's no real reason to think she exists. But also no way to disprove it. (Perhaps this is similar to how atheists feel?)

But for a Christian who believes she knows all the answers (yeah that was me a few years ago), the idea of a Meta-God is earth-shattering. Because no matter how many apologetics books you read, no matter how well you can recite the arguments for Christianity, no matter how much you research about history and evidence for the resurrection and all that, you can never prove that Christianity is true. And back then, I would have been 100% NOT OKAY with that.

(Defining what exactly it means to say "Christianity is true" is a whole 'nother discussion...)

Maybe it seems true, maybe God even believes it, but in the end, Meta-God will have her way. Maybe God would let you into heaven, but Meta-God would then kick you out.

There is no certainty. There can never be certainty.

It's faith. I'm a Christian, but there's no way I could ever know if Christianity is true or not. I have a lot of reasons for my beliefs, but no proof. Proof is literally impossible, because not even God can know if there is a Meta-God.

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This post is part of a link-up on the topic of Psalm 93. To read other people's posts, click here: a boulder in the ocean.

1 comment:

  1. This is sorta up there with "Can God make a rock too big for himself to move?" except in this case it's "Can there be a God bigger than God?"

    I think the philosophical answer is something along the lines of - the understanding of God is that he's so all-encompassing that if you can envision a God beyond him, then that's the God He actually is, not the one you're imagining him to be. Something like that. Other types of answers have been given to the rock question.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnipotence_paradox

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