Even when I was a little child I never expected scientists to find evidence of God. Not because I thought he was hiding or because you had to have faith. I always expected that things would work naturally by themselves even if they were created by a God. After all, isn’t that how we work?
We make machines that will work completely without our assistance. They operate on defined laws and commands like scripts and defined programs. We do not hold them together like many theists think God holds his machine together. We allow them to work until an error occurs. Only then do we alter them.
My point is if God is anything like us he would create a system that would work all by itself? Otherwise, he would be spending all his effort just holding his creation together. Why create extra work?
So, even if there is a God the universe should likely work independently. I mean, to be considered a God you must have power over the world, though that doesn’t mean that power is required to sustain the world.
Update:I am not explaining deism. Deists believe that God just doesn’t care. I am talking about more in the light of physics and chemistry. Most of the stuff we know of works by itself. Like how we can explain how atoms work without supernatural powers holding them together. Everything just works as a system on its own.
As for God guiding us? That is a different argument. I think a lot like writer_cb on this point. So, read her post to get my thoughts on how God interacts with humans and maybe other species.
Answers & Comments
Verified answer
I think you make a good point. If God is omnipotent, all-powerful, and self-sustaining, then shouldn't His world be able to work without Him? BUT...I do not think this means that God just ignores us. Nor does it mean that God is not merciful.
Rather, I think we have to remember that even if God HImself is not looking at his "machine" and tinkering with it every moment, God's energies are. They sustain the world. I believe God has special energies that make the world work. He is up in Heaven, and He misses our company and wants us to love Him again. But because we asked to "play God", He gave us this world as a playground. It is a temporary and miserable world, with temporary love, but as long as we want it, it is here for us. When we are tired of it, and turn to God, then He most certainly and eagerly gives us signs that He is encouraging us to come back to Him. But it is our choice. He leaves it up to us.
God's energies are controlling the universe as we know it. God Himself is not tinkering with it every second. That's what I think.
Well, this idea is classified as deism, the champ religion for Thomas Jefferson, Enlightened philosophers...the idea that God made us, natural law, did his biddy, and then said 'Peace, I'm out.'
The only issue I ever found with the theory, is that we may make machines to function on their own, but we make them to use them. That could mean one of two things, 1) your logic has a flaw, God would be here, leaving his traces, in using our machine, or, and this is the much more logical, and scary theory, 2) We've been made solely for his use, we're only here to be used. Like in hokey Matrix movies (accept the first one wasn't that hokey).
Our machines have no free will. Your toaster cannot decide for itself to keep your bread in for too long, or too short. We have no need to intervene in things that can't be broken. People have free will, and can be corrupted. Sometimes people need an extra nudge in the right direction to keep going. Toasters don't necessarily need nudges.
Well not that what you're saying isn't interesting but we believe that God created us TO have a relationship with him.
He loves to guide us gently through life.
My computer isn't working by itself. I'm constantly feeding it input.
Besides which, if I accept your premise, that doesn't work if it's a personal god who supposedly talks to people telepathically.
Which is essentially the argument behind Deism.
God was created by men to explain how we got here!
How can you prove something wrong with Science when it doesn't have to obey the laws of Science. The point isn't that Science proves religion wrong, the point is that there isn't evidence of god so why should we assume there is one.
You don't have to "discover Him", He has your number.
He'll pass judgment on you, good or bad.
If you're saved (Romans 10.9-11, John 3.16) His judgment will
be good.
I could never make any sense of Atheist "logic".