As noted in the review itself (included below) this is the worst theological idea I have ever read. In literally every chapter (maybe but one) there is some contradiction. But all of them, with but a couple of minor variations, stem from the author’s one grand mistake. His failure to recognize that a truely infinite, eternal God is not limited, in creation, to the temporal! Colborne misunderstands the nature of time, that while we, human mind and with particular regard to its creative powers, are stuck in an eternal now of succession, God, who purportedly is the creator of time, is not so limited. As concerns God, the creation of other entities, other creation, that are also eternal with Him, persons who were begat but nevertheless “have, like God, no beginning” are not square circles, not logical impossibilities.

Once that truth (something that must be true of an infinite and self-consistent God) is accepted, Colborne’s entire theological idea falls apart. It is in the creation of such persons, two conjoint eternal persons, that God escapes from the logical trap that Colborne thinks he sets. God can continue to uphold everything. He remains, after all, the only absolute source. But he is able to withdraw from actually having to do everything. By creating others to whom God gives powers to do (and then sharing in that doing) God sets a pattern that imprints itself on the entire universe (the Father creates the Son and together they share in creating the Spirit), including the physical, at least as soon as persons are able to be made within it. Not only does this make the reality of free will possible (in direct contradiction to Colborne), but it inverts everything Colborne concludes. The living universe is filled with various degrees of free will. Free will that has risen to the personal level, partners with God (if it so chooses, the freedom is real after all) in the evolution (in the case of biological humans on physical worlds) of the physical universe itself.

Colborne’s idea is the ultimate skepticism, even as concerns God. Not only can we not know for sure anything about what seems to be our genuine experience (there being after all no real us to know anything), but except for the assumption that one entity (God) exists, we cannot know anything about Him either given that Colborne’s theology makes God a deceiver! I’m not going to use a lot of space refuting him in detail. It should be obvious that if God literally, personally, and directly does everything that is done, and if at the same time God is literally everything and everything is God (Colborne asserts all of this), there is no room for anything else. But why would anyone embrace such an absurd self-negating idea? If Colborne was right, he had nothing to do with his book. God did it all. Nor have I anything to do with this critical essay, God did that too. Why? If none of this is really how it seems it can have no meaning, not only to ourselves (strictly speaking we are nothing but figments of God’s imagination) but even to God! Such a God is if not psychotic, at least very neurotic, and I think that is the clue we need to answer the why question!

Colborne tells us a bit about himself at the beginning of the book. He had a hard growing-up punctuated by psychotic episodes. I’m certainly not qualified to analyze him, but one has to suspect that his whole theology absolves him of something. What? Responsibility. Neither he, nor you, nor I are ever responsible for anything! Further (and Colborne mentions this), if your brain is in some small way defective, you are not responsible for any psychosis anyway, but how much better if not only are you not responsible for the problem, but that God actually wants things this way. He must! After all he could fix that defect right now if he so willed it. You may not know why he wants that defect, but it doesn’t matter because first there isn’t any you anyway, and if something is the case, it can only be God making it happen right now! If there is no free will after all, not only is nothing any of our responsibility, but even better there is nothing any of us can do about it because this is the way God wants things, and this also includes the most depraved evil!

I put this review and commentary up because it so contrasts with a vision of an infinite God who is self-consistent and therefore wholly good. To get an idea of the magnitude of the difference this implies here are some links..

A self-consistent first principles theology: Prolegomena to a Future Theology
On ethics, God as a pointer to the value direction: What are Truth, Beauty, and Goodness?
On free will and the point of all this creation: Why Free Will?
On mind able to comprehend genuine truth: From what comes Mind?

What is evil and why does it exist if God is good?: Theodicy in the Urantia Book 

Each of these essays contain pointers to many others. On the absurdity of the “no free will” idea for example see: Arguing with Automatons.

