You folk keep wasting your time thinking about this religious stuff ! If God had meant us to understand him he would have given us bigger brains. So until this happens just forget it and go and do some good works, help the poor, heal the sick, etc.

John-tassie,
Firstly, the Christian God is not simply the unknown. Jesus is the fullness of God with no remainder but that fullness cannot be limited and defined and placed in our hands. That is why Christianity cannot be reduced to a message that once we have it ends the journey. It is the working out of what Jesus means that is opened ended. Otherwise we just have the God of the gaps, who represents only the unknown.

I see that you have been influenced by Descartes in your insistent on absolute proof of evolution or the existence of God. Nothing is known absolutely. The theory of evolution seems to be true given the lack of evidence against it and the mountain of evidence for it. But there still exists the possibility that the hand of a creator may still show itself. However, as time goes by this is increasingly unlikely.

The thing I was trying to get at in this article is the mistake of making God an object in the universe. This has been the result of the rise of science and the subsequent tradition of seeing everything in terms of being or the object. Biblical theology, by and large does not make this mistake. For example, God is love, God is truth etc. God is pure event.

This means that we must forgo the God given to us from the Enlightenment and think more biblically. God is the presence of an absence. Jesus is in a way present at the Eucharist and in a way he is absent. This is the ambiguity of the church that strict rationalists do not understand. There is poetry here and subtly of thought.

The one thing I did not put in this article was that the Trinity is of course the subversion of all talk about God as a being, a conscious monad. Again we can say that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are pure event, otherwise we will fall into tritheism.

A series of good questions.

Peter

West, there are many who think like you say ...."God exists the same way a monster under the bed exists – an over indulgence in imagination. " However, my thoughts on all these teddy (god) beliefs is that they indicate a complete lack of imagination ........... but certainly not a lack of insecurity nor a lack of self-interest. On 60 minutes last night we saw the mufti and his family being interviewed by way martin. No imagination to be seen here with this family portrait when they look like a bunch of jackasses. It's as if their minds have been systematically emptied and replaced with a teddy vacuum ..... and as if we do not want to give offense.

We get creationist funny stuff like from Kang with ... "If God had meant us to understand him he would have given us bigger brains." If a contemplative intelligence evolved here on planet earth then this tells us a bit about intelligence. e.g. If you don't use it you lose it. To apply moderate imagination to this point we see you cannot have intelligence without information and you cannot have information without logic because they are aspects of the same thing and existing simultaneously. Therefore it is impossible for a creator teddy (god) to exist in the absence of logic and information. However, there is no reason why information and logic cannot exist without a teddy.

Just seems these teddies if they could be real as dumbos want, couldn't knowingly invent anything and yep there is mystery but not magic. Let's just say that teddy is innocent of the crime of creating our infinite material universe until found guilty ..... but first let's find one.

God or Gods exist as a perpetuating hypothetical construct of human contrivance. Human penchant towards spirality propels the belief system (e.g., cargo cults). Both religionists and athiests need to test their systems.

Investigation needs to be from with-out not from with-in and foresensic in nature. Elsewise, self-confirmation shall result. Relatedly, don't take a priori positions in analysis. Self confirmation of the non-existent can profoundly suggest the mere illusion of existence.

The people, whom contrive Gods, in the first instance, often have social and political motivations: e.g, priesthoods to control land in Sumer (c. 3,000 BCE), the transition from Christ Jews to just Christrians (c. 50-150 CE) or the uniting Arab tribes under Islam (600-700 CE).

In this frame, God or Gods, are most likely (the most probably construct) exist, within the architecture of our minds. Priesthoods, familial belief systems, myths and traditions reinforce how the existance of God or Gods is maintained.

How does God not exist, the null hypothesis, must be disproved along with how God does exist. On the other hand, physics exists and it would be diffcult to prove otherwise.

Thus, with religion, we have conclusions inaquately tested, from above (ahem).

With physics, we have tenative evidence to its actual existence. Does God exist as a function Physics? Probably, because, of the physics of the archecture of minds. If physics, is, first cause, and, creates our minds (first effect), and, our minds create a God or Gods: How does God or Gods exist? God or Gods exist, as the second generation effect of physics.

One of God's best evidences are the pathetic reasons trying to disprove Him.

Thank you Peter. Your point is that God is not an object in the Universe. On that we can agree. He, she, it, is that something beyond the big bang.
That Jesus is the fullness, though ineffable expression of God in the Universe is a bit of a logical problem for me. How can something not limited to the Universe be made fully incarnate, fully present in the Universe?
And I am sorry to hear you try to rationalise the notion of the Trinity. It sounds to me like some Council's compromise attempt to satisfy a majority of different opinions. I know that some people have gone to the stake for refusing the idea of the Trinity, but it sounds to me that you are stuck with one more preposterous view to defend. Admit it mate, you are as agnostic as I.