God as Levitating Turtle<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A bit of interaction on the blog between two commenters produced a helpful analogy to explain why some thinkers find the concept of God a useful one, and\" \/>\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\/2014\/11\/god-as-levitating-turtle.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"God as Levitating Turtle\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A bit of interaction on the blog between two commenters produced a helpful analogy to explain why some thinkers find the concept of God a useful one, and\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/11\/god-as-levitating-turtle.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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{"id":27311,"date":"2014-11-27T07:13:12","date_gmt":"2014-11-27T12:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=27311"},"modified":"2014-11-27T07:13:12","modified_gmt":"2014-11-27T12:13:12","slug":"god-as-levitating-turtle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/11\/god-as-levitating-turtle.html","title":{"rendered":"God as Levitating Turtle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

A bit of interaction on the blog between two commenters<\/a> produced a helpful analogy to explain why some thinkers find the concept of God a useful one, and preferable to alternatives.<\/p>\n

One commenter mentioned the famous image of infinite regress: \u201cit\u2019s turtles all the way down.\u201d<\/p>\n

A levitating turtle, like a God who simply exists, is frustratingly puzzling and mysterious.<\/p>\n

But is positing such an entity\u00a0nonetheless preferable to the positing of an infinite number of things and events, each of which may be more probable, but the infinity<\/em> of which seems even more puzzling, mysterious, and problematic?<\/p>\n

That is what\u00a0that many sorts of theists (in the broad sense) conclude, including not only classical theists but also Deists and others.<\/p>\n

Something that necessarily exists, however puzzling, seems\u00a0less\u00a0illogical than an infinite regress of finite causes. And given that I logically deduce\u00a0that I am contingent on something other than myself for my existence, and given that even the universe seems to not have existed forever, that which necessarily exists must be something beyond the universe, something\u00a0greater still and more transcendent.<\/p>\n

And so let us\u00a0debate and discuss what that reality is, what it is like, what we cannot know, and why we speculate about it as we do.<\/p>\n

But please don\u2019t complain when some of us refer to that reality as \u201cGod.\u201d If that term is appropriate for anything, it is appropriate here, perhaps more so than as applied to the anthropomorphic God of much popular piety.<\/p>\n

$\"Turtles_All_the_Way_Down_by_TheDaneOf5683\"$ <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"