 

God’s Grand Game (2019) by Steven Colborne

In this short book, Steven Colborne offers us a complete, if shortened, theology, a “theory of God”. It is, in my opinion, the worst theory of God I have ever read, not merely because it is wrong (no human thinker gets everything right about God), but because its error amounts to God being evil. Why then three stars and not two or one? I appreciate the scope of Colborne’s effort. He covers a lot here, and he writes well. Beginning from reasonable premises he makes one grand logical error and from that he courageously drives his theory to its conclusion. He is honest about all of this effort, carefully distinguishing between what he claims must follow from his idea, and what amounts to further speculation. Mostly, his conclusions (while wrong thanks to the big error) follow from his premises, until the last chapter where he fails to stay consistently within the boundaries he himself sets (see below). The problem is that some of what falls out of his analysis makes God a whimsical child who, for his own entertainment, puts both pleasure and pain into creation!

The theory is not entirely new. It has within it a theological idea called “occasionalism” which holds that everything that happens is “occasioned”, that is made to happen, by God, personally and directly. Colborne also folds in an 18th Century idealism popularized by George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne in the first half of the 1700s. In Berkeley’s idealism, every perception we have of the physical world is put into our mind’s by God. Nothing of the physical world exists independently of God’s keeping it before (or in) our mind’s directly. This includes also all our thoughts, beliefs, desires, and so on. Everything we call consciousness is put there, moment by moment, by God himself. Colborne is not an idealist (if God wants a mind-independent world he can create one), but the way his theory comes out it doesn’t really make any difference. Is the tree we both see in front of us really there or does God put it into both our heads? Given his radical occasionalism we cannot tell the difference.

Colborne begins reasonably enough. God must be infinite, eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and possessed of unconstrained free will save for the creation of logical impossibilities (like square circles). He affirms what is called the “doctrine of divine conservation” which means that God must, at every moment, uphold all of universe reality. Put simply, if God blinked, there would be nothing and not something! Colborne errs in assuming that divine conservation entails occasionalism. He goes from “God could do everything that happens” (true) to “God does do everything that happens” (false) and on to “God must do everything that happens”. In this last move, Colborne declares free will impossible, like a square circle, completely forgetting that since God is infinitely free, he can uphold, and he can permit or allow, without actually doing everything. God can be the upholder without being the only doer in the universe. Who are the other doers? Well among others perhaps, at least us!

The evil in the theology really gets going here. To Colborne, nothing anyone does has anything to do with any freedom they think they have. He denies he is a pantheist, but his idea amounts to pantheism. Everything is God and God is everything, not merely in the sense that God everywhere upholds it all, but that he is personally doing it all. If I save a child from drowning, really God did it. If I murder you, really God did it. No matter what, good or bad (Colborne denies God is a source of the moral direction — a pointer to the true, beautiful, and good), physical, or mental (all of your thoughts, pains, pleasures) are really God playing at being a you. Colborne recognizes that human beings appear to themselves to be free willed agents, particularly in the moral domain. We cannot freely fly, but we can choose that which we perceive as more (or less) true, beautiful, or good. Indeed there seems to be no bounds on our moral freedom. But all of this is illusion according to Colborne. God is a deceiver by his lights, itself a violation of the principle of God’s consistency and unity! I have never used the term blasphemy in a review, I don’t even believe in the concept, but I think it might fit this book.

After driving at all of these conclusions based on his fundamental mistake (failing to see that while God could do everything, his freedom permits him not to have to do everything), Colborne offers us an analysis of various world religions pointing out that we didn’t invent any of them, they are all God literally “playing around”, and yes, even contradicting himself! But in a final chapter, he suggests that his idea, it’s all only God, would be a sound basis for inter-faith dialogue. But that inter-faith dialogue has any value at all presupposes free will which Colborne denies exists. If we talk, it is only God talking to himself. If we kill one another, it is only God messing around with his puppet soldiers. God’s whim either way, nothing more.

Unless you are just curious about Colborne’s extreme and morally vacuous theological idea, I cannot really recommend this book!