We tried so hard to disprove the existence of God by finding meaning in his creation. Ironically, we eventually proved his existence by finding meaning in every aspect of creation. Despair and meaninglessness came from a rejection of God. The whole time we looked for something to fill the void that was already possessed by the creator of all things. To be made in his image is to understand creation and enjoy it. That’s what makes us unique and blessed.
Coincidentally, I just read this in an interview with the poet Camille Ralphs:
'I went to do Theology at Cambridge thinking it would just be an interesting thought experiment. And what I came to realise is that science is as limited as any other human endeavour. And you cannot disprove through logic, something that lives, if indeed it does live, outside of logic.'
This is really excellent. I’m doing some work on the “break” of the 17thC — the period of day 1620-1680 — when Time was really out of joint. The Thirty Years War, English Civil War, etc. The scientific perspectives are helpful. are you familiar with Pilkington?
I’ve enjoyed this post and also another you linked earlier quite a bit.
I have been thinking as well about the verse “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” as a kind of call to continue to make scientific/economic progress, but a progress rooted in love (for God, family, and community) and virtue.
Very good, but remember there are two requests in the Lord‘s prayer right before that: Your name be hallowed and Your kingdom come. These also fall under “on earth as it is in heaven“. Modern Christianity often concentrates on seeking God‘s kingdom and will, but deemphasizes hallowing the Father’s name; that is seeking his honor, glory, praise, and magnifying his reputation here on earth.
Good essay... You are right, humans are better off with God, but the wrong God (for example the retributive one who sends homosexuals to hell) is no better and maybe worse than no God at all.
Otherwise, I address only one particular... The idea that "wave function collapse" happens only when some consciousness becomes entangled was a big idea in the mid 20th century, but is now long refuted. Collapse (whatever that ends up meaning) occurs at the point of any interaction between the quantum system and the macroscopic world, i.e. an instrument...
You’re right that observer-centric interpretations aren’t mainstream consensus today, as I note, but that’s not because they’ve been refuted or disproven, certainly not philosophically.
Decoherence explains how possibilities become unobservable, but not why one becomes actual. Many-worlds dodges the collapse question entirely.
I reference the very formidable interpretations by Wheeler and Von Neumann etc because they take consciousness seriously, not as a byproduct, but as ontologically significant.
That’s closer to the Logos than a purely mechanistic frame. Thanks
I don’t think that the quantum tie in is needed or even helpful for finding God.
God is not like a quark that can be found and empirically proven. Nor is He like Bayes Theorem, something that can be proven through pure math and logic.
I think this is by design. Reading the Ballad of the White Horse by Chesterton helped this crystallize for me. Hope, and the choice to hope, is a critical part of the living relationship with God. For me, this looks like cycles of doubt on empirical grounds, the choice to hope, and then a deepening of faith.
Static empirical phenomena quickly become dead in our minds, no matter how awe inspiring they are when first described. The breadth of the universe, the nuclear reactions fueling the Sun, don’t move me meaningfully. Bayes theorem is just a tool. Whereas my relationships with my wife, my kids, and my closest community never become fully predictable / describable but continue to grow in richness. Same with my relationship with God.
Give unto Bayes that which is Bayesian, give unto God that which is God’s.
Thank you, Einar, for your thoughtful response. You voice a familiar modern tension of trying to hold on to Christian faith through emotion and relationship, while keeping rationalism and empiricism as the ultimate framework for reality. But that division between meaning and being is exactly the crisis my essay confronts.
You say God is not a quark or a theorem—true—but then you place Him in emotional unpredictability, in cycles of doubt and hope, as if He could only be found where reason gives out. This is still dualism: God reduced to a feeling, while matter and logic are ruled by mechanical inference. St Thomas offers something deeper. God is not what’s left when knowledge fails: He is being itself, the pure act in whom reason, love, and existence are one. He is not at the edge of the system but is its ground.
Chesterton gives us the drama of faith but Aquinas provides its structure. Hope matters not because it’s noble, or feels good, but because it reaches toward what is real… and true. Without metaphysics, sentiment collapses. The longing for God is not psychological comfort but a sign of our participation in Him.
