What can we learn about God from creation alone?

[Josh]

Originally posted 11/24/06:

This question is the question of Natural Revelation or Natural Theology.

Perhaps you've had a thought like the one my friend shared with me:

"Lately I was thinking about the size of the universe and all it's beauty and again I had the feeling, that the creator of it can't be interested in the insignificant prayers of mankind"

I have to laugh at this, because it's precisely for those reasons that I think the Creator must be interested.

You see, if there is a creator, we can tell certain things about him apart from any direct revelation.

We can tell from what he has made that he is orderly, efficient, (even one of his pet projects, chaos, is orderly- of course that's open to a bit of debate), he has a sense of beauty, he is transcendent (he must be above and beyond all this, he must transcend all the space-time dimesnions, etc...)

In addition, he must care a lot about humanity because he allowed us to live in the tiniest window of opportunity possible. There is only a couple hundred thousand year gap of time where the right conditions would allow us to exist. It took millions of years to prep the planet for our survival with 100+ factors that needed to be precisely fine-tuned.

Now, I know you can say this was all by chance, but granted that we are discussing here the possibility of a Creator, he must be very interested in our existence if he exists. We are the miracle planet...

On an even simpler level, if there is a Creator, how could he not be infinitely interested in everything he's made?... every rock, atom, human, plant.... It's not like he would be restrained by the laws of physics... he would be able to be focused on everything all at once without a migraine headache (omniscience and omnipresence- terms which we can now begin to understand with knowledge of multi-dimensional theory).

[Josh]

Originally posted 11/24/06:

I was further questioned on that last bit. Humans aren't interested in every "rock, atom, plant" so why should we think we're so important to God? How do we know we're not insignificant to Him?

I don't think it's fair to compare me to God. I am spatially limited, must prioritize the things I focus on. God is not. It makes sense to me that if God created every physical thing in existence, and if everything in existence demonstrates a high degree of design and complexity, that he would, in a very real sense, "care" about all things. And those things are are the most complex would most likely warrant his special attention. Yes, we humans are living in a tiny little window of existence, if things continued on uninterrupted for even, arguably, another 200,000 or so more years, we wouldn't be here. All the more miraculous in my estimate. I know you think that if something is, then it's not miraculous, it just happened, but the odds are against our being here, it seems something has beaten the odds.

Furthermore, I don't know about you, but I have found as I have grown older, that there is beauty everywhere. I find my son staring at the smallest things: weeds, pebbles, even carpet lint with the most profound sense of wonder. And I find myself re-awakening to that as well. Of course I can't keep myself in a constant state of wonder over those things, but nevertheless, they are all wonderful. And if I could, I would choose to behold the wonder in everything at all times, to be intimately involved with all good things. And so it's not hard for me to imagine that God, who has no limitations, would also choose the same thing. Yet this is no scientific argument, just my personal take.

My friend still felt this was all conjecture, so I followed up with this:

I don't believe it is just an assumption that God is omnipotent (all powerful), omniscient (all knowing), omnipresent (present everywhere), and loving. Neither is it an absolutely scientifically verifiable fact. But it is logical, and the logic of it has been pointed out many a time, most famously as part of St. Anselm's ontological argument. Although I don't necessarily think the ontological argument is that great of an argument for the existence of God, it does well to demonstrate this logic, namely, that:

If there is a God who is transcendant from this universe (that is, outside of it and created it in its entirety), then he must be "the greatest conceivable being" or "a being than which none greater can be thought".

He must transcend all the confines of all the space-time dimensions and physics of the universe, because he created them. He would be, at least from our perspective, but arguably from any perspective, the "perfect being". A perfect being, defined as "one whose essence or nature lacks no attributes (or properties) whatsoever, one who nature is complete in every respect".

There are many analogies we could point out: an author writing a book, a computer-programmer writing a program. Each of these displays elements of omnipotence, omnipresence, etc.., but these metaphors aren't perfect because a book or a computer program are not completely closed systems. They may be affected by outside influence beyond the control of their creators, thus limiting the power of their creators. But the universe is, very arguably, a closed system. So it's creator would have free reign within it. He must supercede anything within his creation to have had created it.

It's relatively easy from all this reasoning to conclude the Omni's; a little harder to conclude that he is loving. But, I hold with Anselm that a perfect being lacks none of the attributes of his creation, and I think it is obvious that love and beauty are indeed aspects of his creation. A skeptic might at least admit that if there is a creator, he would be at least able to be caring toward his creation.

