"Oh, what cannot be wrung from words in 3,000 years?"

Just to play devil's advocate for the fun of it:

God cannot be a scientist because science is a *process* involving reproducible experiments via isolating variables, making observations and drawing conclusions. Unless, of course, you're suggesting that God created through that process...in which case that's a pretty interesting idea; haven't heard it before.

But Krellin, I am actually interested in that statement. Maybe you could elaborate on the idea? Personally, I like to view God as a concept of everything in existence because I feel there is a certain beauty to, well, everything in existence.

@Lee
A believer might suggest that much as how God is not a lover, God is love, it also holds true that God is not a scientist; God *is* science.

Ah, now we're getting at an idea I like, hecks.

Also an interesting side note: I identify myself as agnostic because I feel I cannot make the assumption about God's existence either way (it feels too pretentious an assumption for myself to make). However, I do not see my view of the the word "God" as synonymous with "everything in existence" as a conflicting with my agnostic identity. For me, I guess, it is more of a word to describe the inherent beauty and mystery of nature rather than a religious thing.

Well, gen, science and the Bible both agree that creation was a process...so...yeah...

OK, God isn't a scientist, he is Science Incarnate...

Better yet, God is not science incarnate, science as we now it is a "shadow" of one of God attributes...(delving in to a little Ancient Greek philosophy...)

""God" as synonymous with "everything in existence"

Interesting concept, isn't it...it mean we, finite individuals, are part of God?

But is this a scriptural concept, or a man made concept?

Except is God is infinite and we are of God's creation, we are contained within the whole idea of God, so if we have an idea ("...we are a part of God...") is it our idea, or God's idea within us?

God upholds and sustains the regularities (or laws) that we call "science." They are just the expression of His will for how the universe should behave -- expressions that we can discover with science because they're there, because He willed them.

Can/Does His will ever change? By some readings of the Bible, there are specific instances where this seems to occur - a city deemed to evil to exist is going to be destroyed...until the actions of a man changes God's mind and brings redemption...apparently a shift in God's will.

So...can physics change? More to the point...WHEN did physics change the first time, and how many times has it changed, and will it change again? (Scientific evidence: Big Bang evidence, a different system of physics existed at one point prior to the BB...???)

Clarification, from nothing came everything...impossible by our known physics, and yet that is what seems to have happened. Call it God's miracle of creation...whatever...it was still a physical action in the universe, implying that the rules worked differently at least in that instance...so God changed the physics.

I don't think it was so much 'impossible' according to known physics so much as 'not explained by' known physics which are obviously different things.

Hmm interesting food for thought. Btw liked the Plato reference...

HerewRd - seeing as how we are close to a unified theory by have no clue about conditions prior to the BB I suggest modern physics does not work prior to the instantaneous moment after the Big Bang

krellin,

In the instance of physics, it's true that His will is not, in every instance, that the "laws of physics" be "obeyed." Miracles are a clear example. When I say that the laws of physics are God's will with respect to creation, I'm (obviously?) talking about those times when the laws of physics are actually obeyed, which is whenever there is not some reason related to His salvific plan why they should not be.

There is no evidence that ANY physics existed before the big bang. Theologically, before creation, there was no matter to move, and so no will as to how it should move.

As for letting cities live after prophecying against them -- you're right, sometimes there was room for more grace than would have been clear from the declarations; a conditional clause, if you will, that was left wholly implicit. I can speculate on the reasons for this, but it's not clear you're looking for my speculations on anything.

semck - exactly, if there was not universe, and no physics, then physics changes at one point. I can't comprehend that we live in a time stream that has a starting point. I intellectually can grasp it...but I don't comprehend it, if that makes since. Before time there was...before the universe there was....

Well, there was God...from whom all things flow...and in this time before the Universe there WERE angels...so God DID have a creation prior to the Universe that WE know and live in...which means, there was some other version of physics somewhere, somehow...meaning physics is not universal.

semck - I'll take your speculations on anything - this entire conversation is speculation for the sake of speculating, is it not? We certainly aren't speaking "truth", because we are guessing on things outside the written word.

But again - a city that was not propecied to be eradicated, but was spoken by God (prophecy is God's word, yes?), which then continues to exist is either evidence of God lying - which can not be - or God chaning His mind or....it's a difficult thing to grasp....incomprehensible, really. It's one of those, "gotcha" things that an atheist uses to say the Bible contradicts itself, and the moment 1 contradiction is proven, the entire thing falls apart....because if there is one thing wrong in it, how do you know that *everything* contained therein isn't wrong? So, you *must* have absolute 100% faith that every word is true...

I'm babbling now.

With all the first parts of your post -- agreed. I would only note that whether one would call what governs the realm of angels "physics" or some other kind of stratum could be open to definition and discussion.

As to Nineveh: yes, it's a little tricky. Nevertheless, I don't think that one must conclude either that God lied or that He changed His mind. The first thing to remember is that, while it's correct that God never lies, it's His statements *as correctly interpreted in their cultural context* that are never lies. One can not acontextually grab a statement, take it to western extremes, and then insist there has been a contradiction.

So what's my point? Well, God did instigate the prophecy that "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" But there are different ways this can be interpreted. It can be taken as a scientifc-type statement, a completely precise, ineradicable, and factual proclomation. However, it can also be taken as a warning. To interpret it as a warning does not make it false; it just means it implies something slightly different -- that if things don't change, that will happen.

That is how it was actually interpreted by all who heard it. The people of Nineveh did not view it as clearly ineradicable, but rather, repented and pled for mercy, saying, "Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish." And Jonah also knew, even before saying it, that it was not a certainty, saying, "O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster."

So the people of the day did understand it as, at least plausibly, a warning-style statement and not a hard prediction.

My speculation was why God used this ambiguous type of speech and not something that was *clearly* a warning, like "Yet 40 days and Nineveh will be destroyed, unless it changes its ways." I think it was chosen precisely to be ambiguous and create complete panic so that there would be actual repentance, and not give the people the feeling that they definitely had God in control.

So did God change His mind? I don't think so. He's omniscient. It was always His intention to give them respite when they repented, though He would surely have destroyed them had they not.

So there's my take.