As for “give unto Bayes what is Bayesian, and unto God what is God’s” clever, but deeply revealing. It echoes but distorts Christ’s words about Caesar. Caesar claimed coins; Bayes now (for some) claims logic… and truth itself. Who is Bayes next to Caesar? And yet in rationalist culture, he has become a kind of Caesar, a Czar… a sovereign of epistemology. Bayesianism, once a technical tool for inference under uncertainty, now postures as an all-encompassing method for navigating reality, supplanting metaphysics, ethics, and even theology. That is not humility before reason but idolatry (the elevation of one part over the whole).
There is no realm that “belongs” to Bayes. All truth, if it is truth, participates in the Logos. The Logos is not one explanatory mode among many. It is the ontological unity of all that is—mathematical, moral, empirical, and metaphysical. To assign Bayes dominion over fact, and leave God with feeling, is not integration but negation of God’s ontological unity.
Today is Palm Sunday when the King enters in humility, not force. The crowds cheer, but do not understand. They expect a revolution on their terms. Instead, they are offered the overturning of their entire frame. So too with us. We cheer for frameworks that comfort us. But the Logos does not ask for admiration but allegiance. The call is not to sentimental balance, but to metaphysical repentance. God is not found within our tools but is the one by whom all tools, all truths, and all things exist. Pax
Matt, I appreciate the comment and the post. I am afraid that I was going for pithy with my reply and instead ended up with too clever or even snide. I feel like you and also johann are engaged in what I see as the most important social and philosophical project, bringing deeply thinking men and women back to God.
I meant to strike at the grip of Bayes on the rationalist’s heart and put Bayes at the level of Caesar—clearly important but clearly below God. I admit as well that I’m betraying my own cycles of doubt and despair— that part of me longs to find God in physics as clearly as we have found quarks, but feeling that we haven’t. My resolution is that empiricism can’t quantify my consciousness nor can logic prove its existence to another. Yet I know it is real. Same then with God. I imagine God structuring the universe this way because He does not want to be found by those means, feeling that doing so would diminish the power of the living emotional relationship He seeks with each of us. But perhaps I’ve given up on empiricism and logic as means to understand God and indeed as you note inadvertently creating a dualism that diminishes God. I will ponder this and the possibility of a full synthesis.
Einar, thanks again. You’ve identified the core issue: empiricism and logic fail to account for consciousness, yet we still want them to lead us to God. That tension marks the limit of the modern epistemic frame.
That consciousness cannot be observed or proven from the outside shows that not all reality is accessible through third-person inference. This is not a flaw but a clue. It suggests that our tools, even logic and inference, depend on a prior framework they cannot themselves explain.
This is where metaphysics becomes necessary, not as irrationality, but as reason confronting its own foundations. Aquinas begins with the most basic observations: things exist, they change, and they are not self-explanatory. These facts require a cause that is not contingent, a source that does not receive being, but *IS* being.
I understand the impulse to see God as avoiding empirical detection to preserve emotional relationship, but this is still conceptually flawed. It repeats the same error I noted above: separating God from the order of logic and reality by confining Him to the emotional or subjective sphere. It treats God as a being like or among created things…hidden, but still inside the system.
Aquinas shows otherwise: God is not *in* the system. (He is not the system itself either.) He is the act of being that gives rise to the system and everything in it. He is what makes the system, and all knowledge of it, possible.
Put another way, God is not a variable in the model. He is what makes modeling possible. He is not found in the data per se. He is what makes data intelligible.
Recognizing that empiricism and logic are not total frameworks is not a retreat into feeling or relativism but rather a move toward ontological clarity and coherence. Logic, probability, and inference remain valid but only within a metaphysical order that grounds their intelligibility. To elevate them above being itself is to mistake method for cause.
Appreciate the exchange and your serious engagement. Hope this is helpful.
We tried so hard to disprove the existence of God by finding meaning in his creation. Ironically, we eventually proved his existence by finding meaning in every aspect of creation. Despair and meaninglessness came from a rejection of God. The whole time we looked for something to fill the void that was already possessed by the creator of all things. To be made in his image is to understand creation and enjoy it. That’s what makes us unique and blessed.
