A little while ago I got myself a copy of Nigel Warburtons book "the basics of philosophy", and did a wee blog saying that I planned on reading each chapter/section and then jotting down my thoughts on the arguments and concepts within.
See here
The first of these that Nigel explores in the book is the question "Does God exist?" OK, for some to even ask this is a big step, however it is a problem thats has kept religious philosophers busy for centuries and is at the very heart of religious teachings.
Some key concepts.
Theists, is a term used to describe those who believe in a classical vision of God as singular being, a person if you will, who is supremely benevolent, omnipresent and all powerful.
Atheists as I'm sure you're all aware do not believe this version of God to be real, they do not believe in this God.
Agnostics reserve judgement, preferring to wait it out a little on the fence.
There's little point in me re-writing Nigel's book here since he has done a much better job of it than I could ever hope to do, so I will limit myself to a brief mention of the arguments pertaining to the existence (or otherwise) of the theists God
The Design argument - such complex beings as humans must have been designed by a supreme intelligence.
The fine tuning argument - The idea that the chances of us humans existing are so small that it must have been pre ordained by a God ala the design argument.
The first cause argument - Everything has a cause, but what is the first cause? proponents of this argument suggest the first cause is God. but then what caused God?
The Ontological argument - God exists simply as a result of his definition as an all powerful omnipresent being.
Ok, so in a slight shift of Focus, what struck me in reading the book is that it discusses only one possible version of God, namely the one the theists ascribe to, and the judo-christian view of a singular entity. There are differing religions in the world, thus many people have come up with differing views of this thing called God. So in that vein I've been exploring the question
"What is God?"
First of all I think its' fair to say that God is or has a concept. This concept varies dependent on the teaching to which you ascribe, but non the less, God, as a "supreme power" and "the creator" is pretty much a universal view. That this is true does not prove that God does/doesn't exist, merely that our knowledge of God is shaped by the world in which we inhabit, and that we humans have some idea or concept of "God" be that the theists version or other variants. "God" and the "Concept of God" are thus related but different things.
Theists ascribe two other virtues to this supreme being. "All knowing" and "All good" but this is based on the concept of God being sentient, a person if you will. So I'm going to leave those aside for now.
The ontological argument for existence of God suggest that God exists simply as a result of being an all powerful, all knowing God. Its a flawed argument in that as Nigel suggests , existence is not a property per see. Rather It is a precondition of having any properties at all. To use the example in the book, being unmarried is an essential property of being a bachelor, but saying bachelors exist is not conferring any further properties on the definition of bachelor.
However. Lets turn the ontological argument on it's head. We humans exist. So then what are humans? We are a self aware species with knowledge of the past coupled with an ability to envisage the future as we might like it, based on this past experience. ("imagination" and "learning" if you will) As a result we've built things called societies.
This then means the definition of "bachelor" and its inherent properties must exist inside a societal framework and awareness, one must know what a "bachelor" is in the wider context for the term to have any meaning. So, then could the concept of God exist simply because we humans are aware of ourselves?
Consider the old saying:
"If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it does it still make a noise"
and alter it to:
"If a tree falls in the forest and no one is aware of it's falling did it still fall?
In the first saying the answer depends on the definition of "noise". We and many animals perceive noise through the vibration of air on an ear drum. thus if theres no ear drum then the vibration goes unheard. But that which would give rise to noise in the presence of an ear drum still exists. (rather like sending a radio signal out to an absent receiver)
However in the second we "could" sumise it fell, since the tree can be proved to be on the ground, but as no one saw it fall we cannot prove how it got there. A little like the schrodingers cat conundrum. Since we are self aware and have experience based on what is "likely" to have occurred we come up with a list of scenarios and pick the most appealing. In this case being that it probably did fall to it's current position, for how else could it have gotten there?
