This is to just clarify my understanding. Writing something out often does that. So not necessary to respond. I am using these posts to clarify things.
I completely understand what it means that we cannot understand God. Just as a slug could not understand what we are. But the slug can know of our existence directly but we cannot know directly of the existence of God. That is an important distinction.
If we knew directly of the existence of God, how would that change things? The answer dramatically and definitely not in any positive way. So one of the characteristics of God must be that He must not be directly knowable, whether of His nature or that if He even exists. (Pointed out here on a previous thread with reference to Stephen Evans and his book "Natural and Signs Knowledge of God")
I tend to ignore the esoteric discussions of God and instead to focus on the obvious. From last Sunday's gospel:
"I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
for although you have hidden these things
from the wise and the learned
you have revealed them to little ones."
And
"All things have been handed over to me by my Father.
No one knows the Son except the Father,
and no one knows the Father except the Son
and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him."
So we are left with intermediaries, The Gospels, reason and science.
I wonder what Aquinas would have written if he had available the current knowledge that science has provided of the nature of the universe and its fine tuning. Aquinas used only what was available to him in the 1200s. We should use what is available to us in the 21st century as well as what was the basis for Aquinas' conclusions. Logic will not change but our understanding of the nature of our existence is rapidly changing.
One of. the most ironic things of the modern age is the conventional wisdom, that science points away from a creator. The actuality is that the more science discovers, the more it points to some sort of creator with an immense intelligence.
While we may not understand much of the nature of this entity, we do understand several things about it. Namely, that it would not create such an existence as our universe without a purpose. This creator had choices and by enacting one of these choices, it reveals certain things about its nature.
This is to just clarify my understanding. Writing something out often does that. So not necessary to respond. I am using these posts to clarify things.
I completely understand what it means that we cannot understand God. Just as a slug could not understand what we are. But the slug can know of our existence directly but we cannot know directly of the existence of God. That is an important distinction.
If we knew directly of the existence of God, how would that change things? The answer dramatically and definitely not in any positive way. So one of the characteristics of God must be that He must not be directly knowable, whether of His nature or that if He even exists. (Pointed out here on a previous thread with reference to Stephen Evans and his book "Natural and Signs Knowledge of God")
I tend to ignore the esoteric discussions of God and instead to focus on the obvious. From last Sunday's gospel:
"I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
for although you have hidden these things
from the wise and the learned
you have revealed them to little ones."
And
"All things have been handed over to me by my Father.
No one knows the Son except the Father,
and no one knows the Father except the Son
and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him."
So we are left with intermediaries, The Gospels, reason and science.
I wonder what Aquinas would have written if he had available the current knowledge that science has provided of the nature of the universe and its fine tuning. Aquinas used only what was available to him in the 1200s. We should use what is available to us in the 21st century as well as what was the basis for Aquinas' conclusions. Logic will not change but our understanding of the nature of our existence is rapidly changing.
One of. the most ironic things of the modern age is the conventional wisdom, that science points away from a creator. The actuality is that the more science discovers, the more it points to some sort of creator with an immense intelligence.
While we may not understand much of the nature of this entity, we do understand several things about it. Namely, that it would not create such an existence as our universe without a purpose. This creator had choices and by enacting one of these choices, it reveals certain things about its nature.