Is a perfect being (God) simple, like an electron?

  • Question

    Let us define God here as Western philosophers generally do, namely as a "perfect", or "greatest possible," or "most worshipy-worthy" being. This ostensibly entails that God has greatest-making conjunction of great-making properties (i.e. perfections), typically thought to be:

    1. Being the most important kind of object: a person/soul/mind.
    2. Having personhood's essential properties: knowledge (e.g. of self) and power (e.g. to will).
    3. Having them to their maximal consistent degree: w/o random or arbitrary limits.
    4. Being itself maximally non-dependent: i.e. ontologically necessary.
    5. [Being whatever else would make the object greater, if you can think of anything.]

    Although some theologians and philosophers argue for the doctrine of "Divine Simplicity" (where God lacks any form of complexity or composition), here we are asking more modestly whether God is relatively simple, exhibiting hardly any ontological complexity if at all. (See definition of ontological simplicity.)1

    For example, consider the humble electron. Like quarks, an electron is a fundamental particle and it is very simple indeed. The electron is not divisible into smaller particles,2 and it has a few direct fundamental powers. Notably, it simply and directly has (or "carries") what we call a negative charge—a vector-like propensity to repel some kinds of particles and attract other kinds. That's basically it. The explanation goes no deeper. There are no underlying mechanisms to unravel because the power is basic and unmediated.3

    So again, we mean to ask here: Is God (or the perfect being) likewise a wholly or largely indivisible fundamental entity with just one or a few fundamental powers, properties, and/or dependencies?

    1. What is ontological simplicity? There is room for debate, but at first blush the simplicity of an object tracks with its sparseness of essential ontological dependencies (parts & properties). [Swinburn suggests at least: introducing few entities, few kinds of entities, few properties, and few kinds of properties. .... "[Theism] is a simpler hypothesis than the hypothesis that there is a God who has such-andsuch limited power (for example, the power to rearrange matter, but not the power to create it). It is simpler in just the same way that the hypothesis that some particle has zero mass, or infinite velocity is simpler than the hypothesis that it has a mass of 0.34127 of some unit, or a velocity of 301,000 km/sec. (Swinburne (2004), 54-55.)"]] And if those dependences themselves have dependences which themselves have dependences, then its complexity increases coorespondingly; we need to look at the base of the whole dependency heirarchy-tree-pyramid leading up to the object. For example, numbers, if they exist, are simple because they depend on little to nothing. Human beings, however, depend on several specialized parts: organs and organ arrangments, cells and cell arrangments, atoms and atom arrangments, physical forces, and a spatio-temporal arena, among other things.
    2. Note: the idea of there being mechanisms all-the-way-down is quite incoherent, so even if the electron were not fundamental [which it is] another particle or set of particles would be; any cogent reality will have its fundamental/basic entities with fundamental/basic powers.
Yes Reasons affirming the proposition Is a perfect being (God) simple, like an electron?

  • God is reality's foundation: an irreducible rational soul w/o limits

  • Souls/Minds are not composed of parts

    Argument illustration

    Substance. This is relevant because God is just an unlimited soul/mind.

    But no,

    • Substance dualism is false.

  • God's powers are unmediated

    If God's powers were mediated, then there would be additional dependencies in God and his power would be limited by those dependencies.

  • No complexity can be identified (see attempts below)

No Reasons challenging the proposition Is a perfect being (God) simple, like an electron?

  • Omniscience requires 1,000,000+ knowings

  • Omnipotence requires 1,000,000+ powers

  • Minds require a processor (e.g. brain)

    neurological complexity material processor

    Rob Koons: "The Big Giant Brain objection goes something like this. Every intelligent agent we know of (humans, maybe chimps and whales) have highly complex central nervous systems, with billions of neurons and quadrillions of connections. A god who is highly intelligent, therefore, most probably has a brain that is much larger and more complex than a human brain. An infinitely intelligent god would seem to require an infinitely large brain. This means that theism involves introducing more complexity, more amazing coincidences and purposively organized structures, than was present in the data it is designed to explain. Consequently, the prior probability of theism is even lower than the probability that the cosmos became organized anthropically by chance, and so the anthropic coincidences do not make theism more likely true than false."

    In fact, we have good reason to believe that He is radically different from us. This means that we have little grounds for extending a generalization based on finite agents to an infinite agent.

  • Minds require time (for cogitating)

  • Causal powers require mechanisms