Coincidentally, I just read this in an interview with the poet Camille Ralphs:
'I went to do Theology at Cambridge thinking it would just be an interesting thought experiment. And what I came to realise is that science is as limited as any other human endeavour. And you cannot disprove through logic, something that lives, if indeed it does live, outside of logic.'
https://thelondonmagazine.org/interview-between-anger-and-prayer-camille-ralphs-in-conversation/
Excellent!
Bravo, Bravo... going to read through this in my men's group. So much to ponder and discuss. Thank you! Subscribed to Mr Ellison's stack.
This is really excellent. I’m doing some work on the “break” of the 17thC — the period of day 1620-1680 — when Time was really out of joint. The Thirty Years War, English Civil War, etc. The scientific perspectives are helpful. are you familiar with Pilkington?
Thanks for posting this. Very thought provoking. I subscribed to his substack.
Excellent
Good stuff - been pulling threads on similar lines of though across philosophy, theology, and active inference!
I liked first, then I read
I’ve enjoyed this post and also another you linked earlier quite a bit.
I have been thinking as well about the verse “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” as a kind of call to continue to make scientific/economic progress, but a progress rooted in love (for God, family, and community) and virtue.
Very good, but remember there are two requests in the Lord‘s prayer right before that: Your name be hallowed and Your kingdom come. These also fall under “on earth as it is in heaven“. Modern Christianity often concentrates on seeking God‘s kingdom and will, but deemphasizes hallowing the Father’s name; that is seeking his honor, glory, praise, and magnifying his reputation here on earth.
Good essay... You are right, humans are better off with God, but the wrong God (for example the retributive one who sends homosexuals to hell) is no better and maybe worse than no God at all.
Otherwise, I address only one particular... The idea that "wave function collapse" happens only when some consciousness becomes entangled was a big idea in the mid 20th century, but is now long refuted. Collapse (whatever that ends up meaning) occurs at the point of any interaction between the quantum system and the macroscopic world, i.e. an instrument...
You’re right that observer-centric interpretations aren’t mainstream consensus today, as I note, but that’s not because they’ve been refuted or disproven, certainly not philosophically.
Decoherence explains how possibilities become unobservable, but not why one becomes actual. Many-worlds dodges the collapse question entirely.
I reference the very formidable interpretations by Wheeler and Von Neumann etc because they take consciousness seriously, not as a byproduct, but as ontologically significant.
That’s closer to the Logos than a purely mechanistic frame. Thanks
I don’t think that the quantum tie in is needed or even helpful for finding God.
God is not like a quark that can be found and empirically proven. Nor is He like Bayes Theorem, something that can be proven through pure math and logic.
I think this is by design. Reading the Ballad of the White Horse by Chesterton helped this crystallize for me. Hope, and the choice to hope, is a critical part of the living relationship with God. For me, this looks like cycles of doubt on empirical grounds, the choice to hope, and then a deepening of faith.
Static empirical phenomena quickly become dead in our minds, no matter how awe inspiring they are when first described. The breadth of the universe, the nuclear reactions fueling the Sun, don’t move me meaningfully. Bayes theorem is just a tool. Whereas my relationships with my wife, my kids, and my closest community never become fully predictable / describable but continue to grow in richness. Same with my relationship with God.
Give unto Bayes that which is Bayesian, give unto God that which is God’s.
Thank you, Einar, for your thoughtful response. You voice a familiar modern tension of trying to hold on to Christian faith through emotion and relationship, while keeping rationalism and empiricism as the ultimate framework for reality. But that division between meaning and being is exactly the crisis my essay confronts.
You say God is not a quark or a theorem—true—but then you place Him in emotional unpredictability, in cycles of doubt and hope, as if He could only be found where reason gives out. This is still dualism: God reduced to a feeling, while matter and logic are ruled by mechanical inference. St Thomas offers something deeper. God is not what’s left when knowledge fails: He is being itself, the pure act in whom reason, love, and existence are one. He is not at the edge of the system but is its ground.
