Eduardo asked:

Which are God's merits, qualifications,background, (luck?), etc. for being God? why his entity and not
mine or your's or anybody's? did he compete? how did "he" create himself? I know you can not have
answers but, please elaborate.

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God is held to posses certain qualities that make him the supreme being. Theologians and
philosophers usually list a big old list of them: Omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent, eternal, infinite,
omnipresent. Imagine a God that wasn't all knowing all seeing, all powerful, all good and the source
of all creation, what would be the point then of calling him God? He would just be like us finite or at
the most like some powerful alien from out of Star Trek. So these qualities are supposed to define
God qua God.

But is that enough for us? for us as people engaged with the world that presents problems for us
problems like why am I here and what should I do?

Suppose we meet God some day say on the judgement day, but we're just not impressed. Wouldn't
we be justified in taking Him to one side for a moment and asking him " What gives you the right to
come and judge us?" The fact that he created us wouldn't give Him the right, the analogy of parent
and child (that some believers use) is unconvincing to my mind. If I created some one individual and
unique, like Mr Data from Star trek for instance I don't think I could claim any rights of sovereignty
over him, In the same way God has none over me. Further God created us free to choose, if I chose
to reject him or ignore him what has it got to do with Him, if he then threatens me with oblivion that
hardly seems to be in accordance with a loving good God. We have moved to the question of God
justifying himself to us. I can't think of anything God could say that would make me want get down on
my knees.

All I have said up to now rests on an understanding of God that has been intellectualised, the God
here is the God of philosophers, of thinkers, that this is the God that died, and it's a God thing that he
is dead, because he wasn't really a god we could believe/ have faith in. Would not the 'real' God
justify himself not by the things he would say or do, not by encompassing everything in his domain,
not by a show of his strength and powers, but by his withdrawal, his silences, the void and gap
between him and everything else. Not by his involvement in existence in being but his sheer
difference from it.

If so then we have reached the limits of what can be said, we cannot know the how or why of God's
being moreover we cannot talk of 'god existing, or being' or having qualities or essence, this does not
mean that God does not exist or have being, but that his existing is different from that of the world,
including any spiritual or psychical elements.

However we can have an experience of this difference. The philosopher Levinas has argued we can
find it in the face of another person. The Other's existence is also different. the other is never
completely present even when she is standing in front of me, how ever much I may know and
recognise her there is always something unreachable my me about her, there is a void and a gap
between us. The other is absent even while she is standing next to me. But Levinas says the other is
also hungry and needing my help. The other calls me to justify my own place in the world, to account
for my own (potentially unethical) existing when so many others may die just to keep me home and
fed.

Could it be then that this absent god justifies his (non-understandable, un-knowable) entity, in calling
me to justify my own before another person?

Brian Tee

I'm inclined to suppose your question is not altogether flippant; I will state my answer in tune. On the
assumptionthat philosophy is an essentially a-gnostic pursuit, God's qualifications, luck etc. etc. are
precisely the same as those of the cultural group who worship him, under whatever guise and by
whatever name. Proof of this contention is easily furnished when you consider how many "immortal"
gods in mankind's history have not lived up to the claim of deathlessness — meaning that when their
culture disappeared, they were decommissioned. Of course this implies an anthropomorphic theory of
religion, and if that is the view you hold, then the above should suffice. However, one may retain
nagging doubts all the same: for example, what qualifications, luck etc. inhere in the residual electric
potential of the universe by which we scientific super sophisticates explain the (possibility of the)
Being of Everything. You would now return the favour and explain thisto me?

Jurgen Lawrenz

Sydney