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content/post/the-parable-of-the-invisible-gardener.md
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@ -36,7 +36,7 @@ Any one of these things would falsify most of the fundamental claims of Judeo-Ch
But there is a further layer to this onion I have not yet explored. Namely, that the premise of the parable is fundamentally flawed. The believer and the skeptic are arguing over the existince of some particular being who, conceivably, could be subjected to an empirical test. But, this is to equate God and his action in the world, with a finite particular being, as if God were Anatheia, and the explorers had stumbled across the Garden of the Hesperides.
This is a common mistake among the materialists and empiricists. God is not a supernatural gardener. He is the ultimate source of the fabric of reality itself. He is the ultimate ground out of which such things as gardens and gardeners arise. He is the the intellect that gives gardens and gardeners their pattern, and the will that gives gardens and gardeners the purpose toward which they are motivated. If Anatheia or the Garden of the Hespirides did exist, he would be the source of them both. Being the source of all material, and the source of all patterns of being that all material can inhabit, there can be no empirical test that proves or disproves his existence, because such a test would require presupposing what it is we are trying to prove. Any test attempting to prove the source of reality itself, would require us to be ouside of reality. In order to do that, we would have to make ourselves into the God we are trying to falsify.
This is a common mistake among the materialists and empiricists. According to serious believers and theologians, God is not a supernatural gardener. He is the ultimate source of the fabric of reality itself. He is the ultimate ground out of which such finite things as gardens and gardeners arise. He is the the intellect that gives gardens and gardeners their pattern, and the will that gives gardens and gardeners the purpose toward which they are motivated. If Anatheia or the Garden of the Hespirides did exist, he would be the source of them both. Being the source of all material, and the source of all patterns of being that all material can inhabit, there can be no empirical test that proves or disproves his existence, because such a test would require presupposing what it is we are trying to prove. Any test attempting to prove the source of reality itself, would require us to be ouside of reality. In order to do that, we would have to make ourselves into the God we are trying to falsify.
But, even if we take the parable at its face, there is still a problem with falsification, and this again gets to the way the parable is framed. What if we were to invert Flew's original parable? What would the implications be? [John Frame](http://www.frame-poythress.org/god-and-biblical-language-transcendence-and-immanence/) has actually already done this for us: