Those Philosophical And Abstract Godly Attributes
God is many different things to many different people. God is everywhere (omnipresent); God is Mother Nature; God is love; God is the creator; God is dead; God doesn't exist; God was an ancient astronaut; God is all-knowing (omniscient); God is all-powerful (omnipotent); God works in mysterious ways; etc. Whole books have explored the issue going back, well ever since humans could think and express their ideas on paper, or carve them in stone, or whatever. However, many of these abstract and idealised and philosophical versions of God (often contradictory) usually bear no relationship to the God of the Bible, or specifically God of the Old Testament.
I'm not exactly sure what an abstract idealized concept of God is supposed to achieve, apart from being an intellectual exercise like trying to put a numerical value on angels' chinwagging on a pinhead, but it has nothing to do with putting bums on church pews.
God is an immaterial being who doesn't exist in space or in time. That is a common Godly attribute, but one which is absolutely nonsense*. If God creates something that's energetic and physical (possessing energy and matter) then God has to be something that's energetic and physical in order to do that; that being creating that which is made of matter and is running on or off energy. You can't create something from nothing that is immaterial or create something by nothing that's immaterial. If God is therefore a physical and energetic something, then God must exist in space and in time since all material things (matter and energy), including a material creator and a material creation, exist in space and time. If God speaks, for example, God must be physical and possess energy.
But the Bible provides ample examples of God existing in space and time starting with the creation itself (Genesis 1 and Genesis 2). Wasn't the creation once dated in fact to 4004 BCE? A date is a location in time! If God talked to Moses via a burning bush, then God existed in space and in time - at a specific point in space and at a specific point in time. The goes ditto for events in the Garden of Eden and ditto anywhere and at anytime the Bible recounts some event where God did something; where God strutted His stuff, like in ancient Egypt and all those events related in Exodus.
Another variation on that theme is that God is everywhere. Well, God was somewhere, not everywhere when He was having a go at Adam and Eve! If you are physical, you cannot be everywhere at the same time.
God also has to be physical since He has a physical home turf (Heaven) and sits on a physical object, a throne - so God exists in space and occupies space.
If God is physical, and possesses energy, and expends energy, and there's no real wriggle room there, then God is subject to the Second Law of Thermodynamics - entropy. God may be eternal, God may be immortal, but God still has to refuel (i.e. - eat presumably) and by implication, God has to go to the bathroom! God also needs His sleep, or at least rest, as per that seventh day of creation.
God is unchanging is another Godly attribute some religious philosophers associate with Him. Well, if God is composed of matter and energy, if God exists in space and time, and if God is subject to entropy, then God can not be unchanging. If God rested on the seventh day, well, that's change. In fact God didn't do or perform the exact same operations each and every day in Genesis 1 and 2. So that too is change. In fact God changed His mind, creating animals before man in Genesis 1; man before the animals in Genesis 2. God was also willing to change His mind when it came to Sodom and Gomorrah - that's obviously contemplating change even if S&G still got zapped..
God is eternal is yet another philosophical given. That God is eternal is consistent with the Bible giving promise to life everlasting or life eternal. However, the concept of eternal, forever, or infinity is fraught with paradoxical dangers. Since the Universe is a finite 13.7 billion years old, that would imply that God pre-existed the Universe, which is alleged to have created all of space, time, matter and energy. Okay, that's consistent too since if God created the Universe, God must have predated the Universe (which negates the claim that the Big Bang was the first cause that created time, space, matter and energy; there must have been a before the Big Bang). But the issue arises, if you are eternal, and thus have already existed for an infinite amount of time, then what changed in God's circumstances to have brought about the creation of the Universe, or rather why the 'all of a sudden' "I think I'll do this" when for an infinite period prior to your creation you had no plans to do this, yet you are apparently all-knowing, so presumably an eternity before you created the Universe you knew you would do so, yet bided your time and twiddled your thumbs for really no apparent logical reason. Maybe God was of that common human frame of mind: It should be done; it shall be done; it will be done - tomorrow.
Another variation on that theme is that God is timeless. If time is God's way of preventing everything happening at once, then if you're God, everything does happen simultaneously since by being timeless, or in a state of timelessness, there's nothing to stop all things happening simultaneously.
God apparently is pure perfection. God doesn't screw things up. Ha! His creation of the human species was the biggest screw-up of all time! God Himself acknowledged His screw-up with the 40 day and 40 night rain hence flood event). Even if you put the initial blame on Adam and Eve and not on (an apparently all-knowing the future) God (who knew what Adam and Eve would do before-the-fact) He still enacts miracles in order to correct His mistakes. If a course in miracles
had ensured an adequate supply of loaves-and-fishes in the first damn place, there wouldn't have been any need for waving the magic miracle loaves-and-fishes wand.
A common attribute is that God is all-knowing (omniscient) and that He knows the future. But if God knows the future, what was the point of sending Moses and Aaron to Egypt to get the (unnamed) pharaoh to "Let My People Go" when God knew perfectly well He would ultimately have to do the hard yakka Himself and kick ass. It was all wasted breath. By the by, that's an excellent example (along with the flood of Noah and Sodom and Gomorrah) that God is anything but all-loving. Speaking of the flood, what was the point in creating all of humanity in the first place when the all-knowing God knew He was going to have to drown nearly the whole bloody lot of them a few generations on down the track! Creating humanity was just wasted effort.
Another common trait given to God is that He is all-powerful (omnipotent). That too is nonsense. He maybe more powerful than a speeding locomotive; faster than a speeding bullet; able to leap tall buildings at a single bound, and He's certainly up in the sky. However, there's this paradox: can God create a rock so heavy not even He could lift it? If not, He's not all powerful; if so He's not all powerful. It's a no-win situation. More relevant might be an observation, since God is physical, and presumably subject to the laws of the Universe, could God ever escape from inside a cosmic Black Hole