God's simplicity

[Noah1201]

If someone could possibly clarify the following argument for God's simplicity for me:

http://books.google.com/books?id=DgTRtO ... ty&f=false

Here's what I don't understand about the argument. He says that God must be simple because if there were any difference between God's "parts", this would have to be due to some cause, and since God is uncaused, there cannot be any difference between the parts. But why must it be due to some cause? Couldn't have God simply always existed in this state with differences in His composition?

In general, I would also like to hear criticism of the argument from those who reject God's simplicity.

[jlay]

I understand that people think they are making some great statement in attempting to define these attributes of God. But it always puzzles me that people want to say God MUST be this, or that.

I don't know if God is simple or complex, or both. But I do simply know that He is.

[Canuckster1127]

When we camp on these attributes and then descend from them to logical conclusions that aren't balanced by everything else God is, that's when to me, we're molding a God from greek philosophy and replacing a living, breathing Christ with an abstract concept.

[MarcusOfLycia]

I've seen people who make God into an abstract concept become atheists or agnostics shortly thereafter. Our greatest testimony to God's existence is His continual relationship with us. When he becomes a philosophy book instead of the Person behind all things, we lose sight of the whole point of God.

[Kurieuo]

If someone could possibly clarify the following argument for God's simplicity for me:

http://books.google.com/books?id=DgTRtO ... ty&f=false

Here's what I don't understand about the argument. He says that God must be simple because if there were any difference between God's "parts", this would have to be due to some cause, and since God is uncaused, there cannot be any difference between the parts. But why must it be due to some cause? Couldn't have God simply always existed in this state with differences in His composition?

In general, I would also like to hear criticism of the argument from those who reject God's simplicity.

I'm undecided, something I need to look into further, however I know William Lane Craig rejects divine simplicity.
Commenting logically on the argument... cause and effect can be simultaneous, in which case this argument doesn't seem solid.

[Kurieuo]

Once you read Craig's response on Divine Simplicity (DS), recommend reading Edward Feser's own response.

It seems to me that what Craig debates against in DS is a very absurd conception of it. For example, Craig "equivicates" God's characteristics saying God's omnipotence is not the same as God's existence, and to say otherwise is unintelligible. Whereas Feser reasons DS only entails God's characteristics are "analogous" in God to what we understand them to be in us. As Feser summarises in one of his paragraphs:

When we bring the concept of analogy to bear on the doctrine of divine simplicity, we can see what is wrong with Craig’s bare assertion that the doctrine is unintelligible. For this assertion has whatever plausibility it has, I would suggest, only if we think of God as having an essence, as existing, and as having power, knowledge, etc. in the same or univocal sense in which we and other creatures have these things. For what we call power in us is clearly different from what we call knowledge in us; our essences are different from our “acts of existing” (to use the Thomistic jargon); and so forth. So to say that knowledge (in that sense) is identical to power (in that sense), etc. does seem unintelligible. But that is simply the wrong way to understand the doctrine of divine simplicity. Properly understood, the doctrine does not say that power, knowledge, goodness, essence, existence, etc., as they exist in us, are identical. Rather, it says that there is in God something that is analogous to power, something analogous to knowledge, something analogous to goodness, etc., and that these “somethings” all turn out to be one and the same thing. “Power,” “knowledge,” “goodness,” etc. are merely different, analogously used descriptions we use in order to refer to what is in God one and the same reality, just as (to borrow Frege’s famous example) the expressions “the morning star” and “the evening star” differ in sense while referring to one and the same thing (the planet Venus).

I think Feser to some degree bypasses Craig's initial objections to DS being unintelligible. I'm just not sure whether there is some "watering down" as Craig claims many moderns like to do with DS.

For example, a rejoinder for Craig might be, "surely DS entails more than simply our preceiving analogous characteristics in God?" God is either omnipotent or God isn't. God is either omniscient or God isn't. If we are just perceiving these qualities in God's essense, then let's be clear that they don't exist in God as anything other than as mere constructions in our heads. That is, God is not really omniscient nor is God omnipotent, despite our use of these lingual constructs which identify these different properties in God. Yet, if knowledge and power are not analogously alike but different in some way, and each are found in God, then it it seems there is distinction to be seen that really does exist in God's nature. Therefore, God cannot be simple.

At the end of the day, I don't see any devastating argument/s against God's eternality and aseity if one drops DS. Yet, I see many contortions required to sustain DS. I guess it seems obvious where I tend to lean towards (Craig's side), but the fact that the many intelligent thinkers do seem to have held to some form of DS does make me pause and remain undecisive.