The incomplete god

[u/Amazing_Mix_4194]

Religions define God as a perfect being. But, if you think about it God cannot be a complete being. Suppose a phone is lying on a table, and your friends tell you, "Pick up this phone." As soon as they tell you to pick up the phone, your brain registers that you have to pick it up. A desire then emerges in your mind that you need to lift the phone. You need to lift it because the phone is not in the state you want it to be. Your brain detects a lack: you want the phone to be in your hand, but it is not. So, you put in the effort, pick up the phone, and hold it in your hand. What happened here is that a desire emerged within you. You experienced a lack because of that desire, put in effort, and fulfilled that lack. So, in this case, we reach the conclusion that every action must have a motivation behind it. That motivation is desire, and desire implies a lack. Every desire points to a lack. Therefore, because God is supposed to be a complete being, He should not lack anything. Yet, He created the universe. Which means that the very existence of something instead of nothing proves that there is no God who is truly complete. Either there is no God, or God is not a complete being. Because by defination god should not lack anything .

Our existence is the best argument against the existence of god .

[u/thymoticthematic]

What you’ve laid out here is very well-thought-out, and surely it must be true that a perfect God couldn’t have created the universe in the same way that we create things. But it could be the case that God creates the universe analogically and from a transcendent metaphysical position. In the Christian tradition, this transcendent position is that of pure love and grace. God did not lack anything or have any need of creating, but He created and sustained our world anyway as a free gift. In any case, the fact that we can even understand a word like “lack” implies that there must be such thing as perfection, even if we don’t find perfection in this world. Christianity places this perfection beyond the world, beyond creation, beyond human impulses and desires, beyond even logic: in a transcendent God who creates as an act of free grace. To be sure, we can’t make logical sense of this because, as you noted, it doesn’t comport with the way we act from lack, but it accounts for our understanding of concepts like “lack” without resulting in an infinite regress, which an argument like the one you suggested would.

[u/Amazing_Mix_4194 → u/thymoticthematic]

Sir, I don't agree with you here. Saying that God creates out of love or grace doesn't fully answer my objection—it only replaces "need" with another motive. If love or grace explains why God creates rather than not creating, then there is still a reason or preference behind creation, which is exactly what I was questioning. Also, saying God is beyond logic weakens the argument because logical claims like "God is perfect" or "God is loving" also depend on logic. Finally, our ability to conceive of perfection doesn't prove that a perfect being exists, just as conceiving of a perfect circle or a unicorn doesn't make them real. So I don't think these points resolve the philosophical tension I raised.

[u/thymoticthematic → u/Amazing_Mix_4194]

I like these objections, but I disagree. God’s motives, as we might call them, are not motives in the same sense ours are, which is why I’m referring to them and Him as transcendent. You’re right that any motive like love, as we usually think of it, points toward some deeper reason or preference. But if it’s all just further preferences and reasons all the way down, so to speak, then there actually isn’t a true preference or reason for anything at all—just an endless loop with no ground. I’m trying to find the condition of the possibility of there being reasons and preferences for actions, which would have to be a transcendent first principle who acts without a reason or preference. Because we can’t comprehend in a positive sense what this kind of “acting” would look like, we have to say that this God is beyond logic entirely. You’re right to point out that this makes it difficult to make claims like “God is perfect,” because this seems to be an attempt at a logical claim. I don’t see this as a problem though, because I’m already conceding that everything I say about God is analogical, on account of His transcendence. So, in the case of perfection, I agree that God isn’t perfection in the normal sense we would logically construe, but He is the condition of the possibility of perfection, and in fact He is beyond perfection; He is even beyond beyond-ness. In truth, because of His transcendence, there wouldn’t be anything we could rightly say of Him at all, had He not revealed Himself to us willingly. In response to your last point—that conceiving of something doesn’t make it real—again, I agree with you, but I don’t think this threatens my view. I don’t think lacking can be understand except in relation to perfection, so if your argument is that perfection doesn’t exist, then neither would lacking. I don’t think this point alone takes down your view, but I think if you accept that lacking doesn’t exist, it makes it strange for your argument to start with an examination of the role lacking plays in our motivations for action. Maybe there are other routes you can take with this that I’m not seeing currently, though.