{"id":12287,"date":"2013-01-14T14:41:30","date_gmt":"2013-01-14T19:41:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=12287"},"modified":"2013-01-14T14:41:30","modified_gmt":"2013-01-14T19:41:30","slug":"adding-to-the-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2013\/01\/adding-to-the-mystery.html","title":{"rendered":"Adding to the Mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>One reason that some religious believers feel threatened by scientific advances is the belief that, as the mysterious becomes less mysterious, God\u2019s existence or at least God\u2019s involvement in the universe is\u00a0disproved. But as those who\u2019ve dug deeply into the mysteries of the universe, as we find answers, they lead on to new mysteries which ultimately lead sooner or later to the mystery of existence itself, why anything at all exists. That isn\u2019t proof of God, but it does leave permanent room for mystery that will forever point beyond what we can observe into the unknown.<\/p>\n<p>I thought of this when seeing this bookstore\u2019s effort to make sure its \u201cMystery\u201d section lived up to the name:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12288\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2013\/01\/mystery.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"658\"><\/p>\n<p>My own view is that actual mysteries are mysterious enough. No need to try to make them more mysterious than they really are! And so I thought that this is a nice parable of what some religious believers do, trying to prevent mysteries being identified and solved so as to leave room for God. But the truth is that, even if you exhaust every book on the shelf, there will always be more mysteries\u2026<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One reason that some religious believers feel threatened by scientific advances is the belief that, as the mysterious becomes less mysterious, God\u2019s existence or at least God\u2019s involvement in the universe is\u00a0disproved. But as those who\u2019ve dug deeply into the mysteries of the universe, as we find answers, they lead on to new mysteries which [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,80,85],"tags":[661,4005,4011,5345,7833,10169,10886],"class_list":["post-12287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","category-religion","category-science","tag-answers","tag-god","tag-god-of-the-gaps","tag-investigation","tag-mystery","tag-religion","tag-science"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Adding to the Mystery<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"One reason that some religious believers feel threatened by scientific advances is the belief that, as the mysterious becomes less mysterious, God&#039;s\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2013\/01\/adding-to-the-mystery.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Adding to the Mystery\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"One reason that some religious believers feel threatened by scientific advances is the belief that, as the mysterious becomes less mysterious, God&#039;s\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2013\/01\/adding-to-the-mystery.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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