Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: What! You too? I thought I was the only one.

-C.S. Lewis

Thursday, August 11, 2005

God of Nature, Nature of God

Dave, from comments, puts a fine point on what I've been trying to articulate for some time now. The nature of God, if he exists, is simply and utterly beyond our scope of comprehension.

The problem here is that too many people think that God is bound by our reasoning. Too us the mutations that force evolution are random. To God there is nothing that is random because God exists at all points in time simultaneously and all that which we humans call "random" is based on our linear conception of time. God is infinitely more complex than even absolute randomness and it is just because people want to turn God into an old man in the sky that they refuse to accept that mutation is as truly random as anything that we can apply that word to, but still nothing can be random to God.
Some people seem to be holding their breath, waiting for science to bump up against an invisible barrier, beyond which no more knowledge can be attained. Then, they will marvel as the vast unknowable that is God. Gaps in present knowledge are these hoped for glimpses onto the face of God, and, as science fills them one after another, disappointment and fear seem to follow. Defining God as the failure of inquiry is a slippery foundation for faith.

This blog is based on a true story.