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I also think we need to maintain distinctions - the doctrine of creation is different from a scientific cosmology, and we should resist the temptation, which sometimes scientists give in to, to try to assimilate the concepts of theology to the concepts of science.

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Using physics that is beyond me, Prof Cox explains how his fridge shows that there is no afterlife (thermodynamics, apparently). But then he qualifies himself. “Philosophers would rightly point out that physicists making bland and sweeping statements is naive. There is naivety in just saying there’s no God; it’s b------s,” he says. “People have thought about this. People like Leibniz and Kant. They’re not idiots. So you’ve got to at least address that.”

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Originally posted by Evensong:
What does this picture say to you?

Does it contradict contemporary understandings of the physical and biological sciences?

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Originally posted by HughWillRidmee:
Apparently he also wrote “God can and will bring out of the sufferings of this life a good that so overshadows them that this life will be seen in retrospect to have been worth it." which, IMO, is pious, arrogant, unjustifiable, antisocial, uncaring, victim-creating, wishful thinking b******t. (for starters).

The universe we inhabit is so diverse, so magnificent, so astounding, so beautiful and so challenging I really don't understand why some people find it necessary to invent unnecessary, demeaning and damaging alternatives. (OK - other than power, sex, control, money, sex, fear, sex, psychopathy, job-creation....I don't understand why).

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Originally posted by Evensong:
What does this picture say to you?

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It says to me that somebody has no understanding of clean design.



Actually, that's true on a non-humorous level as well. Whoever put it together apparently thinks that theists are incredibly simple-minded. It's a lot less clear what he/she thinks about science--the jumble of random crap on that panel doesn't seem particularly complimentary to me. Nor does it seem like a fair picture of what we know scientifically, however much remains to be discovered.

I'd prefer to have both panels represented by something clean and beautiful in design, if confusing in spots--and most of it still veiled in shadow.

ETA: Oh, and what Dafyd said about the category error.

[ 30. May 2016, 17:25: Message edited by: Lamb Chopped ]

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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!

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Originally posted by Evensong:
I don't think it's about a literal reading of the bible or creation vs science. I'm thinking outside that square with more of a view that Aristotle and Aquinas propound.

The idea that if God were to withdraw from the world, it would cease to exist.

Like Ed Feser says:

" The world is not an ....object [independent of God] in the sense of something that might carry on if God were to “go away”; it is more like the music produced by a musician, which exists only when [she] plays and vanishes the moment [she] stops."

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Whoever put it together apparently thinks that theists are incredibly simple-minded. It's a lot less clear what he/she thinks about science--the jumble of random crap on that panel doesn't seem particularly complimentary to me.

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

It might be trying to get at a sensible point, but it's not making it.

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I totally agree. The array of really shitty 1950s-esque switches and dials is distracting, I'm like oh that looks like it's off an oven, off a dash-8 control panel etc.

Which leads me to conclude that given that the artist had any array of media from which to make their point, the choice of switches and shitty ones at that must be the message. I believe it's making the point that mankind's feeble attempts to understand God and science--as though the wonder of the cosmos is a bunch of switches and levers is laughable just like a bunch of junk shop dials stuck on a bit of plaster. YMMV, postmodernism and all that

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

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Originally posted by Evensong:
What does this picture say to you?

Does it contradict contemporary understandings of the physical and biological sciences?

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I don't know what it thinks its getting at. Trying to compare science (a human activity) with God (who is not a human activity) is a category error.
Is it thinking about science as an activity that studies things (pure science), or as an activity that controls things (applied science, engineering, medicine, etc), or does it mean by science the subject matter of the sciences?
It also risks portraying God as someone who switches things on and off, and otherwise leaves them alone.
It might be trying to get at a sensible point, but it's not making it.

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
The first time I saw a Darwin fish, I thought it was something the creationists dreamed up to poke fun at the other side.

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You mean it isn't?

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Originally posted by Evensong:
Might the picture suggest that if God were to remove Godself from the world then it would cease to exist? Like the music stopping when the musician stopped playing?

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I also think we need to maintain distinctions - the doctrine of creation is different from a scientific cosmology, and we should resist the temptation, which sometimes scientists give in to, to try to assimilate the concepts of theology to the concepts of science
John Polkinghorne

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Originally posted by Evensong:
Do you think it could accord with the argument from motion?

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Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
A theory of God as motion would suggest God being a power that reduces entropy - against our understanding of thermodynamics.

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
To me, the picture just says "sloppy thinking".

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Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
It is so out of date that it may safely be ignored. The hot thing, in the circles I move in, is quantum mechanics. If, every time there is a new path a new universe is generated, then the number of universes is infinite. And if there is a you in many of those universes (all the universes in which you were run over yesterday by a bus may safely be ignored) then you have done, or not done, just about everything. So: how does God judge you, when that bus finally puts paid to your existence? He's sitting there with an infinite number of versions of you, good and bad and mediocre. I cannot tell you, the pleasures that may be gotten from contemplating these things, but I believe such joys are closed to theologians. It can only be done in fiction.

