The whole nature of God for these people (and for many, many Americans) is that of a personal<\/em> God, something with the characteristics of a human. To deny the ubiquity of this concept of God belies profound ignorance of religion. Either many theologians are ignorant in that way, or simply feel that such people have wrong belief.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\nThat last point is exactly right \u2013 many theologians think that the majority of people have wrong ways of thinking about God. Just as many scientists would say that very many people have wrong ways of thinking about science and the natural world \u2013 even including those whose intention is to accept mainstream science. <\/p>\n
I really like the title of the post: \u201cThis ain't your Ground of Being.\u201d But as Tillich, who made that phrase famous, so strongly emphasized, we cannot do without metaphors and symbols when thinking and talking about the Ultimate. The same is true in science, when we try to talk about language-defying quantum realities. The big problem is often not the use of symbols, but mistaking them for a description of the way things really are. But in other instances, the problem is the symbols themselves, which are inadequate even as a metaphor for what they are supposed to point to.<\/p>\n
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Jerry Coyne recently shared this Bizarro comic: I think the cartoon illustrates nicely some of the problems involved in thinking about God in such anthropomorphic terms. Coyne adds the comment: The whole nature of God for these people (and for many, many Americans) is that of a personal God, something with the characteristics of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[163,101],"tags":[674,675,1222,4005,5662,12508],"class_list":["post-11444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-progressive-christianity-religion","category-theology","tag-anthropomorphic","tag-anthropomorphism","tag-bizarro","tag-god","tag-jerry-coyne","tag-theology"],"yoast_head":"\n
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