Why is God invisible?
How do we
know who God is or that He even exists?
John Wisdom wrote a parable about an invisible gardener to illustrate
the argument over God’s existence. Two
people return to a long neglected garden and to their surprise find some
vigorous plants growing among the weeds.
The believer says, “There must be a gardener whose been coming to take
care of the plants.” The skeptic
disbelieves and points to the weeds.
They pitch their tents and watch, but they see no gardener. The believer eventually concludes that the
gardener must be invisible, leaves no scent, and makes no sound. The skeptic asks how this differs from an
imaginary gardener.
A real life
example of this argument over God’s existence was when astronaut John Glenn responded
to Soviet cosmonaut Titov. Titov said he
“saw neither angels or gods” while in orbit, and that he did not believe in
God. A week later, John Glenn responded,
“To look out at this kind of creation and not believe in God is to me
impossible. It just strengthens my faith.”
The physical
characteristics of the universe to permit life are evidence for a Designer or
Creator. The cosmic mass density terms
for the expansion of the universe must be precise values for the universe to
support life. This extreme fine-tuning
of the mass density[i] term must be within one
part in 1060 and the space energy density within one part in 10120. One part in 1060 of the known
universe is about one-tenth the size of a dime.
Thus, the addition of one dime to the universe would throw off this
fine-tuning and not allow for life.
A
naturalistic attempt to resolve how something so improbable could happen uses
the finite dimensions of the Big Bang universe to propose an infinite number of
parallel non-overlapping universes or a multiverse.[ii] With an undefined number of non-overlapping
universes, they claim that our universe hit the jackpot and happen to be in the
one with the right fine-tuned parameters to support life. The wish for a naturalistic explanation of
the universe motivates proposing a multiverse explanation. However, one must redefine naturalistic to
classify the multiverse theory as naturalistic.
How can someone verify the existence of parallel universes mutually
exclusive from our own?
Just after
he published a book on the multiverse[iii],
Paul Davies apparently lost enough confidence in that theory to offer a new
one. He proposes “… the universe has
engineering its own bio-friendliness through a sort of feedback
loop that operates in both directions in time.”[iv] From the naturalistic standpoint, this is a
very egocentric view of the universe.
From the religious standpoint, this is a pantheistic view of the
universe. The naturalistic
explanations for the existence of the universe without God are harder to
believe than to accept that God created it.
Even when
one accepts creation as the explanation for the origin of the universe,
questions remain. “Why is God
invisible?” What is the difference between
an invisible God and an imaginary one?
Can we know anything about God?
Much of our
universe is also invisible. The
universe is much larger than we can see.
We continue to enlarge the amount of universe we see with better
telescopes, and telescopes that sense the electromagnetic spectra not visible
to our eyes. We haven’t mapped every
galaxy in our universe. Even what we
have seen on other planets in our solar system is limited, much less planets in
other solar systems.
Not only is
the full extent of the macroscopic universe beyond our vision, but also the
microscopic. We developed techniques
such as electron microscopes and atomic force microscopes to view what is too
small to see with visible light. We
developed techniques for detecting subatomic particles, but have evidence that
even smaller particles make up electrons, protons, and neutrons. Even an end to the microscopic world isn’t in
sight.
Besides the
macroscopic and microscopic, the visible is insufficient to explain the physics
of the Big Bang.[v] With the limitation of three spatial
dimensions and time, gravity and quantum mechanics contradict each other. Ten dimensional string theory makes the two
consistent. This theory adds six more
dimensions to the familiar four dimensions.
The Big Bang starts with ten rapidly expanding space-time dimensions,
but after 10‑43 seconds, six of the ten dimensions stop
expanding and remain at a radius of 10‑33 centimeters. This radius is much smaller than any known
particle, and the time much shorter than any we measure. In fact, any known particle is closer in
order of magnitude to the size of a visible particle than this radius. The highest known frequency of
electromagnetic radiation (highest frequency gamma radiation) is near 1030
Hz[vi]
or a period of 10-30 seconds.
This corresponds to a wavelength of about 3 x 10-20 cm. Thus, the other six dimensions stopped
expanding 10-13 times faster and within a radius 10-13
times smaller. While any physicist
expects physics to expand and continue to become more refined, this does point
to more than what appears to the senses.
The cause
for the fine-tuning of cosmic density terms of the universe is at least 1097
more intelligent and powerful than humanity.[vii] The estimated number of atoms in the know universe[viii]
is about 1080. Such knowledge
exceeds anything conceivable within the known universe and is independent of
time and the dimensions of this universe to exist before it began. The dimension of time as we know it started
with the Big Bang. The Entity
responsible for creating our universe is beyond our understanding. Because He is separate from the dimensions of
our universe, He is invisible to us.
Since God’s existence is independent of our physical world and He is too
great for us to understand, how can we know anything about Him? Although God is beyond our reach, it doesn’t
mean God cannot make accommodations to communicate with us or that He doesn’t
interact with our world.
