Is God really so fragile?

Question

I see so many cases where people are afraid of offending God, or somehow snapping God out of existence with studying a 'controversial' scientific discipline like evolution.
Is God really nothing more than an enormous Miss Manners who looks down at humanity clucking a holy tongue saying, "Oh, ick! Don't do that! Don't eat that! Oh, gross!"
And is God so fragile that if I ask questions about existence or the nature of things God will simply vanish?
If there is a Creator of the Universe (and I do like to believe there is) I think this Creator is larger, more pervasive and infinitely more creative than any God the human mind has been able to imagine.
What would happen if we all dropped our human pretenses of Absolute Knowledge and leapt into the wonderful world of 'anything is possible'? Isn't it more enriching, more fascinating and more humbling to always ask the question: 'what does this all mean?' than to go around with an idea that I Know The Truth?
I certainly think so.

Discuss...

Responses to responses:
"...Excuse me but 'evolution' isn't a DISCIPLINE, it's a 'theory' written by a man, Darwin, and it should be put down as 'Darwin's theory of evolution.'

Evolution is a theory AND a discipline. People study continue to study and evaluate evolution. Any scientific study can be defined as a 'discipline'. Here is a definition:
"Discipline: a branch of knowledge, typically one studied in higher education : sociology is a fairly new discipline."

also:

"...And comparing God's 'dos and don'ts' to Miss Manners, who whould never actually say "Oh, ick! Don't do that! Don't eat that! Oh, gross!" is just plain WRONG. It seems to me that you haven't actually read the Bible or know much about it..."

Actually, I have read the Bible many times. Not just here and there, but actually cover to cover. And I have studied various parts of it, and I have read lots of Bible commentary. What I come away with is: a lot of 'God's laws' are just plain silly. Both Old and New Testament.

Answer 1

God is incredibly fragile, the only way that he exists is through the faith of his followers and faith is the belief in something that cannot be proven.

I am the doubting Thomas and want to see physical proof before I believe in God. I also find it hard to believe that the religion of love and understanding can have been responsible for so much corruption and cruelty. So I have a problem with organized religion.

The bible is flawed there are errors in it. “The Earth is the fundament and unchanging.” Well we know that the Earth is dynamic and always changing and that it revolves around the sun.” Now to a lot of people merely pointing this out is a mortal sin, at least it is to them. Too many people believe that the bible is true verbatim, and that simply isn’t right. They forget that the bible is a work of man, inspired by the word of God. It never was taken to be a 100% accurate accounting. Plus it had to be written with a standard and style that people in the first century and earlier could understand. Concepts of evolution were too complex for them to understand so they were given an alternate tale. Of course, personally, I believe that men wrote the bible and God was not involved. It was written for the same reason that the Norse, Indian, Greek and other myths from ancient cultures were written. People need an explanation for where they came from and how their world started. Today we use modern science and theories like evolution and the big bang to replace those myths, but we developed these theories for the same basic reasons.

I am a firm believer in science and the theories of evolution and the big bank are well accepted ones with proof that I can believe in. I don’t see that proof in the bible, and no you can’t use a work to prove that the work itself is true. The theories have a lot of independent proof and have held up under rigorous testing. The bible has not.

Ideally the bible should be revised, but with all the different opinions and sub-faiths it would be impossible. So the bible should not be used as the complete and total guide to life and source of all knowledge. Instead the biblical stores should be used like the other myths from other countries as a guide to live your life. I may not believe that Jesus is God, but I do believe that the example he set on how to live your life is an excellent one.

Often in the Christian religion God is portrayed as a huge man with a big book looking over your shoulder marking down every single mistake so that he can hold it against you at the gates of heaven. This book of black marks will be absolute and uncompromising. This doesn’t add up to the image of a compassionate and forgiving God. Once again the religion is contradicting itself.

As for the creation of the Universe which sounds better; a God that goes braaap and the universe is made or a God that subtly creates an ever evolving and expanding universe? The biblical apologists say the world was made in 7 days, but who knows how long a day is to God, it could have been thousands of years. Of course it took a lot more than a 6 thousand or 6 billion years to create the earth. If God was Jesus, and Jesus is God then God darn well knows that a day is around 24 hours long and he wouldn’t have made such a silly mistake. The real reason for the error is that the story of creation is a myth.

So how do I explain scientists who believe in God? God could be anything and he could have created the universe in very subtle ways. It is impossible to know what happened in the moments of the big bang (although the cyclic theory of the universe can account for it, but it is an unproven theory). Could God have just appeared and set off a little spark to create the universe. Then there is that first statement. There was nothing in the universe suddenly God created light. That sounds a bit like a big explosion to me. Plus many of those scientists see the bible as a metaphor, full of errors yes, but the fundamental teachings are important. In that last statement I agree with them.

Robert A. Heinlein said, “Gods have the morals and manners of spoiled children.” And I agree with him. You only have to look at the Greek myths and the Old Testament to see that. According to the bible the Ark of the Covenant didn’t just inspire the troops in battle it actually went into battle and fought by itself. There is no way to explain this, except by a belief in God or magic; which is the same thing. Of course the real story is that the people of that time liked to embellish their stores. Then there is the game of Telephone, one person whispers another a short story and with each link in the change it evolves and takes on a life of its own. Rarely does the person at the end of the chain have the same story. The same can be said of the biblical stories. After all they were not complied in a book until after the year 200 and later they were revised under the rule of King James.

