Pope’s Foot-Wash a Final Straw for Traditionalist Catholics

[caseymoz]

113. And how many other possible explanations are there

. . . besides a creator? Especially since God's presence is not seen in any other miraculous processes such as gestation or healing. (I'm defining God here as a single, conscious creator and supreme being who can bend and rewrite physical laws.) There's got to be some quality that indicates God besides a lack of anything else, which is not a quality, it's a lack of one in something else.

First other possibility on the list is an obvious one; we just don't know enough about the origins of life yet. Our "forensic evidence" of conditions that generated life are just too incomplete. Another explanation is likely coincident with the first: perhaps the process takes too long, so long we can't see it develop in a human lifetime? Or ten lifetimes? Or a thousand?

Have there been other things humans couldn't reproduce in the lab or observe at one time but could later on? You know there are, because that list is long. Now, did any of those turn out to be God?

At one time, humans thought electricity was a sure sign of God. There was no other explanation for except that. Actually, it turns out there were many possible explanations besides God, and it was one of those. The God question distracted people and stunted their imagination.

I'll point out that the way Christians define God should make the being as plain and undeniable as the sun in the sky. But He's not. We wouldn't need faith; we'd know He was there. There wouldn't be believers trying to gain converts just as we don't have believers in the sun.

The Old Testament depicts God exactly that way. He smites people tens of thousands at a time, he parts the Red Sea, He stops the sun "in the sky." No faith needed, people are depicted as know he's there. If there are any disputes, it's not over the existence of a God, it's which God it is, and/or which God is the strongest.

In other words, the Christian God isn't subtle. Definitely you shouldn't be looking for hope of his existence in a lack of an explanation for something tangently related.

The reason why you're trying to find God's presence within our lack of knowledge is you want to think believing in God doesn't insult rationality. You want to believe in God and feel that you're rational about it. You'll take whatever excuse you can. Unfortunately, there's none that can completely satisfy it.