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Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:

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Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
A theory of God as motion would suggest God being a power that reduces entropy - against our understanding of thermodynamics.

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All these conclusions based on "our understanding of thermodynamics" are valid for a closed system. If God is acting from outside the thing we call a universe, then God's actions don't have to increase entropy within the universe, because we're not talking about a closed system.

If you want a closed system including God, you need a way of measuring the entropy of God.

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Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:

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Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
A theory of God as motion would suggest God being a power that reduces entropy - against our understanding of thermodynamics.

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All these conclusions based on "our understanding of thermodynamics" are valid for a closed system. If God is acting from outside the thing we call a universe, then God's actions don't have to increase entropy within the universe, because we're not talking about a closed system.

If you want a closed system including God, you need a way of measuring the entropy of God.

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Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
The second law of thermodynamics says that in a closed system entropy increases or stays constant. If the universe is a closed system then entropy will increase - which is suggested by the increasing expansion and reduction in energy across the universe. The God in motion idea is suggesting that God as the centre of everything would be reducing entropy and against the second law of thermodynamics, whether God is within or outside that closed system.

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

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Originally posted by Evensong:
Do you think it could accord with the argument from motion?

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It could.

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

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Originally posted by Evensong:
Do you think it could accord with the argument from motion?

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It could. Or it could accord with a deist clockmaker god. It's ambiguous like that.

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Originally posted by Evensong:
I don't think it's about a literal reading of the bible or creation vs science. I'm thinking outside that square with more of a view that Aristotle and Aquinas propound.

The idea that if God were to withdraw from the world, it would cease to exist.

Like Ed Feser says:

" The world is not an ....object [independent of God] in the sense of something that might carry on if God were to “go away”; it is more like the music produced by a musician, which exists only when [she] plays and vanishes the moment [she] stops."

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
You could also argue that God has withdrawn from the world. I guess most Christians would not hold this view, but I have heard it expressed by others. For example, God does not stop earthquakes or the ebola virus, so this is a kind of withdrawal.

Now I am thinking of the Jewish mystical idea of tzimtzum, which is a kind of withdrawal, also put forward by Simone Weil, but this is rather different. Here withdrawal is actually necessary for existence.

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Originally posted by Boogie:
Yes, I think a kind of withdrawal is necessary. Not for existence (I think nothing would exist at all without God, thus I like the switch analogy in the graphic) but for freedom. Without the way things work, including earthquakes and viruses, there would be no evolution and therefore no freedom.

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Yes, I think a kind of withdrawal is necessary. Not for existence (I think nothing would exist at all without God, thus I like the switch analogy in the graphic) but for freedom. Without the way things work, including earthquakes and viruses, there would be no evolution and therefore no freedom.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

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Originally posted by Evensong:
I don't think it's about a literal reading of the bible or creation vs science. I'm thinking outside that square with more of a view that Aristotle and Aquinas propound.

The idea that if God were to withdraw from the world, it would cease to exist.

Like Ed Feser says:

" The world is not an ....object [independent of God] in the sense of something that might carry on if God were to “go away”; it is more like the music produced by a musician, which exists only when [she] plays and vanishes the moment [she] stops."

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I'm sorry to leap back to this point, but it seems to me to be the most interesting interpretation of the picture.

First it doesn't imply that to me. It simply seems to suggest that the deity has access to the top switch, which kills everything, whereas science has control of switches to control things at some magnitude below that.

I'm no electrician, but even this concept has some problematic issues. It is possible to ruin electronics without touching the main off switch.

But I suppose I'm a more troubled with this:

"The idea that if God were to withdraw from the world, it would cease to exist."

That seems to me to be a statement which one could only arrive at with a preconceived idea of what God is like. Taking this image on one level one might argue it is indicating that the deity has access to the off-switch (which he may - or may not - have manufactured) but I don't see how it follows that withdrawal would make the universe cease to exist. Presumably this box of electronics would continue to function even if the engineer went away or died, no?

I appreciate that I'm stretching the illustration to breaking point, but I suggest that is also what you're doing above, Evensong.

To me it is a perfectly reasonable position to state that God is Dead. That the creator existed at some point, but we're living in a post-creator existence - whatever that means.

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It simply seems to suggest that the deity has access to the top switch, which kills everything, whereas science has control of switches to control things at some magnitude below that.

I'm no electrician, but even this concept has some problematic issues. It is possible to ruin electronics without touching the main off switch.

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But I suppose I'm a more troubled with this:

"The idea that if God were to withdraw from the world, it would cease to exist."

That seems to me to be a statement which one could only arrive at with a preconceived idea of what God is like.

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Taking this image on one level one might argue it is indicating that the deity has access to the off-switch (which he may - or may not - have manufactured) but I don't see how it follows that withdrawal would make the universe cease to exist. Presumably this box of electronics would continue to function even if the engineer went away or died, no?

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