debatable omnipresent God

Genesis 18:20,21
20 And the LORD said: 'Verily, the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and, verily, their sin is exceeding grievous.
21 I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto Me; and if not, I will know.'How omnipresent of a GOD is this? this seems more like the reaction of man...
PS: Im not implying anything,just want to hear a good explanation of what is meant here...

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

What's more, from this passage it seems god's not omniscient either, or else he'd allready KNOW the situation at Sodom and Gomorrah.

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I hunt for the truth

And in view of what eventually happened to Sodom and Gomorrah, and especially to Lot's innocent wife, God is not omnibenevolent either. This thread is now four messages old and already all of God's defining characteristics have been demolished. Nice.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

Except for omnipotence...With which, and a wave of the hand, all the other "problems" vanish in the logical contradiction defeat of infinite power.An omnipresent being, by definition, could be both everywhere and not, be both omnibenevolent and bad, and be both omniscient and still come to know something. Not that that helps much....

Hi CS,Can an omnipotent God make 1+1=3? Can he do things that completely defy logic, such as making a round triangle?I believe that it is a fairly well established position amongst Christian theologians that he can't. Omnipotence in this case would be defined as the ability to do anything that isn't internally inconsistent or illogical.Not that that helps much either... Mutate and Survive.

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

Well, then the Christian god isn't omnipotent at all! 7 Posts in and it seems we've got old YHWH by the balls

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I hunt for the truth

Like Huntard said, if he (god) cannot then he isn't really omnipotent but instead just something really close to omnipotence.

for God to be God he would have to be hyperdimensional. he would have to operate outside of time and space but could also act within it.further, ultimately it would be the consciousness of God which defines reality. so imo, of course, he would not be constrained by the rules of logic. like the saying goes, think outside the box, or think outside the cube.Edited by hyperqube, : No reason given.

Yes, I completely agree. That level of power would be so great that, in practical human terms, he would be near-as-damn-it omnipotent, omnipotent in any important respect."Can God microwave a burrito so hot that he himself cannot eat it?" style arguments have never struck me as especially useful in arguments either for or against God's existence. Trying to pin down the qualities of an entity who cannot be observed is a bit of a waste of time really. Worrying over the exact extent of God's omnipotence is problem for die hard literalists and they are welcome to it.Mutate and Survive.

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

Sure. But we're still left with the passages from the OP that practically say that god is not omnipresent.The only "excuse" I can come up with is that an omnipotent god could be both omnipresent and not everywhere at once. But this "could be" scenario doesn't help much with the passage saying that god isn't everywhere at once. Sure, he could be if he was omnipotent, but these passages on their own don't suggest that.

There is of course, similar stuff earlier in Genesis.

quote:

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3:8 And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.
3:9 And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?

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Not a very omni God in this depiction. In fact, he comes across as more like a very big and powerful human. I would say that the simple explanation is that Genesis is a very early piece of writing and that it dates from a time before God was considered omnipresent, omnipotent or omni-whatever.Am I wrong? Are there passages in the earlier books of the Bible that explicitely state that God is omnipresent?Mutate and Survive.

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

to me, verses like these do not constrain the omnipotence of God in the slightest. just to ask a question does not mean that he does not already know the answer.Genesis 3:9 And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?are we to believe that God didn't already know where Adam was or what he had done(forbidden fruit), or in fact what he would do when he was created?imo, of course notEdited by hyperqube, : clarity

Sure, they could be rhetorical questions. I was not thinking of that bit, so much as the bit where God goes for a walk in the garden. What does that even mean in the context of a being who is already everywhere anyway? To me, it seems far less consistent with an omnipresent entity and far more in keeping with a god who is not all-pervading. Well perhaps. Not an omnipotent God certainly, but perhaps the authors of Genesis did not have such a god in mind. Maybe their concept of God was different from the modern ones in that respect.Just for the record, I should probably state clearly that I don't believe in any of these gods. Heh. You edited this bit whilst I was replying and it changes the context.I think it is a mistake to assume that the early Jews who wrote Genesis had the same concept of God as modern Christians. I strongly suspect that they thought of him very differently. I see non-omnipotent depictions of God in the Bible as forming part of a link in the evolution of ideas about the divine from polytheism to monotheism.Welcome to EvC by the way! Mutate and Survive.Edited by Granny Magda, : No reason given.

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

"Am I wrong? Are there passages in the earlier books of the Bible that explicitely state that God is omnipresent?"Genesis 4:9,10,119 And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper?
10 And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground.
11 And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand;This shows that GOD already knew what happened to abel,but still asked cain....