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On God and the creation: how does the immaterial interact with the material?

It may be informative to consider the following succinctly Q&A with primary regards as to how God, an immaterial being, can interact with the material realm.
These are my answers to various questions posed to me—and I do mean succinct as the answers are not meant to be all elucidating but springboards and meant to correlate to that which we do know in the here and now.
The first answer is long because I wanted to explain how I view the mind vs. brain issue.

How can God create, control or sustain material properties if God himself is immaterial? And

How can the immaterial soul control the material body?

Probably in the same way that our immaterial minds control our material body.

Now, I know that some atheists deny the immaterial nature of our minds, versus the material nature of our brains. They generally do this by appealing to that which they generally appeal: the it just is of the gaps, the scientists are working on it of the gaps, the someday, oh someday, we will find a materialistic explanation of the gaps. In this way they claim that the mind is merely a byproduct of the functioning of the brain. Some claim that evidence of this is said to be the fact that when the brain ceases to function—such as when it is damaged—the mind is no longer evident.

Now, in the movie A Beautiful Mind—which is based on a true story—the protagonist comes to realize that he has been suffering from hallucinations. How does he do this? Well, he figures out that since he has “seen” two people for a very long time but they are not aging; he must be hallucinating.
Thus, his material-brain was malfunctioning and causing him to see people who were not there, who did not exist. Yet, his immaterial-mind was able to function regardless of, in spite of, his damaged material-brain.

Think of it as hardware versus software; you can have finely manufactured hardware but it will not function in the matter in which it was intelligently designed to function without the software. Now, think about beating a computer/the hardware with a baseball bat (and which of us has not wanted to do this?!?!?!) once you damage the hardware enough the software will have no way to express itself through the hardware even thought it—the code—is perfectly fine. You may cause some lesser damage to the hardware and still get the software to express itself, as in the movie, but at a certain point the software will not be able to come through.

Now, if your hardware/computer was destroyed it is still possible to download the software, the code, the memory, the information, and place it into another hardware/computer and thereby allowing the software to, once again, express itself.
This is tantamount to the Judeo-Christian doctrine of the physical resurrection: once our hardware/physical/material bodies cease to function due to being damaged due to the ravages of life, due to entropy our soul/software/immaterial can be downloaded and uploaded into a brand new hardware/physical/material bodies.

Let us go a step further: the hardware is utterly destroyed to the point that the software, the actual program-the code, is irretrievable. What if there is a back up drive? Then the info, the code, is safe and sound and ready to be uploaded into new hardware. Or, what if there is a main database from which the hardware pulled its info? Again, the data is safe and sound. God possesses the external drive, the database and can download the software/data/program/code into new or replenished hardware—the resurrected body.

How can God be infinite if infinites are impossible (as William Lane Craig has shown with Kalaam)?

Let him answer you:

How can God be immutable?

By virtue of being immaterial and thus, not being subject to our chronological/linear space/time domain.

For details on this please see On the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the Invisible Pink Unicorns, et al.

How can God be spaceless?

Probably in the same way that our minds are spaceless.

If God is spaceless/timeless/infinite/immutable/etc. how is that any different from no God at all?

Probably in the same way that there is a difference between us having spaceless minds or not having minds at all.

How can God be both inside and outside the universe at the same time (omnipresent)?

Probably in the same way that our immaterial minds can take us from influencing the movement of our material bodies to imagining the uttermost edge of the universe and beyond.

What are some good scientific/philosophical reasons for believing God is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient?

These claimed characteristics go beyond the relative ease of finding scientific/philosophical reasons for believing God is timeless, immaterial, spaceless, etc. Yet, they hint, at least, at God being omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient. For example, not being subject to our space/time domain with its limiting dimensions leads to God being omnipresent being able to look in, out and around as He pleases just as you could look at any part of the code that makes up your computers software while the computer would have to read the code in a linear manner in order to get to a certain step/stage in the process that it must perform.

How can God: be present everywhere simultaneously?

I prefer to think of it in terms of God being anywhere simultaneously rather than everywhere. Difference being that God can be anywhere He so chooses but is not everywhere by necessity that is, God does not have to be everywhere as if He was somehow diffused and thereby dispersed. God can be anywhere He wants to be. Think of viewing a parade from a helicopter: the people on the street only see the parade in a linear manner; one float after another, one band after another and can only see the little bit right before their eyes. But you could see the beginning, the middle and the end of the parade, all of it at the same time you would perceive it all simultaneously.
See the following link for more on omnipresence and pantheism.

How can God: have total knowledge? And

How can God: have unlimited power?

These are hard to answer as there can be many angels to a how question. How can my shirt be blue? Well, we could discuss the properties of light, the dying of the cloth in pigment, my choosing to purchase that color, market forces, etc.

So, as for “total knowledge”: Perhaps think of a computer programmer; they—as best as they can and as limiting as this example is—have total knowledge of that which the computer can do by virtue of having programmed it.

As for “unlimited power”: This hard for us to imaging since what we know about power relates to bio-chemical reactions and we know about entropy etc. but again, God is not limited by our limiting dimensions, space/time, etc.

This may be an interesting tidbit—God being material but functions in the material is mentioned:


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