First of all, it seems to me that the size of your God is far more
important than the size of your Science!
I see no reason that one must take as given that either all phenomena will
turn out to be explanable or that some things must necessarily escape
scientific understanding. This is surely something that we can not predict
and I would prefer to wait and see what happens.
It's very important, in the meantime, to not seek to reserve "a place for
God" by demanding that this or the other thing will never be explainable.
This has at least three problems: first, as I said earlier it reveals a
"God of the gaps" point of view -- a monotonically decreasing God. Also,
this point of view tends to ignore that God is constantly keeping the
universe in existence and regulating its processes. I quote from Bube's
Putting It All Together:
Before the recognition of the general principle of gravity, ...
[the]answer to the question "What holds the planets in place?"
was properly and completely, "God does." ... [after Newton]
surely the answer to the question "What holds the planets in
place?" is still, "God does, but now we have more insight into
how he acts to do it." ...
Isn't it strange that the recognition that God works well and
in an orderly way ... should have led so often to the conclusion
that it is not God working?
Lastly, in taking the view that God only works in the unknown concedes the
argument to the "scientistists" (like that construction? ;{>). A God that
is *only* present in the things that we can't understand &/or observe is
one that does not command our attention and can be taken to be irrelevant
to our lives.
There are many things that we know that will never understand on this side
of eternity (the nature of the Trinity, exactly how this free will/election
thing works, etc.). However, all of these things have to do with our
incapability of understanding God's infinite nature. I see no reason to
either expect that there will eventually be a scientific explanation for
all phenomena or not. It could happen, it may not; I have no philosophical
stake in the outcome.
Bill Dozier
Scatterer at Large
dozier@radix.net