This is hardly a recent view. Please provide a citation from a traditional Christian theologian (i.e., one of the Church Fathers, or a medieval scholastic, or an Eastern Orthodox theologian) claiming that God exists in space. This was firmly rejected early in Christian history. Practically the only educated Christian I’ve ever heard maintain it as a possibility was a (Protestant) colleague of mine who is a philosopher (and has very little use for Christian tradition)!
See Aquinas, *Summa Theologiae, *
Part 1, Question 8, Art. 1.
Edwin
I am a writer. I’m heading off to film school soon, and am now completing various movies which I wrote, directed, edited, and acted in.
I speak in euphemisms, metaphors, and perhaps more on the eloquent side then the factual one you may have been expecting.
The jist of what I was saying remains true; God has become less and less necessary as we understand more and more things.
Space was probably the wrong word, ancient people moreover said gods lived in the heavens or the clouds or the sky or what have you, and by the way, I wasn’t just referring to christians.
Ancient people thought God was the sun, or that a beetle carried the sun, or that Thor caused lightning, et cetera. That was the point.
We used to need God to explain the phenomenon of lightning (not christians necessarily, you’re not the center of the world), but now, we don’t.
We used to need God to explain the complexity of human life. Now, we don’t.
It certainly doesn’t
disprove him, it just no longer makes him
necessary.
Right now, we don’t know how the universe ‘started,’ assuming it even had a beginning. Seriously, we have no idea. No one does. The universe is exceedingly bizarre.
Quantum Mechanics have been proven to a degree of decimal place accuracy that is akin to measuring the width of North America to the accuracy of a single hair.
Yet, as a physicist put it, “If you think you understand Quantum Mechanics, you don’t understand Quantum Mechanics.”
We cannot understand the assumptions that Quantum Mechanics makes, yet by the degree of accuracy, it must in some sense be true.
How can this be? Well, really, think about it. Who do we think we are anyway? We evolved to survive in this world. Quantum Mechanics have no bearing on our everyday lives, so brains that were capable of understanding it were not more likely to survive. Hence, we didn’t develop the understanding.
And yes, everything that we see in our day to day lives has a direct cause, so that instinct is naturally built into our brains to help us survive. You push a boulder, it falls. Maybe you use that to kill an attacking mountain lion. You survive and pass on those traits.
The point is, certainly none of us can really understand how God just is, unless you’re kidding yourself. Theologians admit this; it is a mystery.
There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, unless you try to pretend that your mystery somehow solves the mystery of how the universe came about.
Again, to be clear, it is not an argument
against God, but it cannot be used as an argument
for God (hence the name of the thread).
If only things that change through time require a cause, maybe the universe has been around forever.
Or, maybe the universe’s laws will eventually come down to some very simple rule, something that could be called “God” in a kind of pantheistic mindset, something like string theory may do.
Or, maybe the law of causation only proves true to things inside the universe, not to the universe itself.
Or, maybe string theory will eventually be proven and show that the collision of two branes caused the big bang.
Or, maybe some other brand new theory, as revolutionary and hard to understand as evolution, will come along and gain scientific consensus within the next 100, 1000, or 10000 years, who knows.
All of these are perfectly valid explantions. What remains to be determined are which premises are true.
That’s the missing link. We don’t know what premises are true. We can’t go and test things outside the universe, or test the universe or existence itself. Maybe someday, but not now. We just don’t know.
I do know, though, that it is very pointless to answer a mystery with another mystery, a question with another question.
