Today I found myself engaged in an online conversation about particle physics. My friend Jim wrote that 99% of matter is nothing, and because God is everywhere, God is 99% nothing.
First, I attempted to correct his physics—because though space is mostly nothingness, matter itself is never nothing. But I’ve had discussions like this with Jim before and he tends to read my comments in a rush and often misses the point. So instead of arguing physics, I tried to explain analogies. Jim was using data from science to draw an analogy to theology. And even if he had been correct on the physics, it’s a big leap to use “facts” about space to draw conclusions about the nature of God. You risk committing the fallacy of the false analogy.
A false analogy says that because two things have one thing in common, they must have other things in common. For example, “Apples, strawberries, and raspberries are all red, and they are all fruits. Therefore, all fruit must be red.”
In Jim’s case, he created a false analogy when he assumed God and the universe have multiple traits in common: Jim argued, in effect, that “God is everywhere, and the universe is everywhere. And because the universe is mostly nothingness, therefore God is mostly nothingness.” But this is a false analogy.
I wanted Jim to recognize that no subject is more critical to human life than the question of the nature and existence of God. That is, if God is real, nothing matters more than knowing the truth about him and his opinion of us. And because the topic is so important, we should do all that we can to ensure that our thinking is as logical as possible. When it comes to knowing the truth about God, we need to get things right!
And that brings us to the scriptures.
God KNOWS how important it is for His people to know Him, and to believe the right things about Him and to make the right decisions about following Him. God also knows how easy it is for us to get it wrong, for people like Jim to read one article online about physics—misunderstand the article—and draw conclusions about the God of the universe based on that misunderstanding. That’s human nature: we misunderstand and immediately jump to the wrong conclusions. That is the risk when you reason from analogy. But that is why God gave us His WORD! We don’t have to reason from analogy. We don’t have to be experts in science—or any other field. We simply have to read the Bible.
“All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” 2 Timothy 3:16.
The Bible has the answers we need. And when you read it–when you consume it–it will fill you with joy:
“Your words were found and I ate them. Your words became a delight to me and the joy of my heart” Jeremiah 15:16.
ΑΩ
Household Words: 