Have they claimed too close a correspondence between the two conceptions of God? Might, for example, Kuwasi Wiredu and Oyin Oladipo be correct in maintaining that, for many Christian thinkers, God is an ex nihilo creator who is beyond time, whereas the African God or at least the conception of God that is prominent in West Africa , is distinguished by being construed as an artist who fashions pre-existing materials in time and perhaps even in a particular place?
Given the extent of their differences, which conception is more likely to fit reality? Which conception of God is philosophically and theologically more compelling? Does the response require backward causation? Is such a response metaphysically tenable? Does Jewish monotheism, especially as developed by Jewish mystics, entail acosmism, pantheism or panentheism?
There is a lot more universe out there than we can view, but the most distant object that we have seen is a galaxy, GN-z11, observed by the Hubble Space Telescope. This is approximately 1. But when the light "set off", the galaxy was only about three billion light years away from our galaxy, the Milky Way. We cannot observe or see across the entirety of the Universe that has grown since the Big Bang because insufficient time has passed for light from the first fractions of a second to reach us.
Some argue that we therefore cannot be sure whether the laws of physics could be broken in other cosmic regions — perhaps they are just local, accidental laws. And that leads us on to something even bigger than the Universe. Many cosmologists believe that the Universe may be part of a more extended cosmos, a multiverse , where many different universes co-exist but don't interact.
Inflation is an important theory because it can explain why the Universe has the shape and structure that we see around us. But if inflation could happen once, why not many times?
We know from experiments that quantum fluctuations can give rise to pairs of particles suddenly coming into existence, only to disappear moments later. And if such fluctuations can produce particles, why not entire atoms or universes? It's been suggested that , during the period of chaotic inflation, not everything was happening at the same rate — quantum fluctuations in the expansion could have produced bubbles that blew up to become universes in their own right.
But how does God fit into the multiverse? One headache for cosmologists has been the fact that our Universe seems fine-tuned for life to exist. The fundamental particles created in the Big Bang had the correct properties to enable the formation of hydrogen and deuterium — substances which produced the first stars.
Could quantum physics help explain a God that could be in two places at once? Credit: Nasa. The physical laws governing nuclear reactions in these stars then produced the stuff that life's made of — carbon, nitrogen and oxygen.
How come all the physical laws and parameters in the universe happen to have the values that allowed stars, planets and ultimately life to develop? Some argue it's just a lucky coincidence. Others say we shouldn't be surprised to see biofriendly physical laws — they after all produced us, so what else would we see? Some theists, however, argue it points to the existence of a God creating favourable conditions. But God isn't a valid scientific explanation. The theory of the multiverse, instead, solves the mystery because it allows different universes to have different physical laws.
So, it's not surprising that we should happen to see ourselves in one of the few universes that could support life. Of course, you can't disprove the idea that a God may have created the multiverse. Many Thinkers like Aristotle and Rene Descartes reached to the conclusion that there must be a creator. Thomas Aquinas 13th century gave five proofs for the existence of God. But what proof convinces a 21st century American?
Do you want an experience of God? How would you know it is one? Do you want scientific evidence — what would that be? Do you long for convincing, rational explanations? Or it may be that in "going and seeing" you will find it. Buddhism is a nontheistic worldview. We put no stock in gods because they too suffer in the cycle of birth and death, we call Samsara. How could we prove a nonexistent thing God in this case does not exist? Harder for us because it's a question we are indifferent to.
We can prove for certain that some do feel a certainty in the existence of God. A fervent wish and deeply felt need for stability drives this.
But the universe is far from a stable place. Clinging to a static object of mind in a changeful world creates suffering. The best course is not clinging to imagined projections like God , only then life can be eternal, joyful, selfless and pure. Micheal L. Fortunately, the existence of God cannot be proven nor disproven through temporal means or wisdom. I should say that I am trained originally as an economist, but have been working at the intersection of economics, environmentalism and theology since the s.
In the Princeton physicist — and subsequent Nobel Prize winner — Eugene Wigner raised a fundamental question : Why did the natural world always — so far as we know — obey laws of mathematics? As argued by scholars such as Philip Davis and Reuben Hersh , mathematics exists independent of physical reality. It is the job of mathematicians to discover the realities of this separate world of mathematical laws and concepts.
Physicists then put the mathematics to use according to the rules of prediction and confirmed observation of the scientific method. But modern mathematics generally is formulated before any natural observations are made, and many mathematical laws today have no known existing physical analogues.
In some cases the physicist also discovers the mathematics. Isaac Newton was considered among the greatest mathematicians as well as physicists of the 17th century. Other physicists sought his help in finding a mathematics that would predict the workings of the solar system. He found it in the mathematical law of gravity, based in part on his discovery of calculus.
Indeed, Newton made strenuous efforts over his lifetime to find a natural explanation, but in the end he could say only that it is the will of God. Despite the many other enormous advances of modern physics, little has changed in this regard.
In other words, as I argue in my book, it takes the existence of some kind of a god to make the mathematical underpinnings of the universe comprehensible.
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