This would only address the where part of the question.
Bingo! This is one of the more powerful reasons that I hold it to be absurd to believe in a deity that won’t manifest itself to us in the first place:
- Either it doesn’t care about people and the universe and therefore can’t make any difference,- or it’s playing a cruel and two-faced game and therefore doesn’t deserve our respect or adulation,- or no such thing exists at all.
In the words of Isaac Newton, “If I have seen further than most men, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.” Your proposal thoroughly devalues the efforts of scientists down the ages. If you’re not familiar with the term, may I suggest that you acquaint yourself with the phrase “god of the gaps” by googling it (including the inverted commas). As our knowledge of the world increases, the gods get smaller and less significant. Curious, that.
'Luthon64
How can God intervene in the cosmos if He is not the god of the gaps? How does He function? We ignostics find that God is just the unimformative tautology that God wills what He wills. God did it is mere magic! God" hides our ignorance behind a theological fig leaf," and to further quote atheoligian Keith Parsons:" Occult power wielded by a transcendent being in an inscrutabe way for unfathomable purposes does not seem to be any sort of a good explanation." Contrary to Richard Swinburne, this personal explanation is no efficient cause, for it means nothing. The language of God is just a series of guesses about a mystery,surrounded by other mysteries, that mystifies rather than explain matters! Now, for the sake of argument,were there meaning for God,Ockham’s razor shows it to be redundant and contrary to Alister McGrath, it provides no insight.Natural causes are indeed primary causes! Thus we have the ignostic and the Ockham arguments as a basis for atheology.We no more need God as a personal or any other kind of explanation than we do Thor, demons and gremlins! The language of God is fatuous.
Actually, it’s much more like incoherent, unintelligible and inarticulate babble with no discernible meaning or purpose than it is like a language. A language usually includes such essential components as semantics, grammar, syntax, phonology, apobetics and so on.
'Luthon64
Anacoluthon, we are indeed on the same page! Our points here about this language alone suffices to indict theology as so much babble as Dawkins notes.While scientist have yet to settle on any bounce or bud theory, theologians just babble on and others with the shield of faith embrace their hoary nonsence. Thanks!