That does not strike me as a fourth option, Christopher. You are using a standard argument, straight from the arsenal of the apologists for an all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing God: that He is "above" and "beyond" our puny powers of understanding.
Just how is your fourth option "different"?
Zillions of other options have been proposed. The option of an evolving God, for example: one that depends on human cooperation to evolve further. The option of God as Nature: that is, the God of pantheism. The option of God as Clockmaker, who makes the Clock, winds it up, and then loses interest and removes himself from the fray: the pure Deist option. The polytheistic option, for that matter: the one that William James, for one, felt was much better adapted to explain the contradictory realities of our existence. And so forth.
And it is wrong, in my opinion, to view the logical objections raised to the existence of a 3-all God (my abbreviation)as being the products of "reason" alone. They are based just as much, if not more, on emotion. When people see injustice and suffering, they are often provoked to outrage, if this injustice and suffering are seen as the handiwork of an "omnibenevolent" God.
Joan |
