Indescribable

In the interests of seeing something that might change my mind and cause me to see the light even though I thought this unlikely, I watched a video on Youtube called Indescribable.  A Christian Louie Giglio with an interest in astronomy uses the immense size of the Universe and projects it onto God in order to show how glorious God is.  Apparently the purpose of the immense universe is to show us what God can do.  God is basically showing off.

Apparently God is indescribable.  He is described as indescribable, ginormous and being greater than every thought ever held of him.  Louie accepts the Big Bang Theory and equates it with the creation event. He claims that when God said 'Let there be light!' a big stream of light came out of his mouth at a speed of 186,000 miles per second the speed of light in a vacuum.  He also says that the light came out of his mouth in the form of all the stars in the Universe.  But if this were so, then they would not travel at the speed of light because while light travels at 186, 420 miles per second, sources of light such as stars do not.  If Louie had stuck to the idea that the light which God created was what is now the cosmic microwave background radiation then there would still be problems.  The CMBR would appear to come from a single source like light comes from a star.  Maybe a microwave detector could make out features of God's mouth!  It would also take time for the light to spread through the gigantic universe.  If the universe was only 10,000 years old as some creationists say then the light would only spread 10,000 light years, a tenth of the size of the Milky Way.

But Louie says the stars in their entire form came out of God's mouth.  This ignores the fact that astronomers witness in their telescopes star forming regions where the stars actually emerge.  They condense from huge gas clouds and their light ultimately has its source from the nuclear reactions taking place inside the star.  No evidence not even scriptural (as far as I know) that stars came from God's mouth.

Louie mentions the book of Job where God excuses the evil of the world by his own might.  He is so big, being able to hold the Pleiades in his hand, that it follows that he is also incomprehensible and therefore there is some incomprehensible complicated reason why he allows evil in the world. Well, he may be big but if he is just big enough to hold the Pleiades in his hands he is not big relative to the Universe or even relative to our own galaxy.  Assuming a hand three times as long as the Pleiades and average body proportions (so he is not a freaky giant with relatively tiny hands) I calculate God would have a body height of 361 light years, less than a hundredth of the width of our galaxy (100,000 light years) .  I note also lots of anthropomorphism in Louie's picture of God.  He has hands like us, a mouth like us even though he is said not to have a brain like us.  Louie's picture of God also implies a being that interacts with matter directly as opposed to being a bodiless mind that influences matter by some sort of ultimate psychokinetic power.

Louie talks about the amazing grace of God in trying to save us from what we deserve.  God takes on the punishment that all of us sinners deserve.  But does everyone deserve to be crucified?  I don't think so.  I am not sure that even Hitler deserves to be crucified (some might disagree).  The point is that torture in modern society is supposed to be an absolute no no, although in practice humans seem to be so barbaric that they engage in it anyway.  But two wrongs don't make a right (again some might disagree).  In any case we are told that the punishment awaiting us in our afterlife is not crucifixion but  eternal hell.  Jesus is only crucified.  After one day his punishment is over and this is supposed to be taking the punishment for our sins.  The fact that God allegedly has to dole out punishment even if it is to his Son suggests God does not make the rules but only enforces them.  So what authority is forcing God to be the strict but rather odd sort of judge?  Maybe God wants to show the depth of his love by allowing himself to be tortured as Jesus Christ.  That's like a mother throwing herself in front of  a train when her children are already safe and out of danger, to show how much she loves her children.  That would be kind of creepy and scary.  So presumably the sacrifice is necessary to save us from something.  But God has to save us by allowing himself to be tortured.  He doesn't make the rules.  But then he wouldn't be God.