Chesterton gives us the drama of faith but Aquinas provides its structure. Hope matters not because it’s noble, or feels good, but because it reaches toward what is real… and true. Without metaphysics, sentiment collapses. The longing for God is not psychological comfort but a sign of our participation in Him.
As for “give unto Bayes what is Bayesian, and unto God what is God’s” clever, but deeply revealing. It echoes but distorts Christ’s words about Caesar. Caesar claimed coins; Bayes now (for some) claims logic… and truth itself. Who is Bayes next to Caesar? And yet in rationalist culture, he has become a kind of Caesar, a Czar… a sovereign of epistemology. Bayesianism, once a technical tool for inference under uncertainty, now postures as an all-encompassing method for navigating reality, supplanting metaphysics, ethics, and even theology. That is not humility before reason but idolatry (the elevation of one part over the whole).
There is no realm that “belongs” to Bayes. All truth, if it is truth, participates in the Logos. The Logos is not one explanatory mode among many. It is the ontological unity of all that is—mathematical, moral, empirical, and metaphysical. To assign Bayes dominion over fact, and leave God with feeling, is not integration but negation of God’s ontological unity.
Today is Palm Sunday when the King enters in humility, not force. The crowds cheer, but do not understand. They expect a revolution on their terms. Instead, they are offered the overturning of their entire frame. So too with us. We cheer for frameworks that comfort us. But the Logos does not ask for admiration but allegiance. The call is not to sentimental balance, but to metaphysical repentance. God is not found within our tools but is the one by whom all tools, all truths, and all things exist. Pax
Matt, I appreciate the comment and the post. I am afraid that I was going for pithy with my reply and instead ended up with too clever or even snide. I feel like you and also johann are engaged in what I see as the most important social and philosophical project, bringing deeply thinking men and women back to God.
I meant to strike at the grip of Bayes on the rationalist’s heart and put Bayes at the level of Caesar—clearly important but clearly below God. I admit as well that I’m betraying my own cycles of doubt and despair— that part of me longs to find God in physics as clearly as we have found quarks, but feeling that we haven’t. My resolution is that empiricism can’t quantify my consciousness nor can logic prove its existence to another. Yet I know it is real. Same then with God. I imagine God structuring the universe this way because He does not want to be found by those means, feeling that doing so would diminish the power of the living emotional relationship He seeks with each of us. But perhaps I’ve given up on empiricism and logic as means to understand God and indeed as you note inadvertently creating a dualism that diminishes God. I will ponder this and the possibility of a full synthesis.
Einar, thanks again. You’ve identified the core issue: empiricism and logic fail to account for consciousness, yet we still want them to lead us to God. That tension marks the limit of the modern epistemic frame.
That consciousness cannot be observed or proven from the outside shows that not all reality is accessible through third-person inference. This is not a flaw but a clue. It suggests that our tools, even logic and inference, depend on a prior framework they cannot themselves explain.
This is where metaphysics becomes necessary, not as irrationality, but as reason confronting its own foundations. Aquinas begins with the most basic observations: things exist, they change, and they are not self-explanatory. These facts require a cause that is not contingent, a source that does not receive being, but *IS* being.
I understand the impulse to see God as avoiding empirical detection to preserve emotional relationship, but this is still conceptually flawed. It repeats the same error I noted above: separating God from the order of logic and reality by confining Him to the emotional or subjective sphere. It treats God as a being like or among created things…hidden, but still inside the system.
Aquinas shows otherwise: God is not *in* the system. (He is not the system itself either.) He is the act of being that gives rise to the system and everything in it. He is what makes the system, and all knowledge of it, possible.
Put another way, God is not a variable in the model. He is what makes modeling possible. He is not found in the data per se. He is what makes data intelligible.
Recognizing that empiricism and logic are not total frameworks is not a retreat into feeling or relativism but rather a move toward ontological clarity and coherence. Logic, probability, and inference remain valid but only within a metaphysical order that grounds their intelligibility. To elevate them above being itself is to mistake method for cause.
Appreciate the exchange and your serious engagement. Hope this is helpful.