You bring up a good point. #6 approaches a pantheist view:

6) God created the world as a 'creative principle'. As a 'creative principle' he merely acts as an opportunist and only when opportunities come along, does he inspire an event to occur that has a positive effect on the design of the universe. Since opportunies are limited, our world is also 'half empty'.

But, I was thinking more in terms of process thought.

How about #9:

9) God and the Universe are one and there is no creation per se. The universe is just one aspect of the larger Universe and owing its existence to this Universe; the full properties of the Universe encompass properties normally attributed to God (otherwise the term 'God' is meaningless). These attributes might include metaphysical laws, metaphysical concepts such as truth, order, free will; along with possibly more religious concepts such as goodness, mercy, morality, humility, love. If the religious attributes exists as part of the Universe, then the 'half full glass' of the universe can be explained along the lines that the Universe's religious-like properties take time to evolve in a universe, or these properties are voluntary or specific to the substructure in question (for example, conscious beings might be required to evolve attributes of a religious-like character, and this is when the Universe exhibits these properties). Of course, the attributes of God may be much more restricted and limited to mere secular-like metaphysical laws.

How about that? Are there any others that might be missing?

• Ooh - blaine_steinert - June 4, 2003 - 17:13 UTC
  • Depends - harvey1 - June 4, 2003 - 18:54 UTC