Originally Posted by metherion 
Edit: Quote in above post changed to represent that this is Dawkins' view. I still say it's wrong. lol.
Sorry, I gotta stop it right there.
God is NOT DISCOVERABLE BY SCIENCE.
period.
end of story.
God is supernatural. Science is, and can only ever be, the study of the natural. God is not a hypothesis, or anything of the sort. Science can't touch Him.
We have to very careful not to confuse well-attested-to
a posteriori truths with
a priori conditions. That God is God is
a priori.
That He cannot be discovered by science ... I don't know. It is true, or at least appears to be in our universe. Can we say for certain that it could not have been otherwise? Should we elevate what we know
a posteriori to an
a priori condition on God Himself?
I don't know how wise that is. After all, God was a hair's-breadth away from being scientifically provable on Easter morning. The tomb was empty, the wrappings laid neatly on the stones inside - is that not something that was scientifically confirmed? Peter looked into the tomb and saw what was inside; that was a physical,
scientific observation, though it was made only with the naked eye instead of with telescopes or astrolabes or other observing apparatus.
As it is, God chose to elevate the way of faith: without faith, all the facts in the world that point to God can never be proof
of God. And it may even make sense that God did so: for relationships grow with increasing disclosure of self and discovery of the other, so that a God who was knowable all at once - deduction by deduction from a set of axioms that in itself contains anything that could possibly follow - would not really be possible to relate to.
But I don't think it had to be so. And indeed, there will come a point in history when the identity of God and His people will be generally known, will be objectively agreed to - when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. And the knowledge of God will be as assured and certain as the knowledge of atoms or of stars - the only difference between us and others will be a question not of knowledge but of
relationship.
And so, as we live with a relational God, we must learn to recognize that God's inscrutability was not inevitable - it was His choice. And that helps us to balance God's inscrutability with His wonderful, ineffable self-revelation in Jesus Christ and His Scriptures.
__________________
And who that has understanding will suppose that the first, and second, and third day, and the evening and the morning, existed without a sun, and moon, and stars?
- Origen, 215AD [De Principiis 4.1.16]
... to insist that the rising of the sun is figurative while the rising of the Son is literal is also hypocrisy.
- Geraldus Bouw,
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