There are many arguments for the existence of God from a cosmological perspective (Acquinas’ Prime Mover being a typical example). So, let’s assume that a cosmological God exists.
However, how do you go from the existence of a cosmological God to equating this God with the God of your religion?
I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to come back and answer this question at the end.
Let’s consider a simple example. A cosmological God (i.e. the one which made the Universe) obviously knows how the Universe is built. Yet, both Jewish and Christian scriptures (which are, allegedly, inspired by God) describe a completely incorrect cosmology. For example, in the Old Testament, the heavens are a solid sphere, with a reservoir of water on top. And in the New Testament, Jesus ascends (i.e. goes up) into heaven, which is a realm above the sky, where God lives. We now know that this is not the case, and even Yuri Gagarin radioed back “I see no God up here”.
Never forget that the scriptures are written FOR us, not for God. As a result, they are dripping with symbolic representations of reality… our limits of constraint on earth thus far mean that yes, the heavens ARE like a dome where the outside is filled with water… to this day we are STILL not able to leave the near vicinity of our planet… and while it’s HOPEFUL to think that we might one day be able to travel to other stars and inhabitable planets, there is also the very REAL possibility that there are not enough resources on the earth to both maintain life and realisitically equip such a mission. It may be that we NEVER leave this solar system. In that case, we really are hamsters living inside a dome submerged in an ocean… stuck here. Maybe the scriptures here serve as a subtle warning of our limitations… who knows? What we do know is that for the ancients, while they could certainly jump upwards, the heavens represented a REAL boundary for them.
In the same way, the dead are buried… in the ground. It makes sense then, that humans would perceive of the darkness of being underground with the realm of death and sorrow. It is a metaphor built on our human understanding and experience. In that same way, the heavens represent light and air… the opposite of death. They are a symbol of human life built around our experiences as well. It makes sense, then, that Christ, relating to us in terms of our understandable experiences and symbols at the time, would “ascend” to show His “rising” into heaven through a physical metaphor that was widely understandable at the time.
And we can be certain that our language and symbols today are LIKEWISE built on our finite experience. If Christ were to have become incarnate today, you can bet that the symbols referenced would be utterly different… but they would be no less true, and they would be no less limited by the fact that we, despite our growth as a species, are still incredibly limited and ignorant beings.
Another example. Genesis mentions both the Sun and the stars. Thus, Genesis has all the language necessary to contain a simple phrase “The Sun is a star”. Yet, that obvious truth is nowhere to be found. Even worse, one Giordano Bruno ended up burned alive, because he started with that very proposition and followed it to its logical conclusion, proposing an infinite number of alien civilizations, each with its own Adam, Fall, and Christ.
Bruno was burned for his heresies, not for the idea (that was a widely known fact at the time) that the sun was a star. What he tried to do was make science into a religion, and that was his downfall… science is NOT religion, nor does it make or break doctrines.
A third example. Why would a cosmological God who operates on a scale of superclusters of galaxies, personally attend to salvation of some species, inhabiting a small planet, orbiting a rather unremarkable star at the outskirts of some very typical galaxy? I mean, such God probably has a ton of other civilizations to look after, not to mention overseeing the day-to-day operations of the whole Universe. (Yes, I know that an infinite God can do that, but you get the idea… why would he bother?)
There is no proof whatsoever at this time that there even IS another species on other planets with “human” perception… nor any evidence that such beings would not be “human” in nature even if we understood them. And even if they ARE in existance, such beings would be “human” aliens and would be included in the same plan of salvation of which we share in (in other words, the actions of Christ here on earth would apply to all of said civilizations). Remember that in terms of moral agents, human and homo-sapien are not NECESSARILY synonymous… it just happens that in our entire experience thus far, the only beings which fit the definition of human which have been observed are homo-sapiens.
That being said, all this is humbling, but also awe inspiring, because we believe that the entire universe, all of it, was created with Humans as the end goal in mind. We are tiny carbon based smudges on a tiny rock, orbiting a rather normal star surrounded by the great cosmos, and yet ALL of that was created specifically for us… and the message from that very counter rational idea is twofold: 1) as you point out, be humble and 2) feel loved by the fact that such an awesome God created all of this as a working system for humans (of any species in which they might occur)
Having that in mind, what evidence do you have for equating your God (i.e. the God you believe in, with all of its characteristics), with the cosmological God?
**Logic and science.
Science: **
For thousands of years, abrahamic traditions were the ONLY people on earth who believed that the entire universe was finite. Other religions and societies believed in creation stories, but their Gods always took some form of “stuff” that was already there and refashioned it. It was both a point of ridicule and awe for Christians because we were basically full of belief that our God not only created life, but also created existance itself (as we know it). Hardcore pagans thought we were either silly, or thought that such an insanely powerful God was impossible.
Science agreed… until the 20th century, nearly all scientists held that the universe itself was infinite. Religion and faithful scientists said otherwise, and were ridiculed off the stage. And then something crazy happened: solid proof of the big bang was introduced, and in the space of a couple decades, science completely reversed itself. Christianity had formulated a hypothesis, the hypothesis had been scrutinized extensively, and the hypothesis was proven to be true. That’s the scientific method for you.
In the same way, the Abrahamic traditions postulated very specifically that all of humanity had two common and converging ancestors… one male and one female. It also postulated, in the form of Noah, that the male common ancestor would be much more recent than the female common ancestor (Eve). Scientists long ridiculed this idea as well… and religiosos were held as silly for holding such a belief. Once again, in the last few decades as genetics have evolved, we find that there WAS in fact a common female ancestor AND a common male ancestor, and that, surprise, the common male ancestor WAS much more recent than the female. Science has come up with all sorts of theories about why this is possible which deny the Christian biblical account, but one irrefutable fact remains: Christianity postulated another hypothesis which was rigorously scrutinized and once again has been proven to be true.
**Logic: **
Since we’ve now seen that Abrahamic traditions are the only ones whose beliefs about creation and the formation of human life have survived the rigors of science, even when all of the scientific field was stacked against the religious hypothesis, we can narrow our search down to the abrahamic traditions. Here we engage our logic:
- Islam: recognizes the new testament as divinely inspired by God, and yet then does linguistic backflips to believe that Jesus was “just a prophet” and not God, despite the fact that the new testament clearly states that Jesus was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Such a logical contradiction cannot be possible in the true faith, so I reject Islam as the true Church of God.
- Judaism: all of its wonderful prophecies are fulfilled in Christ, even though some are fulfilled in ways which were beyond the very limited human understandings of said prophecies. If I look at judaism as a faith which made accurate and true predictions about the nature of the universe, then I look at the prophecies that it made, it is no great step for me to look at Christ and see that those predictions are likewise fulfilled. It isn’t so much that I REJECT Judaism, so much as I think that the old covenant is fulfilled in the Christian church… that we are made fulfilled Jews by our life in Christ. In other words, I believe in Christianity BECAUSE I believe in Judaism (in a way) and its prophecies… but I think it is illogical to continue looking for the fulfillment of those prophecies in a limited and less universal means than Christ has already accomplished. Ergo, I accept Christ as the fulfillment of Judaism and am therefore a christian.
