The idea of the night sky as "infinite" is nowhere near as shocking as the idea of galaxies a septillion meters away. It's like the difference between Thor, versus the machine superintelligences of Iain Banks's Culture or the Powers from Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep. You can imagine the "infinite" Jehovah demanding the worship of Israelite tribespeople, but it's rather harder to visualize a mind 10^50 ops/sec large bothering to do so.
If you think of mystics as primitive amateur philosophers and science fiction writers who demand that their work be protected from ordinary criticism, you can see there's no way they'd be able to keep up with modern science fiction writers or modern mathematicians. In this light, words like "infinite" or "unimaginable" are just words - showing instead of telling, mere adjectives, a demand that we be impressed which isn't backed up by any actual ability to conceive of impressive things.
it's rather harder to visualize a mind 10^50 ops/sec large bothering to do so
How about a more Leibnizian idea of the Creator having designed into the primordial energy event all of the consequences of existence - some slight fluctuation or variation being ultimately responsible for this internet post ... is that a valid activity for your concept of a mystical supermind. Or consider that the realist approach to many worlds is true - is the awareness of every subatomic interaction in every one of an infinite array of possible worlds, is that enough processing for you? How about if that mystical being is responsible for an infinite number of such worlds?
You have a very large concept of the infinite aleph-0^^^...^^aleph-0 (I doubt you can verily comprehend those numbers though) or whatever but some numerological mystics would say those concepts are discovered from ideas embedded in the created order or inherited from a prime movers creative mind.
Saying "infinite" creates a vague sensation of bigness that isn't anywhere near as big as, say, 3^^^3 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth%27s_up-arrow_notation) to say nothing of really large numbers.
The idea of the night sky as "infinite" is nowhere near as shocking as the idea of galaxies a septillion meters away. It's like the difference between Thor, versus the machine superintelligences of Iain Banks's Culture or the Powers from Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep. You can imagine the "infinite" Jehovah demanding the worship of Israelite tribespeople, but it's rather harder to visualize a mind 10^50 ops/sec large bothering to do so.
If you think of mystics as primitive amateur philosophers and science fiction writers who demand that their work be protected from ordinary criticism, you can see there's no way they'd be able to keep up with modern science fiction writers or modern mathematicians. In this light, words like "infinite" or "unimaginable" are just words - showing instead of telling, mere adjectives, a demand that we be impressed which isn't backed up by any actual ability to conceive of impressive things.