The
characteristics of the universe point to a Creator, who exists outside the
dimensions of our universe. While this
gives us evidence of a Creator, this general revelation of God leaves Him as
invisible and unreachable. However,
since He had the ability to create the universe, He also has the ability to
interact with it. While God is invisible
to us, has He ever expressed who He is through particular people and historic
events? While God is incomprehensible
through the general, has He accommodated our understanding to express what He
wants us to know about Himself? Has He given us special revelation, expressing
Himself in the particular? This is the
claim in the Biblical revelation.[ix]
What is the
best way for God to reveal Himself in terms we can understand? If God were to become human and live with us,
then we could understand Him by how He lived.
That is what God did as Jesus Christ.
Not only is
much within our universe invisible. Much
of who we are is invisible to the rest of humanity. Not only do we need to ask, “How can I know
God?,” but also, “How can I know who I am?”
We cannot completely explain ourselves in terms of the physical
world. While we continue to progress in
neurology and explain more of the mind in terms of the
brain, much of the mind eludes explaining and is the subject of
debate. An inexplicable aspect of the
mind is the ability to choose. One attempt to explain choice in terms of
probability is parallel universes for each possible decision one can make. In another universe, the person makes the
different decision and lives accordingly.
While this parallel universe theory isn’t as widely considered possible
as the one explaining the fine-tuning of cosmic mass density, it points the
same way to the problem with choice.
A practical
aspect of the mind being invisible is the distinction between how a person
appears to other people and the mind.
It’s easy to consider outward appearance as most important. This thinking disconnects actions from the
mind, from thoughts, motives, and emotions.
It leads to one acting out a part that may not reflect what one thinks
or feels and doesn’t reveal one’s motives.
The Scriptures reveal that God sees the inner person not just the
external.[x] If a person wants to do wrong, but is forced
to do right, is that person good? For a
person to be good, he must want to be good.
The book of Job deals with whether Job will do good for the sake of
being good without receiving a reward for doing so. Even when it appears Job is about to die,
while his wife and closest friends fail to encourage him, Job maintains his
integrity.[xi] Of his family and friends, Job alone passes
the test and passes without even knowing he was tested.[xii]
Learning
self-motivation to do right, rather than needing external motivation, is an
important purpose for our life. People
are born with the instincts for self-preservation and reproduction, but those
desires don’t stop with self-preservation or reproduction. The desire remains to amass wealth beyond
necessities. The desire remains to eat
beyond the point of being healthy.
Sexual attraction isn’t restricted to husband and wife, and reproduction
is seldom its primary motive. Violence
far exceeds self-defense. People
struggle with many desires, which have a purpose in their proper place, but
motivate them to actions that neither satisfy their desires nor meet their
purpose.
Rules and
laws can help establish a standard for right, but they don’t give someone the
desire to do right. They don’t even
necessarily get someone to act in line with the purpose of the law. People may seek to evade the law without
breaking it, or even break it in such a way to avoid the penalty.
While
rewards and punishment are important methods for teaching small children, good
parents desire for their children to be self-motivated. The most effective way for children to learn
includes setting a good example.
Similarly, God’s most complete revelation of Himself is His becoming the
man, Jesus Christ. As Jesus, God
experienced all the same human desires we do, but lived as God wants us to
live. He is the ultimate example of how
to live.
However,
Jesus’ most important accomplishment was to pay the penalty for our sin (our
falling short of good). God highly
values this accomplishment, but we don’t understand it well. As with goodness, God doesn’t force this
atoning gift upon us, we must accept it.
God’s atoning gift transforms our lifestyle from opposing God to
cooperating with Him. God adopts us
similar to how people adopt children.
Just as a good parent seeks to direct a child towards moral goodness,
God does the same with us. The goal is
more than getting us to behave properly.
It’s to build good character.
It’s for us to behave properly because we want to behave that way. God has freed us from the penalty of sin to
follow Him out of love rather than fear of punishment.
When we
receive Christ’s atonement, we also receive Christ, living within us through
the Holy Spirit. The Spirit desires good
and opposes our inborn selfish desires.
The Spirit doesn’t override our desires, but gives us ability to desire
good. It’s up to us to follow the
desires of the Spirit and put aside selfish desires. Because selfishness can cloud our thinking,
an external written source, the Bible, gives us a standard to test the spirits
and distinguish which desires are consistent with God’s will.
While God
has communicated to us through the Bible, our primary means of communicating
with God is prayer. Prayer is for our
benefit because God already knows our thoughts, but prayer is more than meditation. God knows what we need better than we do, but
often He wants us to ask. Prayer gives
Him the opportunity to show Himself though His working in our lives. We must ask to recognize that work is His.
The sign God
gave Moses so he would know God sent him was that he would bring
Note: I took this approach to answer
the philosophical question, “Why is God invisible?” This is not how I would approach a systematic
theology.
©2007 Perry Vernon Webb. You may
quote this page in part or the whole as long as you
1) do not alter the wording and
2) reference this Internet page as the
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