If it’s new and different, it’s god

Why would something new and astonishing and apparently a violation of what we know about nature be evidence of “God” or a god or the supernatural rather than…something new and astonishing and apparently a violation of what we know about nature?

I can easily imagine evidence of something new and astonishing and apparently a violation of what we know about nature. I have a harder time thinking of something that would convince me it was evidence of “God” or a god or the supernatural.

I’m not being stubborn or dogmatic in saying that. I’m saying I just don’t see why something new and the rest of it couldn’t point to A Big Unknown as opposed to the familiar though speculative category “God.”

Maybe a very big very powerful Person? But that could be a part of nature we hadn’t known about before. It could tell us “Hey I’m the one in the Bible” [but in which language?] but that could be what this part of nature does.

Maybe all kinds of spectacular magical events? But that could be astonishing and inexplicable without necessarily being non-natural. It could just mean that we’d never known what we hadn’t known – which is bound to be true anyway.

On the other hand, I can see saying “this is at least evidence of something like what people have been calling ‘God’ all this time.” I can see agreeing that this changes everything I thought I knew, and everything I thought other people knew, too.

But just plain “evidence of God”? Well which one, for a start?

Inspired by.

99 Responses to “If it’s new and different, it’s god”