How can God be intelligent if He is immaterial?
We know that God is spirit (John 4:24). We know that He is the uncaused first cause, that is to say that He created everything (John 1:3). This means that God is spaceless, timeless and immaterial. I recently heard atheists say that God cannot be intelligent because he is immaterial. The argument was: 1. Intelligence, as we experience it, comes from a brain. We never saw something "brainless" be intelligent or thinking by itself. 2. Since God is immaterial, He does not have a brain 3. Therefore, God cannot be intelligent. I didn't know how to answer this argument. How can something immaterial have intelligence? "Where" is the intelligence, if it is immaterial?
John 4:24
LS1910 - 24 Dieu est Esprit, et il faut que ceux qui l'adorent l'adorent en esprit et en vérité.
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Asked December 19 2013
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Samuel Bourassa
For follow-up discussion and general commentary on the topic. Comments are sorted chronologically.
Rajaraman V
"Does He who implanted the ear not hear? Does He who formed the eye not see?" (Psalm 94:9).
I think the non-intelligence has given the atheist their brains to fool around the world
Aaron Bradshaw
I encourage all who have read this post of answers to read " I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be An Atheist" by Norman L. Geisler & Frank Turek. It presents the obvious blind faith that's required not to believe in God while logic and reason points directly to God's intelligent design.
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Actually, we HAVE observed intelligence in things that are "brainless" which is something that does deserve mention. Interestingly there is a large amount of controversy in this particular debate due to human centrism, because the being I am about to mention doesn't even have a central nervous system.
Slime mold. Slime mold is capable of solving a maze and remembering it. It can remember where traps were and these can be removed and it will avoid where they were. No brain, no central nervous system... and one of the biggest debates of the 21st century because it completely redefines our understanding of ourselves.
Much of the theological debate comes from the arrogance we have in seeing ourselves as these all knowing and all powerful beings of evolution. It helps that we cannot explain our own functionality to ourselves, but having something much lower and completely different from us show that it can do what we do... it is a humbling that makes one realize that there is greater meaning than just being the "top of the food chain", even more so that we cannot really say that we are the top.
See, it is the arrogance of human centrism that has us in this position. We see ourselves as if we are gods, but God would be looking down at us as if we were slime mold, seeing our limited grasps of the world we live in as cute but not what the full truth is.