God is Subtle

God is subtle. Here are three reasons why:
1) God is everywhere, but His omnipresence never 'pushes anyone off their chair'.
2) God always speaks, but he doesn't talk over anyone.
3) God makes the cosmos function, but His power never prevents anyone from making practical use of the Creation.

That third reason is most interesting to me as both a spiritual and practical man. It says to me two things: One, that God allows us to partake in his glory; and Two, that the physical world is rigged to give God maximum glory. These two things boil down to one great Gift: Human freedom. After all, we are made in God's image.

But, what is God's maximum glory through his Creation? Consider that anything God creates is necessarily infinitely inferior to himself. In other words, God's own glory can never be fully realized in anything he creates. So, I think his maximum glory cannot be in an 'end-state' kind of physical law---a 'Final' or 'Unified' theory of physics. I think God's maximum glory through his Creation can only be by our endlessly-new discovery of an endless depth of physical laws.

Objecting to this idea as a logically impossible 'infinite regress' both mistakes the point, and misses the point. The key to this idea is that the universe was not made for the satisfaction of fallen man at all. It was made for the never-ending wonder-and-use of the original, UNfallen mankind. God's maximum glory in His Creation is thus something which is simply-and-directly God-centric. In other words, it does not presuppose the existence of fallen man, nor of atheism, nor even of Satan (these creatures, rather, presuppose God and his glory). So, it is not a defensive physics at all. It is a purely pro-God view of physics. All God's enemies are simply ignored.

All theories of physics of fallen man tend to be formulated as 'Final' theories, rather than as practical and spiritual ones. By no coincidence, each of these theories has, in turn, had to be revised to account for the new-and-nearby discoveries of things which once were rejected as physically impossible. The question is, does there logically need to be a 'Final' theory? That may depend on your ultimately essential view of God---which, in turn, informs your view of the physical world. Is God basically rationalistic? Or, is He something more? Something better?

Did God make the physical world in order to satisfy the 'fallen' human wish for a means of salvation-by-works (technology, ritual, alchemy)? Or, instead, did He make it in order to satisfy that One Thing which it is said we shall do in the resurrected life: enjoy God forever? Is God's ulimate glory in an algorithm, or in an axiom? Which of the two is more meaningful, more beautiful? And, is a simple algorithm better than a complex one if the latter has far more practical and asthetic potential? Why stop there?

Even the Mandelbrot algorithm pays homage to God.

The way I came at all this was from an unassuming inquiry into the nature of space. What did I know directly about space, and about logic; and what kind of answer could that knowledge give me? I found that it all boiled down to the geometric point, and to what that point implies/presupposes. Einstein would be envious.

Isaac Newton formulated the most practical primitive conception of Motion without claiming a mechanism for gravity. Good thing for him AND us, because, since Newton left the scene, there has been so much effort to find a mechanism. I say there need be no mechanism, even in the face of an 'infinite regress' of physical laws. For what little I know of Newton's work, he may well not even have claimed that he had found the 'Final' theory of the Motions of All Things On All Scales (there seem to be reports that the current theories of physics include odd, and even bizarre, behaviors of subatomic particles).

Now, return to the topic of God's subtlety. Even pagans have a sense that there is, in fact, a certain Something, or Force, which is everywhere, and in everything, but which cannot be found like one finds a blue grain of sand on the beach. You can look and look and never find this Something, yet the 'spiritual' mind seems unable to help but admit that this Something exists.
The spiritual mental framework quite instinctively holds that a certain Something is omnipresent, yet also transcendent.

The mental framework of physical rationalism---or atheism---cannot, of course, readily admit that such a Something exists. But, this mental framework cannot be used to prove that this mental framework is sufficient to understand everything. Some persons simply hole themselves up into a particular-and-favored habit of mind in order never to fall into an erroneous habit of mind that produces increasingly severe errors.

Of course, in holing themselves up in a particular habit of mind, a person tends toward an increasing bias so that they end up rejecting as erroneous things which they later (if too late) are forced to admit are true. This tendency is a fact of the fallen 'human condition'. And, importantly, this tendency is a defensive one, rather than the ably-learning one of the small child of an unfallen world.

