God’s existence is a fact, He created the universe and keeps it in existence and moves it to its proper end, including all physical laws. That is an article of the Catholic faith.
Very good.
There is no " God of the gaps, " that is a derogatory assessment of Thomistic Philosophy which is totally missunderstood by Hume, Decartes, Kant, and modern Athiests. Few of these men actuallly studied Thomas. They failed to understand Thomas and his modern descendents. They never tried to use science to prove the existence of God. Science assumes the truths on which they base their science. It is these underlying assumptions, the Metaphysical structure if you will, that are the basis of Thomas’ proofs. These are the necessary, underlying metaphysical causes of all reality, essentially described in terms of Actuality and Potentiality, Form and Matter, Essence and Existence, Efficient and Final Causality, and the Universal Coordinated Order of all Being in the universe, which demands an Unmoved First Mover, a First Uncaused Efficient Cause, a Necessary Being, who owes its Necessity to no other, but has its Necessity of Itself, a Being which Exists of itself perfectly and in an unlimited manner, which is the cause of the being ( existence) of all all other beings which are clearly limited, a Supreme intelligent orderer who directs all other beings and orders them to their proper ends. Show me the " God in the gaps " here!! There is none.
How can we be sure these atoms are totally identical?
Evolution barely rises to the level of a conjecture, I’m afraid, never mind a theory! Read the articles and posts on this site and its links:Lets see here…
There are hypothesis, and then are scientific theories like the theory of evolution. Are you suggesting that there is somethig higher than a scientific theory in science?
No. Those who use the term correctly understand that it is a legitimate assessment of people who use blind spots in scientific knowledge as an opportunity to say “God did that”.
Well said… the (false, in my opinion) underlying assumption being that something is only truly True if it can be proven by science.
There is something called the Bell’s Inequalities.
JDMike:
I think quantum physics makes the “how” of God’s existence (potentially) more available to us. Not alone, but in combination with other thought, such as the thought of Fr. de Chardin, David Bohm, and Scripture. Within the threads of these fora exist theories such as Yppop’s and Greylorn’s, that are attempts to explain how the physical and spiritual co-exist.
It’s funny, in a respectful way, that I am reading more about the “God of the gaps,” in these threads. If Yppop is correct - and thus far I like his theory best - God operates, i.e., creates, causes, sustains, etc. - at the implicate level, while we see and science operates at the explicate level. His theory is that “space” is essentially all there is. There are two sorts of “space” corresponding to the levels which we are able to view or not.
At the Big Bang, a huge, but finite, number of particles was stacked. In so doing, point particles would not extend into any sort of dimensionality. Whether there is one, or are many, when stacked, they produce no dimension (so, no displacement of God). At God’s Command, these stacked point particles started to move away from the main stack and each other. As they did, because of their charges, they formed what appears to be a lattice, with each point particle being equidistant from all of its neighbors. In between this (3-D) lattice of particles is Space - but a Space very different from a “soup” or a “foam.”
Today’s Physics defines “space” as merely “extension.” Yesterday’s physics defined “space” as the “internal extension of a body.” - (Com. on the Phys., Bk. IV, les. 7, n. 909; les. 10, nn. 970-971) and Newton seems to have defined the space of the world as “the sum of the extensions of all bodies in the world.” - (The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, transl. A. Motte, rev. F. Cajori (Berkeley, 1947), p. 6). Whatever, it seems that we have a contradiction. Not between the two definitions, but between how “space” was defined then, and how it is currently thought of.
Currently, “space” seems to be thought of as that extension that exists between two (or more) bodies - or even no secondary body at all… Very interesting. In other words, that "extension that exists between two or more bodies is sort of what? Air? Well, it can’t be “air!” Air is its own bodies. And, they are also separated. Also, as molecules, they are much larger than quantum particles. So, we’ll postulate a “soup” of quantum particles. And that’s fine. But, it does not explain what is in between the ingredients of the soup, so to speak. It’s not more, yet smaller particles. Bosons and fermions (quarks) are already considered to be the smallest particles. Right? (Please correct me if I’m wrong. I don’t keep up with this stuff moment by moment.)
So, what we have here is “gaps” - actually, an infinity of “gaps.” (And, we haven’t even left our Universe yet.) The closest I have been able to conceive of these “gap areas,” formed by the expansion of primordial particles, is that they consist of “nothingness.” “Infinite Nothingness.” Now, we know that “spiritual” is distinct from “physical.” We know that God is infinite and, as such, cannot be displaced by anything. So, the physical cannot displace the spiritual. But, do they co-exist side-by-side? Or, is the “Stuff of the Gaps” God? (BTW, we are not entertaining Pantheism or Panentheism.)
Enough, for now.
Loro:
Hello, Yppop. Good to hear from you! Did you think I was sending up signals?
It’s so simple and does not harm God-as-Spiritual Being either. Simply replace “spiritual being” with “invisible being” and Space can certainly be that. This means that Infinite Continuous Space is not per se physical but is that within which the physical may have place. From our viewpoint, anything physical has place (in space).
Exactly. I think people fear the words used to describe the spatial dualities. They’re God’s concepts. As I read Scripture, I look for certain things. For example, I look for ancient attempts to describe things that would be much easier to describe nowadays.
“Fear of words.” Nothing that you or I have said disparages God in any way. Nor is any of it meant to be heretical in any way. It is merely an attempt to allow science to participate in Revelation, instead of being at war with it.
Agreed. The implicate level is precisely the level at which God operates. The Psalmist tells us that “all that the Lord wills He does in heaven and on earth, in the seas and in all the deeps.” (Ps 134:6) And, I am the Lord, He tells us Himself by the mouth of the prophet Isaias, and there is none else. I form light and create darkness; I make peace and create evil. I, the Lord, do all these things. (Is 45: 6-7) It is I who bring both death and life, I who inflict wounds and heal them, He said to Moses. (Deut. 32:39) 'The Lord killeth and maketh alive, it is written in the Canticle of Anna, the mother of Samuel, He bringeth down to the tomb and He bringeth back again; the Lord maketh poor and maketh rich, he humbleth and he exalteth . . .(1 Kings 2: 6-7). Yet, we perceive (at the explicate level) that it is soley us doing these things.