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God as mechanistic nature

© Francois Tremblay

The god-concept is usually seen as a creature of pure will, a creature with endless creative potential and power - basically an unlimited version of a human agent. But this idealized concept fails when we compare it with the consequences of infinity.

I have already discussed in my article "Deus Extra Machina (II)" that omnibenevolence alone makes a hypothetical god little more than a supernatural machine, since it would automatically be restricted to one possible universe, or a small area of possible universes, those in which natural and human good is maximized. The free will of such a god would be severely limited !

But this line of discussion can be extended to the god-concept's fundamental element of infinite power. I have discussed in another article how a god is necessarily amoral because it has no life to protect, no happiness to accomplish - in essence, precisely because it is an infinitely powerful being. Such a being has no need, no necessity to do anything, because it has no needs and no criteria for choice.

It also has no emotions to influence such choices, since emotions are shortcuts to compensate for limitations, and therefore reserved to limited beings. An omniscient being cannot be surprised, or any emotion that has to do with surprise.

How could an unlimited, perfect being be frustrated by anything ? Shamed ? Or as the Christian Bible portrays its own god, pleased, furious, vengeful ? How can an unlimited being be any of these things ? How could an immaterial being feel pain or pleasure ? These simplistic notions must be discarded as someone's imagination gone awry.

Considering a god as an anthropomorphic construct is, however, a convenient way to use non-existing limits as an excuse to explain away evil. If a believer's god is like a human, it has feelings and limitations, and thus the restrictions of the god-concept's infinity become irrelevant in his mind. The problem of evil becomes irrelevant if the Creator cannot change this state of affairs. The contradictions and obscurity of the doctrines can be explained away by the god's necessity to work through finite humans. The lack of evidence can be countered by a limited god's "plan" which cannot be understood by humans.

Likewise, one can justify prayer in this manner. As Ivan Turgenev, the 19th century Russian author, astutely points out :

Whatever a man prays for, he prays for a miracle.
Every prayer reduces itself to this:

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