The Contradictory Nature of God (Part I)

This is part one of an essay I have been planning to write for a few weeks. It is a strictly philosophical essay, though I will move in and out of the usual philosophical parlance in order to communicate with my audience in a more general way. It will concern a number of topics: omniscience, omnibenevolence, etc., and other issues with the ontological argument and so on. It is written from an atheistic point of view, but is purposefully not dogmatic. It is intended to clarify debate on the topic and to provoke thought -- not to offend or convert.

Part I is an introduction and a short overview of the problems I have found with the philosophy of religion (unfortunately, I am only accustomed with the christian/Western tradition -- I make this 'bias' clear here, as it is my 'area of expertise'). I do hope you comment either here or via facebook and twitter -- get involved, I'd love to know your thoughts.

I
The problem with essays on the philosophy of religion

 

God is often described as omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent. ‘He’ is also described in various other ways – some claim that ‘He’ has necessary existence, is perfect in every way and cares about our lives – others quibble about the details and instead maintain that there is simply such a thing but that he is unknowable.

This essay will be a critique on what I see as the vacuous (at best) or arrogant claims from believers who not only think (“know”) that there is a God, but that ‘He’ is all sorts of things: all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good, for example. There are, of course, infinitely many varieties of these claims – it would be impossible to explore all of them. Thus, I will be concerning myself with some of the major ones that are presented to me in the Western tradition of belief. I hope that those whose conception of God is not directly addressed by this essay do not merely wipe their brow and continue blindly, having felt a bullet passed them by – I intend for these readers to apply the same sort of thinking on their own conception and question what they really “know” – and how much of it is guesswork (or, worse, random designation of certain attributes to this higher power of theirs).



I will begin by explain my reasons for doing this – for going over ground that has been gone over many times before. It seems to me that when discussing, for example, the so-called ‘arguments’ for God, it is largely Christian philosophers of religion (“theologians”) who write the most widely-read theses. This is inevitable, but from my own studies I have found there to be a serious error in the entire school of the philosophy of religion. Throughout their articles (I am here referring mainly to philosophers of religion in the analytic tradition who explore various arguments for God and his nature) they display their great prowess, their adept use of logical arguments, incisively cutting swathes through ambiguities and highlight the issues in a beautiful way. However, time after time – in every single article I have read – there comes a point when their “faith” seeps into the piece and the sustained focus they have maintained throughout, in undoing the arguments of other philosophers unravels. Often, it is something as simple as ‘God being perfect . . .’ – which seems harmless enough.

In reality, this is exactly the sort of unthinking use of language that they pick others up on but seem to hypocritically ignore when it is they who introduce bias without justification. Whilst we could grant them that God is perfect, as a premise, to allow their argument to build – they never highlight that such a premise might be contentious. They take it as given that the reader (whether religious, anti-religious or apathetic) agrees that God would be perfect (or all-good, all-knowing, etc.). The point is that not only is this rare – it is impossible. The philosophers here are indulging their own egoistic and idiosyncratic form of belief and are burdening the reader with their own views which the reader neither wants nor appreciates – certainly in my case.

 

I am, indeed, an atheist. I am also, however, completely open-minded. I question my beliefs as often as I possibly can without losing my sense of identity. If God reveals “him”self to me, or is in any way proven, I will be the first to renounce my mistake and commit to whatever it is “He” wants me to do. But this article is not intended to turn believers into atheists – it is simply an explanation into what is described as ‘the nature of God’. I will let it be known at the outset that I do not think the human mind could ever know the nature of God – man does not even know himself. This needs no justification except recourse to experience. Show me the man who says he truly knows himself and I will show you a liar.

 

This essay, then, is simply an attempt to explore some important question into how and why people believe in God. I hope it will be interesting and thought-provoking to believers, agnostics and atheists alike. I am sure that many will have spotted the irony in that I have been making use of idiosyncratic punctuation without justifying it – this was all for effect, I assure you.

I have placed certain terms within sardonic quotation marks because I wanted to highlight the problem with discussion about religion. It is taken for granted by many that God is “He”. This is an inheritance from the Christian religion. This is the first of my problems with essays on the philosophy of religion: I will use the example of atheists, because I am one, but the point remains for other non-Christian.

 

I am aware of my own context: as a Briton alive in the twenty-first century, it is explainable why the term “He” is a common referent for God, as the United Kingdom is inherently a Christian one (although it is increasingly secular – but this is another topic altogether). But if we are to debate religious subject-matter responsibly, I cannot allow myself to fall into tradition or habit – at any point. It seems to be obvious that if there was a God, “He” would not be a “He” at all – why would a higher power of any sort be considered in terms of gender? Why not give him an age, an ethnicity or a sub-culture too? It seems incredibly short-sighted to attribute human features to God.

 

This is controversial in itself, I realise – thus, I will clarify: I accept that God’s existence is possible, and during this essay I will specifically ‘believe’ in God, or propose that “He” does exist – but in doing so, I will be exploring those features of “Him” that seem acceptable to give to “Him”. A human nature is not one of them. Bearing in mind that humans did not exist for millions of years since the beginning of time, and that it is more than likely, statistically-speaking, that there is other life on planets in other universes, throughout the history of “time” (an admittedly human concept), it seems ferociously arrogant to me to assume that God is in any way related to humans. That alone will forever stop me conceiving God as a “Him”, a “Her” or an old man with a beard. This issue being raised, I will consider it at more length in the next section – the function of this is merely to highlight the tenuous use of the word “He” when referring to God. I will be no longer be using this system of quotation and will refer to God as “it” or some other gender-neutral term.

 

On, then, to the common (mis)conceptions of God’s nature.

A Short Story,
Published 08 October 2012

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