Even in the fallen world, it's better to seek the wisdom of an open-and-humble balance than the wisdom of arrogant defensivenes. The latter potentially results in a further fall into the arrogance of an untouchably tyranical personal Eden, in a fallen world that naturally-and-rightly demands that you equitably share what that Eden has cost them to produce for you. Christians don't need to get uppity with their theories. God is conceived as the 'Ideal Being'. The best and greatest possible. The notion, or thought, is easy to appreciate. But, the concept, or exact reality, can be difficult to formulate. That there are often obstacles to its formulation does not prove that the concept is impossible. As an excerise in intellectual humility, one can say that the obstacles may show only that there may be shortfalls in one's own thinking. After all, how many times, and in how many things, have you run into logical/conceptual obstacles that at first seemed inviolable, only later to find that you had made a conceptual mistake? It has happened to me so many times, and from so early in life, that I never have tried to keep track of them. Few people ever do.

The ideal concept of God includes both His ontological existence outside of spacetime, and His practical omnipresence within it. These are sometimes referred to as God's transcendence and immanence, respectively. Ideally, for the ideal being (God), He created space-time, rather than spacetime having existed as co-equal with God. So, God's ontology, that is, His very being, exists outside spacetime. But, ideally, also, God is omnipresent in spacetime. That is, ideally, God is both transcendent and immanent. By His omnipresence or immanence, God sees all. But, because He also transcends the cosmos, no-one-and-nothing can see Him without his choice. After all, if God made the eye, then God is invisible not because He is hiding behind a tree, but because He was hanging from one. He is invisible by nature, so that He can be seen only as He chooses. Just as importantly, He is everywhere and everywhen in such a way as never to 'occupy someone else's seat' so to speak. That's a humble God. His omnipresence never pushes any king off his throne, or any wanderer out of his tent. In short, God does not get in anyone's way. Everyone is free to be, and to move. On the face of it, the two ideals of omnipresence and transcendence seem unable logically to co-exist. Further, each ideal in itself seems impossible. How can something be present IN space and time and not take up any space and time? Much less, how can something be present everyhere and everywhen without 'butting' everything else out of existence? Both God's omnipresence and transcedence are possible by way of a single, all-but-ignored thing: the geochronic Point. Even the popular current theory of physics entertains the idea of such a point. Einstein's Theory of Relativity calls it the Singularity. But, the Singularity contains physical matter and energy, and need not be quite a true point. In logically considering the true, geochronic Point, however, it can be noted that this Point has no geometric nor chronological extension. It is purely there, as if without actually depending on either extensive space or extensive time for its own existence. In fact, both geometric and chronological Points are indistinguishable from each other: neither of them actually possess the properties of their respective referents. And, there can be an infinite number of them at a given Point, allowing an infinity of them throughout all of space and time. In short, they OCCUPY all of space and time without actually taking up any of space and time. Further, the geochronic Point cannot actually be located in terms of spacetime. You can't pinpoint it between your two fingertips. Nor can you stick the sharp end of a cartographer's tack through it. It cannot even be said that this Point is 'slippery', or 'fine-grained', as if to say that it 'slips through your fingers like liquid-teflon sand'. Oddly, the Point also logically allows that space, time, and matter can be 'infinitely' divided. That is, you can divide space, time, and matter endlessly without ever coming to the end of them, without ever finding the tiniest possible bit of them. In practical and asthetic terms, there is no tiniest possible bit of space, time, or matter; and no end to the ways in which it is organized, and thus to its practical uses. It's practical and spiritual uses need never end; its discoveries need never stop at a 'Final' theory. So, the geochronic Point seems to allow the only, directly theologically positive view of physics. Since the Point has no true referent, but rather all things are in reference to it, then there is not many Points, but one. God is not omnipresent in terms of spacetime, rather, all of space and time is everywhere and everywhen present to God. After all, God is transcendent. All this, if the true Point exists. It seems, at least from some mental framework, that the Point logically can exist, even though it cannot be directly empirically proved to exist. Like an axiom to the axiom's own algorithm, the latter unable to prove that its axiom is an axiom. Or, even like the 'self' to Allen Greenspan's original position of 'logical positivism: "If something cannot be measured in terms of something else, then nothing can be known about it, including whether it actually exists." This Point, as such, cannot be found. Not by you or me. It is not like a blue grain of sand that, by your seeing it as such, is proved to your senses to actually exist. Rather, the Point is so fundamental a Something that thought is possible only by subtlely presupposing it. In other words, like God, the Point does not get in your way. You are free to think.