08/08/2026
Category "Philosophical" (Short Stories in english)
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Harry Schloßmacher

4--The Action God: A Thought Experiment

So far, the classical attributes of God have not been disproved. What has been questioned, however, is their explanatory power. The central question has always been the same: Do omnipotence, omniscience, and perfect goodness really correspond to the universe we actually observe?
Perhaps, though, the question itself points us in the wrong direction.
Perhaps we should not begin with a predetermined image of God and then attempt to measure the universe against it. Perhaps we should reverse the perspective and ask whether our image of God can be adjusted to what the universe itself reveals.
This opens up an unusual possibility.

Let us assume, for a moment, that the creator of the universe is neither completely omniscient nor perfectly benevolent. What kind of being would such a creator have to be for the universe as we know it to make more sense?
This is where the following thought experiment begins.
It makes no claim to reveal the truth. Its purpose is more modest: to explore whether the observable structure of the cosmos might suggest an image of God different from the one traditionally offered by theology.
A glance at the universe reveals an astonishing diversity.
Billions of galaxies contain billions of stars. Countless planetary systems are born, evolve, and eventually disappear. Stars explode as supernovae; new suns ignite; planets take shape from cosmic dust, while elsewhere entire star systems fade into oblivion.
Movement is everywhere.
Change is everywhere.
Development is everywhere.
The universe does not resemble a static structure, completed once and for all. It looks far more like an immense, ongoing process—one without a clearly visible endpoint.
And perhaps that is precisely where its deepest fascination lies.
For development always implies openness.
Where development occurs, new possibilities emerge. Where possibilities exist, surprises become possible. And wherever surprises remain possible, there is something resembling tension, curiosity, and discovery.

A completely omniscient being, however, could never experience such a thing.
A God who already knew every detail of the future would have nothing left to discover. There could be no genuine surprises, no unexpected turns, no authentic curiosity.
Every star, every galaxy, every form of life, and every decision made by every intelligent being would already have been known to such a God from all eternity.
For him, the universe would not be an adventure.
It would be a book already read from beginning to end.
But what if the future were not entirely predetermined—even for the creator?
What if at least some possibilities remained genuinely open?
Then every newly forming planetary system, every previously unknown form of life, and every civilization capable of developing along its own path could bring something genuinely new into existence.
The universe would acquire an entirely different character.

It would no longer be merely the execution of a plan completed in the mind of its creator before time itself began. It would become an ongoing act of creation—one whose ultimate outcome remained open.
Under such an assumption, the immense scale of the cosmos would take on a new significance.
The more stars are born, the more planets emerge, and the more frequently conditions arise in which life might develop, the greater the number of possible histories.
The value of the universe would then lie not merely in some final result, but in the process itself.
Its fascination would lie in the almost incomprehensible multitude of individual stories unfolding simultaneously across countless worlds.

This is where the idea of the Action God acquires its real meaning.
The term is not meant to describe a thrill-seeking deity, still less a satirical caricature of God.
It refers instead to a creator whose interest lies not exclusively in achieving a perfect final state, but in the unfolding of creation itself.
For such a being, development would be more interesting than stagnation, diversity more compelling than uniformity, and openness more meaningful than complete predetermination.

But such a universe would inevitably have a darker side.
Where freedom exists, things can go wrong.
Where development is possible, failure and destruction become part of the process.
And where countless worlds are free to follow their own paths, not every story will have a happy ending.
That is precisely why this thought experiment does not solve the problem of suffering.
Nor does it justify suffering.
It merely changes the perspective from which we look at it.

Perhaps the universe was never intended primarily to produce a perfect state as quickly as possible.
Perhaps its essential character lies precisely in being a creative process that is never completely finished.
Perhaps creation is not a task with a predetermined final answer, but an unfolding reality whose possibilities are discovered only as they become actual.
Whether this is truly the case, of course, we do not know.
But the thought experiment does reveal something important:
A God who conceives of the universe as an open field of development may, in certain respects, fit the reality we observe better than the image of an omniscient cosmic ruler whose entire plan was fixed from the beginning, down to the smallest detail.

And so the decisive question remains.
Which image of God explains the universe more convincingly?
The God of perfect predetermination—
or the creator whose cosmos unfolds through an ongoing process of creative openness?

All rights belong to its author. It was published on e-Stories.org by demand of Harry Schloßmacher.
Published on e-Stories.org on 08/08/2026.