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Thank you so much for your posts!

Alamo-Girl, this is probably the most aggravating "expert public pronouncement" ['anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything'] that I have ever had to endure in my lifetime so far.

Sadly, it appears there are quite a few who cannot accept that anything exists beyond the ability to observe it. IMHO, that is the most destructive form of arrogance.

Can't they can see how wrong-headed it would be for a starfish to have such a notion about his "world?"

And yet there are many who truly believe that God cannot exist because they cannot measure Him, weigh Him, subject Him to trial and punishment --- or lookup the registration of His copyrights --- or even because He doesn’t give them a bag of M&M’s on demand. I am not kidding.

[It is] a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Hebrews 10:31

Or in the case of a starfish, a seine...

And yet there are many who truly believe that God cannot exist because they cannot measure Him, weigh Him, subject Him to trial and punishment --- or lookup the registration of His copyrights --- or even because He doesn’t give them a bag of M&M’s on demand. I am not kidding....

Sadly, it appears there are quite a few who cannot accept that anything exists beyond the ability to observe it.

I'd laugh but it isn't funny. Behold the denizens of Flatland, planar existences that cannot imagine it possible (or useful) to simply "look UP" -- because for them there is no third extension beyond the two of the plane. Like the hapless starfish, they miss most of what's going on in life.

Amazing. Thanks, A-G, for the great insights.

And yet there are many who truly believe that God cannot exist because they cannot measure Him, weigh Him, subject Him to trial and punishment --- or lookup the registration of His copyrights --- or even because He doesn’t give them a bag of M&M’s on demand. I am not kidding.

I hope you're not condemning science with that remark. It is entirely true that scientists -- while doing science -- deal only with natural phenomena, which are those things that can be detected, measured, etc. This is an inherent limitation of science; it can only deal with objectively verifiable data. The spiritual domain is forever outside the scope of scientific inquiry.

But in using purely naturalistic procedures, there is no implicit rejection of God. There is merely the recognition that science can only explore a limited domain -- that of matter and energy, not spirit. Many scientists are religious, as I think you know, so there is obviously no precondition of atheism when one does scientific work, or thinks scientific thoughts. So ... I hope you're not equating science and atheism. They're not the same thing at all.