Its this last bit, "how else could it have gotten there?" that brings us back to God. The design argument is a reflection of this question. We are so complex, so indescribably wondrous as beings in the frankly ridiculously improbable world that is Earth in the vastness of the universe, that we must have been dreamt up by an all powerful being who kinda looks like us but knows way more. But the design argument has its well documented flaws, and a long time influence on my scientific thinking Dr Richard Dawkins has covered this at length so for me it doesn't quite cut it.
In indulging this train of thought as I read the book I found myself drawn to what is known as "non realism". An idea that God exists simply as an aspirational concept of humanities' better and more praise worthy traits, which I found to be in essence a reversal of the cause and effect of the design argument. We do not exist because God made us. Rather God "exists" or least the concept does, in some sense because we became aware of the concept of God.
However.
What caused this awareness? The first cause argument states that everything is a result of something else. You kick a football, it moves, you cut your hair, it gets shorter, You touch water, you get wet, Causality is a thing that I've been involved with from a scientific viewpoint over many years, first with cellular physiology, then latterly health care diagnostics, and now management theory. Why something occurred and what pre condition(s) caused its coming about is a question that keeps many minds busy. As for the cause of our self awareness? The truth is, other than suposed evolutionary pressures, and speculation, we simply don't know.
If you'll indulge me in a purely speculative moment, mythology often has its roots in long forgotten experiences. It's not wholly outside the bounds of credibility to suggest that enduring myths of other worldly beings might have something to do with this thousands of years ago. We humans tells stories of all sorts of weird and wonderful things, from superman, to mutant super heroes, giant extra terrestrial robots and stuff like lord of the rings or the avengers. Those are of course modern examples but their lineage is way back round camp fires, eons before 4k telly's were "a thing' and "a thing" was considered an expression. An admittedly "far fetched" thought is that our vision of God as a person may stem from long lost knowledge of some vastly powerful being on earth of unknown origin that has then become legend, myth and eventually ..religion. But, moving away from self indulgent conjecture, its fair to say enduring stories whatever their inception, may well have played a part in how humans evolved the theist concept of God, or even multiple gods as the greeks did.
My point is that somewhere back in our lost evolutionary past whilst sitting round that camp fire re-telling stores of monsters battled or daring feats of bravery we asked a simple yet profound question,
"Where did we come from?"
It is worth mentioning here that "Evolutionary" might predispose some to think I do not believe in God since the world was created in 7 days. I've always been in the camp of the genesis story being metaphorical, and the evolutionary process being akin to the paint brush not the painter. Way back in 5th year during my school RE (year 11 for younger readers) I coined the thought that evolution is the "how" and God, whatever that might be is perhaps the "why"
Another point that the first cause argument brought into focus for me is the question of God's relationship with Time. If God is to be considered the first cause then he was arround before the beginning of what we commonly call time. Usually thought of as the big bang. Could this mean God is timeless, ever present?
It's here that I began to form the basis of an opinion, or position on the issue of God, since a few threads seemed to be coalescing in my mind.
- Humans are self aware. We remember, and question.
- God was was supposedly there at the beginning (big bang)
- Awareness of something does not prove or disprove its existence.
- Ignorance or unknowingness does not prove/disprove existence.
So. millennia ago its possible that somehow we humans became aware of Time, mortality, and our species' existence in a way, and on a level that we do not yet see in other primates. (Although by all accounts evolution is still occurring and new things being discovered) Around this point we as a species also became aware of the questions "why are we here?" and "how did we get we here?"
Our respective cultures and story telling ability thus led to accounts, some very likely born of factual events, that have been passed down through the centuries. These stores are thus interpreted and examined, re written and disseminated, ultimately becoming what we know today as "religions"
Could "Time" perhaps then be said to start for the human race at this point of awareness, rather than the "big bang" and thus so begins our evolutionary tale of the knowledge of the concept of self, species, and thus of God. (The beginnings of known real time, documented human history?)
But hang on, what about those trees in the forest? Stephen Hawking has done brilliant job of discussing time as we know it here...