To sum up, if there is a transcendent creator who brought the universe into existence out of nothing tangible (as scientists now mostly agree- that there was a time before time, space, and matter) then he must by necessity be all of the omnis and can, arguably, be said to posess the attributes of love and concern. The love and concern are evidenced by the extreme fine-tuning he put into our existence here right now.

After further questions, I finished the dialogue with this summation:

In regard to Anselm and the nature of God, I will finish by restating that if God is transcendent, then he is by nature a "being than which none greater can be thought" because we can't imagine or envision anything outside of this universe except if parts of that God are revealed to us within our time-space limitations. It makes perfect sense to me that if God is transcendant, then he is omniscient, omnipresent, and even concerned for His creation. And there is really no point in even speaking of a non-transcendant God, because nothing entirely trapped within the universe could create the universe, so if there was some sort of demi-god, the universe itself would actually be the ultimate God. And I firmly believe that at the back of all things is a Mind not a Force,based on the arguments for design, the arguments against purely naturalistic processes, etc.. Look, something kicked off this universe. It wasn't the universe itself, because there was a time when there was no universe, so it was either some impersonal force or a transcendant God.

[hume]

Originally posted 11/27/06:

"I don't think it's fair to compare me to God. I am spatially limited, must prioritize the things I focus on."

Right - we're clever about restricting our attention (unconsciously for the most part) to what seems most relevant to us and our needs; otherwise the constant stream of incoming perceptions would overwhelm us and leave us unable to function.

God, on the other hand, is unlimited and can easily "pay attention" to any number of things at once, without getting "distracted."


"the universe is, very arguably, a closed system."

I think -- maybe I'm mistaken here -- that "the universe" is *by definition* closed. The universe is simply everything that exists. If you can think of anything that's "outside the known universe," you must then expand your conception of the universe to include it. (For instance, when physicists posited the existence of dark matter -- a substance previously unknown to exist anywhere -- they didn't speak of it as something outside our universe, even though our previous understanding of what the universe is did not include dark matter. They just added it to the list of "what the universe includes." [Obviously this sets aside the question whether dark matter really does exist; it's just a recent example of something entirely new, and how such things are categorized.])

Of course God is understood to be outside of -- distinct from, independent of -- the universe. But that's a special case; God as Creator is, again by definition, the one and only entity who stands apart from the Creation. Anything we discover, posit, or encounter that isn't itself The Creator is, by definition, part of The Creation, the universe.

[hume]

Originally posted 11/27/06:

"Lately I was thinking about the size of the universe and all it's beauty and again I had the feeling, that the creator of it can't be interested in the insignificant prayers of mankind"


I admit, I feel this too -- but the odd thing about this notion is the way it values inert objects over minds. Arguably a single human mind is more incredible and wondrous than an entire galaxy; for galaxies cannot think, do not have personalities, have no wills or desires. A universe containing no sentient beings would be a very large, complex, empty and utterly stupid place (stupid in the sense that no part of it would possess the slightest intelligence or hint of selfhood). It may be that sentient life is the crowning achievement of Creation.

The very perception of beauty -- the capacity to feel awe, to wonder at a beautiful object -- is an aspect of mind (perhaps even its highest function). The stars are beautiful -- but they don't know this. A gorgeous sunset has no idea how amazing it is. If you removed us from the universe, would it matter as much? In a sense we are the universe's own capacity to understand how marvelous it is.

[Josh]

Amen.

[sonlyte]

That is a excellent expression of the beautiful truth of it.

I have pondered the idea in fact that given the forces of nature that God usually uses to do his will, if the size of the universe and time in which it took him to complete his work was centered around the creation of his image, then the magnitude of creation enhances the value which he places on sentient life "the crowning achievement of creation"
One example is the idea that the mass and the expansion of the universe is in perfect balance to achieve the formation of galaxies and stars. Thus the size of the universe is an absolutely necessary component of the overall goal to achieve a stable solar system.
Also the timeline in which we seemingly find ourselves puts us in a perfect place for the formation of planets in that the heavier stars form first and upon their death, materials become available for the formation of planets, thus our position 13.some billion years is a necessary time given the governing laws through which God was working.
I guess my point is, that if God does value us as his crowning achievement, all of creation would have been necessary on awesome scales of magnitude to make it reasonably happen.

To me, this is a letter of God's love.