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Comment by Zigurd | Hacker News Reader

Our knowledge of the cosmos, in just a few hundreds of years, expanded from the Earth, Moon, planets and stars of the firmament, a kind of cozy neighborhood, to that of unfathomable numbers of galaxies stretching out to unimaginable distances of space and time.

Strange that gods who were so occupied with matters on this planet, who live in a nearby heaven up by the firmament of stars, are also still credible candidates for "creator" of the universe.

The real universe is so much more vast and so much more strange than any scriptures had ever imagined. One could be forgiven for excusing that underestimation of the universe as a limitation of the imagination of man.

In other words, "the god of the gaps" has to keep finding new gaps to fill, and the gaps are ever less tenable.

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Are they really less tenable? Because, if there be a God, on the judgement day present in many of the religions we know, he might point out that the sheer complexity of the universe should be a sign of his existence. What are the odds? Are the odds actually in favor of man's theory, or is man desperately clinging to a theory to avoid him? Is it actually good science as designed, or rather any excuse no matter how implausible will suffice? Good science looks at the odds and makes a conclusion. Bad science looks at the conclusion and ignores the odds to bias towards a result.

Edit: Furthermore, this said God might point out on said day the lack of any aliens, or other life, as another sign that the universe was made for man, and nothing else, and the sheer enormity of it should be yet another sign. For if the universe was not large, would it be more easy to deny?

Edit 2: You might dismiss the above, and these aren't the best arguments that could be formulated, but it is more to show that your presupposition that a larger universe disproves his existence is untenable.

>man's theory

Theism is man's "theory". Either way, we enter a paradox, if you believe in gods then the theories of man ultimately came from gods, ie, a perfectly logical system only produces logical output.

This whole thread pretty much wound up like I predicted while reading the article. Author implies with certainty that science is uncertain in a specific field and it's invaded by people certain of their beliefs in other fields, ie, if science has a kink in it then gods exist for certain.

For god of the gaps argument never fails to amuse me.

You’re taking an unbelievably literal interpretation of a faith you don’t believe in and literally projecting it on to the parent comment as a form of criticism. Safe to say that I don’t think you can expect a response from them.

My view of gods as being too small for the universe is grounded in the history of religions. If the OP is making up a new god for the newly discovered gaps, he faces no such limitations.

Right. You’re grounding your statement in the view that theology cannot evolve with the times, and that any claim that it does is actually, in fact, a falsehood. That itself is a major assumption on your part.

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