The biggest thing I can say to offend the religious folk is that I have an open mind and a questioning one. I demand proof or at least theories that I can understand and back up with pieces of proof. If God were to suddenly appear in front of the Reverend Jessie Jackson on live TV and let Jackson do the Doubting Thomas routine then I might believe in God. But, of course that will never happen, it never could happen. I don’t claim to know the truth only a few pieces of it and I am prepared to change my ideas if necessary. Once Dark Matter and Dark Energy were considered to be wild ideas, but now we have proof of their existence.

Your proposal to “dropped our human pretenses of Absolute Knowledge and leapt into the wonderful world of 'anything is possible?” is a very dangerous one to the religious folk because it brings all of their thoughts in doubt. To people like me I applaud the idea and I firmly believe in it and try to practice it. That’s why even though I am an atheist I would encourage my children to attend church to get the good example that church can give them.

Answer 2

My dear, I must say that I think that you are both wrong and right ... frankly it's really impossible to say which is 'greater' because what you wrote is so badly written. You put the word "controversial" in front of 'scientific discipline like evolution.' Excuse me but 'evolution' isn't a DISCIPLINE, it's a 'theory' written by a man, Darwin, and it should be put down as 'Darwin's theory of evolution.' And comparing God's 'dos and don'ts' to Miss Manners, who whould never actually say "Oh, ick! Don't do that! Don't eat that! Oh, gross!" is just plain WRONG. It seems to me that you haven't actually read the Bible or know much about it or you'd see that is NOT what the 'old religious laws' were about, and you'd also see that all of what you are 'complaining about' is in the OLD Testament, and most of that is 'simple history' and it's really what is in the NEW Testament that 'counts' ...
And I sorry to tell you this, but I am a Catholic, and I believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit ... one God with 'three faces/aspects' and I also believe that Darwin's Theory of Evolution is at least 99% 'true' and I have not a single problem with 'reconciling them both' because I know that the 'Bible' was written nearly 2000 years ago, and Darwin lived in the much more 'recent' past ... and I also believe that Dinosaurs could have existed more than 65 million years ago, because I 'know' that the 'Book of Genesis' was written as a 'tale' to pass down certain 'religious facts' and not a book taken from 'actual fact' at the time it was written. So, I can 'Know The Truth' (sic) and still 'believe' in scientific 'facts' proven since the Bible was written. They are not 'mutually exclusive' ... which seems to be what you 'think' people who 'believe in God' think.

Answer 3

First, something of a digression: Evolution is no longer just a theory -- it is a proven fact. Most scientific theories are, for technical reasons, unproveable, but evolution is provable and I have done so.

To the main point: We seek knowledge in order to be able to make oredictions. The "anything is possible" zeitgeist does not provide any useful information. It is provable that the predictive power of any theory arises exclusively from its refutability, and since no theory of god is refutable (it is impossible in principle to show that any such theory is false), all such theories are useless. So, the quest for truth (the ultimately virtuous endeavor) must rely on evidence and logic, not on any sort of faith.

Answer 4

Gods are not all that fragile. It is there followers who are fragile and very tempted to follow the words of the human shouters than the meanings and paths of Gods. The problem with this is most folks are just too lazy and its easier for them to let some other human tell them what they should believe the God offers and wants.

Answer 5

Only by people who think they know everything. I am not religious however I freely acknowlede I have no idea whether there is a god or not - science cannot prove one way or the other and neither can common sense. Commons sense once dictated that the world was flat!

Answer 6

god is as fragile or as strong as we make him. we made him. all of his ten comandanments and that came from human minds god is nothing more than a belief. now the creator is beyoned our imagination but we've humanised him by putting human morals on him and giving him a name and creating a whole relgion out of it. the creator will be just the same without us but god dose depends of us

Answer 7

Nonsense!

During the Christian communion (cannibalism) ritual, God says, "eat me", and everyone does. Millions of them.

Could a fragile diety be chewed up, swallowed, digested, and excreted if it wasn't durable?

Answer 8

yes god apparently is fragile.

like they say..a wbreeze of reasoning or a whiff of common sense is enough to bring any religion crashing down

if there is a creator, and i dont think there is, i thikn he has a certain obligation to explai na few things. not give us an archaic book and say "interpret to your hearts consent". which we do....and fail miserably at. usually causing war and destruction as we go.

i agree with you. people need to stop assumingthey know whats fact and start looking at the facts we already have, maybe using them as a launching pad to shoot themselves off intothe unknown.

....i dont know...

Answer 9

fragile... like a ming vase? fragile... like a poem being mocked by a jerk? the more physicalized you go, the farther from god you get, the more you get into peoples lives being fragile, and gods will is your will, so all of your/our lives are enormously fragile, but god itself as you would recognize it is not.

Answer 10

"Oh, ick! Don't do that! Don't eat that! Oh, gross!"

Now that's just plain funny!