If God Can Do Anything

Ricky Carvel recently posted on the implication of saying that one believes in a God who can do anything. Such a God can make a universe that offers no evidence of a divine creator. A God who can do anything can make a universe that was planned to be exactly as ours is, and bring it about entirely through natural processes. In other words, if God can do anything, then no evidence whatsoever is incompatible with the belief that God created.

That renders belief in God as Creator unfalsifiable, does it not? It also undermines any attempt to discuss evidence that supposedly points to God, since if that evidence turns out not to point to God, that still doesn't disprove the existence of a God who can do anything.

Nothing that I have said above means that there isn't a God who can do anything. But it certainly would seem that it makes no sense to discuss whether the universe provides evidence of a God who can do anything. Because if any evidence whatsoever is compatible with such a belief, then how can any evidence actually demonstrate it?

This isn't, however, necessarily bad news, except for promoters of views like that of the modern Intelligent Design movement, whose Creator can only work in very specific ways that are constrained by what it is possible for human designers to accomplish. But it is good news as pertains the acceptance of science by people who believe in such a God. John Pieret, in a recent post, notes that there have been many great scientists like Newton who were people of faith, and who advanced our understanding of the universe as a place where processes work without having to posit divine interventions. They have felt free to explore, study, and describe the universe as it is, because their faith in a God who could do anything could not be threatened by whatever they happened to uncover.

If you are a religious believer, and someone talks to you about Intelligent Design, you should give them a sad glance and say, as lovingly and kindly as possible, “Oh ye of little faith.”