The power of God...

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Ok, many Christians take their scriptures very literally. In their scriptures, it tells of an omnipresent (is everywhere), omnipotent (all-powerful), and omnibenevolent (morally perfect) God. However it does not mention of his intellect. For purposes of this thought, I will temporarily make the positive assertion that this God exists. I cannot help but wonder, if a superpowerful being like God has forgotten what it is like to be in such a weak, corruptible, small body with such a narrow perspective of the world. As such, we cannot trust that all of his commands to us be appropriate for our experience on the Earth. Even if he does know what it's like to be in a human body with a limited human mind, wouldn't that knowledge of being accustomed to our weak state lessen his power?

If we have assumed that god is omniscient then he knows the appropriate formulation of moral laws.
If he is omnipotent, he is capable of choosing to tell us among a given set of formulations of his laws.
If he is omnibenevolent, then he must choose the right formulation to tell to us.

The only possibility would be that the appropriate formulation is not the same as the right formulation, but this seems counterintuitive. It is part of Judeo-Christian morality that lying is a sin, and instructing people in a way which was not appropriate seems tantamount to lying. Thus God would sin, and thus he would not be omnibenevolent.

Is it really lying if you are ignorant of what you are saying?

The issue is that the Christian God is usually described as being omniscient and Christian theology tends to take a powerful stand upon that element of God's nature. This means that God cannot be ignorant and thus the statement by twoshots stands. Not only that, but how would knowledge make God weaker?

..is in the mighty triforce!!

If you look at how perfectly balanced our world is, how the atmosphere is just right for us, our distance from the sun is just perfect, the weather patterns are safe, the food chain is very stable, how enormously complex the human body is and still manages to run extremely well (take a college anatomy course and you'll see), etc... if God created the universe and made everything work so well, you have to assume that He has intellect. To create a world in our position requires astronomical care and thought.

There's also a passage in the Bible talking about how a day is like a thousand years to God, and a thousand years like a day, meaning that whether or not something took place yesterday or a thousand years ago makes no difference to God, and it's all the same to him. You could say that God's memories as being a human being, though 2000 years ago, is just as good as if it was only two days ago. Time is not a factor to God. We're also talking about a being that is perfect and does not decay, therefore does not experience the deficiencies that we do, such as memory loss.

Posessing knowledge of what it's like to be corruptible does not make God, to any degree, corruptible.

This thread reminds me of a great song by DownHere:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=mACDoV2-laE

In my life all the strife is getting in the way
Frankly I did not plan on getting hurt today
From Your chair in the clouds, benevolent are Your ways
While the begger bleeds, the children play
Everyone wants to know why
Isn't it always the question: How do You know my condition?

You came down to me
To know what it's like, to know what it's like to hurt
You came down to me
To know what it's like, to know just what its like to be me
To be us

In the wake of the last decades and centuries past
Who's to blame for this mess, and who's gonna take the rap?
We're quick to judge and discard a God who lets us choose whom and what to love.
Isn't it always the question: Do You really know my position?

You came down to me
To know what it's like, to know what it's like to hurt
You came down to me
To know what it's like, to know just what its like to be me
To be us... To be one with the dust and to be lost

You know what its like to thirst, to bleed
You know what it's like
You came down to me
To know what it's like, to know what it's like to hurt
You came down to me
To know what it's like, to know just what its like

You came down
You know just what its like, you know just what its like to hurt
You came down to me
You know just what its like, you know just what its like
To be me, to be us
To be lost... To be found.

Actually Legato,

Jesus was born 100% human, with human body, form, desires and suffering. So, yes, he does know how weak we are.

I tend to think that if you take these precepts; god is omniscient and omnipotent, that he knows exactly what he's doing, knew exactly what would happen when he created us, how it would happen, what people would do just following their own better instincts; he'd be able to view down the scope of all probability and know within a degree exactly what would happen.

I think the more esoteric religions like Kaballa or certain strains of Gnosticism really take this into account and project a much more buddhist "life is about learning x, y, and z" or "life is about experiencing certain things - for God - which he in his infinite power cannot". Looked at like that, looked at in the sense that no matter who we are and how happy or miserable we are, that we are here learning lessons which had been planned before our birth and that this is mostly an autopilot ride for us to take notes on and get pounded and folded like refining steel.

Kaballah seems to indicate that toward the end of that progression we just sort of start to 'get it' and at that point we're spiritually matured enough to take the final religious steps - then again by that same token I can't see how it would be a bad thing if you weren't ready to not take those steps; afterall if you try to do something like that before your ready you'd think that god would know that your efforts would seem completely hollow and that all best intentions would just crumble after a while. Still, I like the fact that they more mystic and esoteric strains of Christianity and Judaism really explain our world as it is, in the case of some seem like they discovered a lot of Darwinian truths long before Darwin did, and it still didn't need to kill God in their minds eyes but rather just assigned a rather different paradigm to our purpose here and the reasons why our reality is what it is as opposed to what the more dogmatic and watered down versions of these faiths would teach.