Is there a God?

I am not an atheist, I am not religious, I am not even really agnostic. I do have strong feelings, however, about meaning, God or the lack of it which I think justify my characteristic ambiguity on this subject.

The first thing I want to state here is that I think we have been rather unfair to the concept of God in the 21st Century. We have not only neglected the concept, but also put considerable taboo on the idea that people could totally believe in any sort of holy scripture if it interferes with our preconceived societal norms. To give an example, it is conceived as odd - and one would probably castigated as half-mad - if one wanted to commit their life to rural obscurity in some way-off Buddhist monastic order. The reason I think this is probably unfair is that humans have no way of disproving or proving God. Humans cannot prove anything without reference to a set of values that they pull out of thin air. Humans cannot prove that humans have equal worth without cautiously making assumptions about what humans should value. There is no self-evident reason for the idea that humans should have equal worth – however, for whatever reason, most people have decided to cautiously base some aspect of our value system upon these foundations. There are many reasons why I think it is somewhat sensible to do so, but this is not the point at the moment. Instead, it is the shaky nature of these foundations need to be emphasised. The fact that humans have no self-evident proof for anything, and all theories can be met with reasonable counter-argument mean there is no basic reason why God cannot exist. What’s more, it means that a value system totally and only determined by a God cannot be discounted by any form of rational proof – because no system of values can be.

This would be a good enough argument as it is for societies to be more tolerant and understanding of crazy people who go off to Buddhist monasteries. However, I think there’s something else here as well. Historically, it seems as if humans have had a need, an unrelenting desire for religious practise – something that attempts to colour meaning on the blank canvass of life. Modern western Europe is unique in that it sees that it rejects the divine. Although this does not necessarily prove much, it does show how central some explanation for why humans should be on this earth has been in the past. Gods have been a central feature of all human history – and for me, attempting to therefore dismiss God without cast-iron evidence, as a potential convincing argument to the question of why we are here, is really quite arrogant. More than anything, it seems symptomatic of an undeserved self-assuredness of the values we currently hold. The idea that we have progressed past the need for a God, because we have fuller explanations for what we should value from elsewhere seems naïve, considering how easy it would be for us to be wrong.

The historical role of religion has other consequences. God – or other figures playing similar roles in different cultures – provides a set of things which humans need to anchor their life, values and sense of themselves. God allows humans to explore a sense of purpose – and what is more, it seems as if the incomplete exploration of the the sort of purpose that God allows us to feign is an integral facet of human nature. It is therefore the case that religion may play an important social role that we should not attempt to necessarily dissuade. God – or rather any God – allows humans to get confused and awed into the sense that there might be something really significant to this life. It is probable that this characteristic is a necessary and natural one for human beings, regardless of whether it is fulfilled by religion. Without God, there is a sort of empty nothingness to life that humans naturally attempt to combat. In my mind, and from my experience of modern society, humans do this in a godless society practically automatically. Humans replace the need for God with a set of groundless values that they will to be the case – i.e the current set of values we hold dear in the west. In this way, rebutting religion may not actually do that much. Religion in the west is – somewhat convincingly - seen as a set of partly arbitrary set of odd rules that have no basis in fact. However, the absence of religion provides something very similar. The values we hold fulfil the same basic role of religion. We create values to provide ourselves with a sense that we as humans have some form of special mission – and that we are not just here to eat, sleep, mature, have sexual intercourse and then slowly and tragically wither away. Adding on to this, when there is no religion, we lose sight of the basis for the values we base our social existence on. There is a reason why Christians value human life equally – it is God made. God is sovereign and perfect, and therefore his creation must be respected. However, there is no real corresponding convincing moral reason for western atheists to do likewise, despite the fact that there is a seeming corresponding moral imperative to respect the equality of human life. It seems, therefore, that there is no reason to really prefer either system – they both do the same thing, and as it seems as if values are solely the expression of will in the absence of God, there is no possible reason one would prefer our values to religion without reference to precisely to those values. There is therefore a circularity to the value-systems in our society. There may be some ways to get round this problem, however, this is neither the place or time to discuss my opinions about quite how we do. The point is that our values are relatively contingent, certainly not rock-solid and can provide people with a set of things that they need or will naturally desire to gain – i.e. some mystic half-true basis for morality. This is similar in both godless and godly societies. The only reason we judge religious societies poorly is because we judge different value-systems poorly in the general sense - because we have different values to them!