In the article Professor Hawking describes the period before the big bang as having no observational consequence, thus from the POV of physics this can be left out of the equation. The big bang is the beginning (for us) of observable time, observable change. But we know God isn't supposed to be constrained by mere things like physics, other wise that would disprove the all powerful angle and much like that tree in the forest, observation does not prove or disprove existence, Thus one can theorise that a measure of something akin to time, perhaps infinite, existed in a unobserved way before the big bang.
It is this that has lead me to an oddly simple thought. Could the concept of God be the result of human knowledge of Time itself? Moreover Could God actually Be Time? After all "old father time" is a well known expression? It dates back to greek mythology "times".
I tried to test this idea by breaking it.
It's not unreasonable to theorise that the big bang we humans know as the start of our observable time could well have been the end of something else, unknown and now unknowable, thus the law of unending causality would be satisfied. The mechanism for the continuation of "another time" back before the big bang is simply that there are unobserved trees falling in a unknown forest, due to unknown forces and the passage of "their" time.
But what of the things I've mentioned at the beginning?, of God being "all knowing" and "all good"? Well God as Time would certainly "see all" since for anything to exist in our physical world post big bang it must have, or have had, a greater than Zero time integer. And in "another time" before the big bang one can theorise that though different, and unknowable, this may have been true, since "our time" can exist independently of any observed or actual change and in the absence of the awareness of time (consider a box of space vacuum, the fact it has "nothing" in it does not suddenly halt time. or perhaps an empty street at night, time still passes.) It's therefore not unreasonable to carry this premise backwards to before the big bang.
However God as Time cannot be "all good" as it fails the test of the "problems of evil". Since some evil things happen with the passage of time. Probably due to "free will" in the case of humans and "random causality" in the case of natural disaster, time itself could be said to be complicit.
But this does not in and of itself break the theory, since the premise of God as Good is tenant of the theists definition of God and not that of God as Time.
If one accepts this definition of God as Time, it has similar ramifications to the non realism argument, indeed it could be said to be a version of it:
- Religion becomes merely a consequence of human self awareness, and societal pressure.
- Religious morality can no longer be consider divine wisdom since the words of the various religious texts are reduced to merely those of men observing the world as they see it, regardless of how profound and wise they may be.
- Good and Evil become action based and not based upon the promise of a physical Heaven or hell.
- God as Time makes no comment on the possibility of life after death.
The third of these, the idea of a heaven or hell and resurrection/damnation has never sat well with me. Not because I have issue with the concepts, but rather the religious mechanism by which one enters either place. Moral actions, or "good" actions should be based on the intent to do good, rather than the intent to profit by the doing of good. Thus the idea of accessing heaven though a life of devotion is in my view too close to the gambler argument of Pascals wager. (the idea that its better to hedge your bets and believe in the theists God rather than be proved wrong and spend an eternity in hell.)
Another place where "God as Time" and the traditional theist view diverge is this idea of "God" being the supreme moral authority. Nigel goes into the arguments surrounding God and morality much deeper than I have here, since I've barely touched them, so if you want to look at those grab a copy of his book, its well worth taking "the time" to read. (yeah its a bad pun, but I couldn't resist.) Handily though the next chapter in Nigel's book is all about Right and Wrong. So perhaps after looking at and writing about it i'll revisit this "loose thread" regarding God in a future article.
In conclusion, and I admit somewhat annoyingly, what really puzzles me is the premise I came up with all those years back in school. God as the "why" and evolution as the "how." God as Time starts to break a little here since Time, like evolution could be argued to be a mechanism for change.
Occasionally it's a driver but sometimes just a facilitator. Thus one can suggest that Time is merely another tool of the theist's concept of God and that God exists in an entirely different way. The only way to answer this is to either accept there is no why, thus Time is just Time therefore God doesn't exist, or that God is something else, separate from time, and that brings us right back to square one...
What is God?
And to answer that we need to figure out if God actually exists.....
;-)
Have a great weekend, a lovely "Time", and may the "God(s)" smile upon your endeavours.
till next time
Sarah
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