W
White_Tree
Guest
Moving on…
I think one of the main flaws with much of our approach to religion in general is that we often try to encapsulate God within our beliefs and concepts. God is beyond any beliefs or concepts we may have. Our concepts about God, as beautiful as they may be, are inevitably going to be incomplete, and hence wrong. The universe is infinitely more complex than any of our theories or ideas about it (and believe me, our ideas about it are pretty complex). And God, not to be trumped by His own creation, is even deeper and more mysterious than our universe.
It’s okay to have concepts of God, but when we elevate those concepts to the level of God, then we run the risk that when those concepts are disproved (and they will be disproved sooner or later, because all concepts are incomplete, in at least some sense), then we could potentially believe that it was God that was disproved.
In fact, when you listen to many (all) of the arguments put forth by atheists, what they are typically doing is disproving a particular concept about God, or a particular interpretation. None of them have ever launched an assault on God Himself, because it is impossible to contain God within the intellect.
Related to that, and also related to the theme of that essay, we also have the unfortunate tendency to reduce God to the residual in our equations. That’s statistical talk for saying “God must be the part of the universe that we can’t explain” (the “residual” is the part of the equation that is not explained by the theory or model).
For instance, one of the themes of this essay was “The universe cannot have come into being without a cause. We don’t know what that cause was. That cause must be God.” In a sense, this approach is no different from saying “The sun moves across the sky. We don’t know why it does that. Must be some God pulling it across with his chariot.”
Taking either of these approaches does no service to anyone. Many people become so wed to their concepts of God that they refuse to listen to any evidence to the contrary. There is a substantial proportion of people in the United States that believes the earth is only 5000 years old. There are other people who think that evolution is a hoax. When these people interact with well-educated people, they are perceived as backwards or unintelligent. This stereotype makes it difficult for many people to seriously investigate religion for themselves, because they have an image of religion as being a collection of fairy tales that are only believed by people that do not know any better.
Furthermore, the amount of the universe that can be explained by conventional science tends to increase over time. That means the residual is always growing smaller. Then many people look at this, and think “Oh, science is explaining so much, and that residual they call God is continually decreasing in importance. Eventually the residual will disappear. There must be no God.”
Other people explain part of the residual and think that they have explained away God. There is a very prominent scientist at Yale (I won’t mention his name), who would tell his students during class that because evolution was able to explain the creation of the various species, it was therefore impossible for God to exist.
You and I know that such a notion is ridiculous. The ability of the theory of evolution to explain certain aspects of nature has no bearing on the existence of God. Yet that poor professor was deceived because he thought God was nothing more than a residual.
Whenever we reduce God to a concept or a residual we make spirituality harder for everyone. Religion loses its credibility in the minds of everyone when such a concept is disproved or some of the residual is explained away. That makes it harder for many people to come to the Light.
Remember that when Jesus was asked, “What is Truth?”, He remained silent.
So, coming back to the point of that long-winded discussion, I don’t think that the density of black holes has any bearing at all on the existence of God. I really hope I didn’t insult you in any of this. I think philosophy is wonderful, but I just feel like it is emphasized a little too much in our traditional approaches to religion. We need a balanced approach. (I have a friend who is in the seminary, and I was just dumbfounded when he told me that they have them spend 4 years studying philosophy. I was like, “Why???”
) And I certainly don’t think that any argument or theory we can come up with will ever be able to disprove the existence of the Almighty God.
Honestly, I don’t think it does. God exists whether or not there is any type of infinity within the universe. However, our concepts about God may be affected by whether or not there exists such an infinity.
I think one of the main flaws with much of our approach to religion in general is that we often try to encapsulate God within our beliefs and concepts. God is beyond any beliefs or concepts we may have. Our concepts about God, as beautiful as they may be, are inevitably going to be incomplete, and hence wrong. The universe is infinitely more complex than any of our theories or ideas about it (and believe me, our ideas about it are pretty complex). And God, not to be trumped by His own creation, is even deeper and more mysterious than our universe.
It’s okay to have concepts of God, but when we elevate those concepts to the level of God, then we run the risk that when those concepts are disproved (and they will be disproved sooner or later, because all concepts are incomplete, in at least some sense), then we could potentially believe that it was God that was disproved.
In fact, when you listen to many (all) of the arguments put forth by atheists, what they are typically doing is disproving a particular concept about God, or a particular interpretation. None of them have ever launched an assault on God Himself, because it is impossible to contain God within the intellect.
Related to that, and also related to the theme of that essay, we also have the unfortunate tendency to reduce God to the residual in our equations. That’s statistical talk for saying “God must be the part of the universe that we can’t explain” (the “residual” is the part of the equation that is not explained by the theory or model).
For instance, one of the themes of this essay was “The universe cannot have come into being without a cause. We don’t know what that cause was. That cause must be God.” In a sense, this approach is no different from saying “The sun moves across the sky. We don’t know why it does that. Must be some God pulling it across with his chariot.”
Taking either of these approaches does no service to anyone. Many people become so wed to their concepts of God that they refuse to listen to any evidence to the contrary. There is a substantial proportion of people in the United States that believes the earth is only 5000 years old. There are other people who think that evolution is a hoax. When these people interact with well-educated people, they are perceived as backwards or unintelligent. This stereotype makes it difficult for many people to seriously investigate religion for themselves, because they have an image of religion as being a collection of fairy tales that are only believed by people that do not know any better.
Furthermore, the amount of the universe that can be explained by conventional science tends to increase over time. That means the residual is always growing smaller. Then many people look at this, and think “Oh, science is explaining so much, and that residual they call God is continually decreasing in importance. Eventually the residual will disappear. There must be no God.”
Other people explain part of the residual and think that they have explained away God. There is a very prominent scientist at Yale (I won’t mention his name), who would tell his students during class that because evolution was able to explain the creation of the various species, it was therefore impossible for God to exist.
You and I know that such a notion is ridiculous. The ability of the theory of evolution to explain certain aspects of nature has no bearing on the existence of God. Yet that poor professor was deceived because he thought God was nothing more than a residual.
Whenever we reduce God to a concept or a residual we make spirituality harder for everyone. Religion loses its credibility in the minds of everyone when such a concept is disproved or some of the residual is explained away. That makes it harder for many people to come to the Light.
Remember that when Jesus was asked, “What is Truth?”, He remained silent.
So, coming back to the point of that long-winded discussion, I don’t think that the density of black holes has any bearing at all on the existence of God. I really hope I didn’t insult you in any of this. I think philosophy is wonderful, but I just feel like it is emphasized a little too much in our traditional approaches to religion. We need a balanced approach. (I have a friend who is in the seminary, and I was just dumbfounded when he told me that they have them spend 4 years studying philosophy. I was like, “Why???”
) And I certainly don’t think that any argument or theory we can come up with will ever be able to disprove the existence of the Almighty God.
