Size doesn't matter

A nice way of sounding sexual, but thinking theological.

A couple of friends of mine who have chronic God problems often return to the size of the universe as a reason to dis believe that, even if there is a Creator, he could "care" much about our tiny selves.

(I'm not against chronic God problems. Have em myself. But some of them seem to give more trouble than they deserve. E.g.)

When you do give some attention to the immensity of the universe, it does tend to make you feel less than small. Which, in fact, you are. In comparison. Pascal's oft-quoted response to the new science: Le silence eternel de ces espaces infinies m'effraie.

The classical definition of God includes infinity. Easy to misunderstand as "huge". Not really so.

For instance, when theologians say that God is eternal, our first inclination is to imagine vastness of time. But the point of eternity is that it is not temporal at all. There is no such thing as past, present and future. It's not a lot of time. It's time-less.

Same with infinity. The first thought is that it means huge unthinkable vastness. Size is important to us. Naturally and rightly. Because we are sized creatures. Finite. But, no. Infinity has nothing to do with size, either large or small. It's not a lot of size. It's size-less.

To use another example, no classical theist would imagine that the all-seeing God can "see" better in daylight than he can at night. Light and darkness are all the same to Him. Similarly with vastness and smallness.

So, it's not crazy to think that the classical infinite God is able to "care" as much about me as about the universe or the Milky Way. It took no more intelligence or effort to create the whole universe than any tiny part of it.

Reminded me of the wonderful old short film Powers of Ten, which shows a cosmic and a sub-atomic world of quite similar complexity, "outside" and "inside" a picnic by Lake Michigan. Which is what you would expect on an infinite God.

For God, size doesn't matter.