How close is traditional religion in determining the attributes of God? All sorts of religions make all sorts of seemingly wild claims. To separate the chaff from the wheat, I’ve listed some of the most common claims below and given a logical analysis where possible. Note this is not a 'does God exist?' post, God is assumed to exist for the purposes of discussion.

1. Omnipresent - NO

Parts of the universe are moving apart from each other at faster than the speed of light. This means they are casually disconnected from each other (can have no effect on each other - not in each other’s future light cones). To class as one being, all parts of the being must be causally connected, so God cannot be omnipresent. This rules out pantheism too.

2. Infinite - NO

Infinite implies unmeasurable. But a being can always measure itself - it is called self-awareness. So God cannot be infinite.

3. Omnipotent - NO

Could God create a copy of himself? If he did create a copy of himself, he would no longer be omni-potent, so we can conclude God is effectively not omni-potent.

4. Omniscient - NO

To know everything about one’s self requires memory storage larger than one’s self so it is not possible to know everything even about one’s self. For example, say a particle has 4 attributes (mass, charge, position, momentum) then (at least) 4 analog bits (=4 particles) are required to encode that knowledge.

5. Omnibenevolent - NO

This requires infallibility which in turn requires perfect information (omniscience) before making decisions.

6. Immutable - MAYBE

From the perspective of eternalism, God could be seen as static and unchanging - past, present, future, God has ‘already’ performed all possible actions, so he can be unchanging.

From the perspective of presentism, how can God be static and still effect change? Impossible.

7. Eternal Outside of Time - YES

God cannot be eternal in time (he would have no start, no coming into being). God, if he exists, can only be eternal outside of time - timeless. A timeless first cause is the only way to avoid an infinite regress of time stretching back forever (which is impossible).

8. Non-material / Extra Dimensional - MAYBE

Spacetime started 14 billion years ago. The first cause must be from beyond spacetime. We know the first cause cannot exist in any sort of time (because that leads to an infinite regress). A key question is, can space exist without time? IE can 3D exist without the 4th dimension? A similar question is can 2D exist without the 3rd dimension? If length is 0, then width and breath disappear also. So space cannot exist without time (in our universe anyway). So the first cause might be ‘spaceless’ too. That might mean the first cause is not subject to the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

A non-material or extra dimensional first cause would be able to cause the Big Bang without destroying itself.

9. Transcendent / Immanent - MAYBE

Transcendence is ‘being outside nature’, immanence is ‘being in nature’. God created spacetime so he is from outside nature. Can God get all or part of himself into nature? Tricky question without being able to tie down the nature of God.

10. Male - NO

Referring to God as ‘Him’ is the judaic tradition. But of course ‘he’ cannot be the product of bisexual reproduction. So Jesus is God’s son only in an allegorical sense.



So overall, the picture painted of God by most conventional religion seems a long way off the mark. I am not sure why they invented all these superlative attributes for God? Perhaps they thought they were praising God by doing so? Whatever the case, they seem to have left theology with the task of justifying the impossible (no wonder it can get so complicated).