One could only discern discontinuity in a well- grasped, predictable system.
Not so, the quantum theorists have been calculating statisticly since the 1920's. The math has really gotten a boost from reasearch into atomics. Physisists regualarly pin down forces and phenomina which taken one at a time would be within the margin of error.
The traditional concept of God is that He is uncircumscribed by time and space, and therefore immaterial.
Our universe is the entirety of space and time. If there is something outside it has had no effect. I suppose if you imagined our universe a soccer ball and God had just kicked the other side a few billion years ago, the shock wave and information would not have reached us yet. That is no different from our point of view than if nothing had happened over there.
If God is not actively moving an atom here and there or modifying a brain impulse, then he is doing nothing. There is no effect from something that does not interact. At the least this rules out the water-to-wine kind of miracles.
What is immaterial and outside space? This too has been studied scientificly as memes. Memes are ideas and thought patterns. They propogate, combine, and evolve into whole self supporting entities. Life, as in animal plant etc is usually defined as a combination of chemicals which reproduce quite accurately but with modification and so can carry information forward in time. Memes share this ability, although they are immaterial, so in a real sense they are alive. I can buy into the idea that God saved a puppy from a burning building, if the meme which encoded the God concept, caused someone to rush into the building to save the puppy.
Memes, like all living things, are subject to descent with modification (evolution). The advantage that plant and animal life have had for the last few billion years is that they used a digital form of information storage called DNA. This only entered into meme reproduction fairly recently.
TP |