The arrogance of fake belief

I have already spoken of why I think it may be wrong to say no to God just because of ‘science’ or some other new-fangled and supposedly modern innovations that render the concept of God null and void. However, I am not religious. Don’t get me wrong – I would love to be. However, I think there is nothing more bankrupt and arrogant when talking about the Christian God than believing in him just because of a self-made calculation. Variations of ‘Pascal’s wager’ – that one should believe in God because the consequences of not doing so are so extreme relative to what benefit you may get out of not believing in him – seem ridiculous to me. God, as a concept, requires one to totally respect and obey. God requires faith – faith that is total to an individual. To fake this because of a calculation is arrogant. It assumes that one can game God. Believing in God for reasons such as Pascal’s Wager won’t fool God if he does exist. God is highly unlikely to care about conformity over belief. Part of the core message of the New Testament is that the internal Sturm and Drang of one’s mind and heart matters - you need to believe yourself to have acted in accordance with God’s law. Fake belief in God will not cut it. This calculation can be replicated to other religions as well – albeit imperfectly. When speaking of the divine, it is arrogant to believe out of calculation, it necessarily places human reason above the divine, which is an implicit rejection of the total sovereignty of a God.

The Alternative?

Instead, I think the only legitimate reason that one could believe in God is through personal revelation. If God exists, or at least the Christian God, I think he would need to reveal himself personally to you to prove he exists. To think about why I think this needs to be the case, it helps to establish that there are two options here. Either an individual is persuaded by non-divine factors or divine factors. Either God has a hand in it, or he does not. If God does not have a hand in it, then one cannot be truly convinced of God, because one is not making a calculation that includes direct experience of the divine. By doing this, the individual justifying their faith is saying they believe in something which they patently have no experience of.  It’s like someone with no experience of algebra trying to solve an algebraic equation – it is impossible, because some core piece of knowledge necessary to make the choice is absent. In contrast, if God reveals himself to you, you are obliged to follow everything he says. That being said, I have one small qualm here which inches me a little away from believing in God. If it is God’s decision to reveal himself to people, why do some people get chosen – or at the very least why would people get more convincing signs than other people in the veracity of God’s existence? If God chooses to reveal himself to people, he more or less decides who goes to heaven or hell in his system. God, by revealing himself, provides evidence for people. God, as he is all-knowing, will know how convincing he is making himself to individuals he is revealing himself to. Presumably, therefore, even if we accept free will as a given, there is still a perplexing problem at the heart of Christianity. This is especially true as one has to fully experience God’s awe if one is to be a true Christian – as I said before, without experiencing a totally convincing conversion experience, one will not really be able to be a true Christian. Without full, unambiguous revelation, one is not believing in God, instead in one’s own will to believe in a God.

Final remarks

To conclude, I cannot believe in God unless he reveals himself to me. If he does reveal himself to me – then that’s great, but so far he has not. If he does reveal himself to me, then anything and everything he orders is just – it is one’s duty to not care what other people think.

This all being said, these mere ponderings can be overturned by extra-rational fudges by the divine. We cannot rule out that the divine is incomprehensible, in fact, there would be considerable reason to think that it should be our default position that the divine is incomprehensible. If this is the case, all reason bends as God would want it, and maybe there’s something I’ve missed. So, I have given warning, don’t take me too literally – it may eventually cost you eternal life!

Yours,

WFF