From: RFaussette@aol.com
Date: Wed Sep 17 2003 - 17:51:39 EDT
A contrast to the suggestion that God is outside the physical world (from
Natural Selection and the Nature of God 1998):
"As man evolved, his expanding consciousness at some time came to
intuit God whose existence was perhaps suggested to him by the precision and
synchronicity of the observable universe. The confusion over the nature of God
arose as man anxiously tried to characterize God. The Hebrew authors of the Old
Testament avoided the confusion by forbidding the people to represent God by
any image or any form at all...
"By definition, let us agree that God, though he may be more than we
experience is, at the very least, all that is manifest. Therefore, God (for all
practical purposes) is what is. If we wish to avoid characterizing,
anthropomorphizing or trivializing God we can still accept 'what is' to be everything that has
ever been, everything that is, and everything that will ever be, plant and
process, nothing existing outside of God.
Influenced by an image of God portrayed by artists, man may limit
God to a place or a physical manifestation. In difficulty, man may pray for
God to intervene in his behalf. The mistaken assumption is that God is absent
until summoned. Man often forgets the obvious; because nothing exists outside
of God, God is in the difficulty. Assume this Old Testament perspective and
become immersed in the totality of the Old Testament God who is never limited to
or removed from your immediate vicinity.
Given this perspective it logically follows that when the ancient
Hebrew prophets focused their attention on any aspect of the observable universe
they saw God. That is how they learned the laws of God and how to live in
harmony with God. The more rigor they devoted to learning, the closer to God they
became. Learning became religious. It is said the devout Jew does not simply
study Torah, he is Torah. He studies God’s law until he can intuit God’s law.
He learns God’s will and reflects God’s will."
The God outside this physical world is inaccessible to you, as inaccessible
as an alternate universe or an anti-matter galaxy. The God to study is the God
manifest in this world through his manifestations in it, be they plant or
process. This God is in the scientific domain. To speculate on the God outside
the physical world is... merely speculation and can never be anything more.
rich faussette
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