Is god infinite

Answer 1

There are clearly two sides to this debate: either god is infinite, or he is not. I've addressed the question using primarily the definition of "god" that is held by the Abrahamic faiths and have not really addressed the idea of "god" held in faiths such as Buddhism and Hinduism.

First of all it's important to define what one is refering to by applying "infinite" to God. Is this a reference to his power? His size? His age? Clearly infinity can apply on a number of different levels and on each application of it to different parameters, different problems arise.

With regards to his power, there is the famous paradox of "can god create an immovable object?". However this is question is a tautology and gods inability to create something more powerful than himself is not actually a weakness. Rather it is a testament to his infinite power.

In terms of his size there are issues too. If God was infinitely large then we would all be part of God, and becaus God can't sin, even a part of him couldn't sin, which then creates problems. Also, part of infinity is also infinity, meaning we too would be infinitely large and all exactly the same, and that's not the case. So its probably fair to say God isn't infinite in size.

In terms of his age, classically, god was said to be infinitely old. However if one applies a derivation of the "kalam argument" (which states that if the universe were infinitely old, we would have not concept of "now", as "now" is the end of known time and infinite time obviously doesn't have a start or end. Ergo, the universe is not infinite and does have a start and end) where we apply the argument to God instead of the universe. Here one could argue that as the concept of God is "sensed" now, but because God extends further into time (all of it in fact) we do not fully know God until he reach the end of infinite time - which of course is impossible - and thus we can never fully know God. However a rebuttal to this could be that, because God is an unchanging entity, if he is known to us as such at the start, then we actually know him as he is always from the beginning of time to the end.