It’s interesting to think that, without God, science turns into engineering, philosophy turns into vocabulary, and ethics turns into politics. With God, all of these fields of study are transformed into subcategories of theology.
For those who want to protest, here’s what I mean:
Unless there is a God, there is no designer for the universe. Without a designer, there is no design. If there is no design, then there is no reason to want to discover the fundamental principles of the universe. What makes you think that there are fundamental principles at all, or that such principles won’t change? All that is left to science is figuring out how to make stuff. Everything else is storytelling, with the intent of covering up unproductive employment.
Similarly, if there isn’t a God who generated such abstract concepts as beauty, truth, goodness, agency, and happiness, then those concepts are entirely flexible, and they can change from era to era, and place to place. Furthermore, there’s no real reason to think that they exist at all, or are worth any effort to achieve. All that remains is careful defining of terms, so that they can be used cogently in sentences. You have to know exactly what sort of wind you are sewing.
And Ethics? The answer to every ethical assertion is always “says who?” And if the reply to that isn’t “God,” then the next reply is always, “Try and make me.” Trying to make people do things is the bread of politics.
There’s more than one way that Jesus Christ holds the universe together.
neumatikos 