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Does God Exist

Page history last edited by markinpowys@... 2 years, 8 months ago

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Does God Exist?

Introduction

While at university and studying philosophy, one of the topics we covered was Ontology: the branch of philosophy that (according to Wikipedia, naturally) "studies concepts such as existence, being, becoming, and reality. It includes the questions of how entities are grouped into basic categories and which of these entities exist on the most fundamental level."  During our classes - and outside them, of course - we played around with the obvious question: does God exist?  But I don't recall any serious examination of that question: it was mostly an excuse for people to articulate their prejudices and vent their feelings about related topics.

 

It seems to me that the question is fine, apart from a basic lack of clarity concerning three of the key words used.

  • What does 'God' mean?
  • What does 'exist' mean?
  • And, in this context, what does 'does' mean?

 

To state the blindingly obvious: if we cannot agree what the question means, we are unlikely to make much progress in finding an answer.

 

 

Some Introductory Comments

It seems trivially obvious that the word 'God' (or 'god') has many possible, different and often mutually exclusive meanings.  Taking a few at random ...

  • An omnipotent, personal creator.
  • The ground of our being.
  • A collective noun for a group of divine beings.
  • A specific character in a specific religion.
  • A specific character in a specific mythology.
  • An unmoved mover.
  • A being than which no greater can be conceived

 

It is also probably obvious that the word 'exists' also has multiple mutually exclusive meanings, depending on the context in which it is used.  And sometimes the meaning is clearest when existence is denied.

  • I point to a specific apple and say, "This apple exists."
  • Dodos do not exist.
  • Unicorns do not exist.
  • Pinky exists as a character in 'Brighton Rock', but not in 'The Power and the Glory'.
  • Faster-than-light travel does not exist.
  • A proof of Pythagoras' Theorem exists.
  • The number one exists.
  • Numbers exist.
  • The square root of minus one exists.
  • Love exists, as do hate, hope and despair.

 

In the absence of an agreed meaning of these terms, the meaning of 'god exists' is, I presume, a claim that there is a valid meaning of the word 'god' concerning which it is true to say that this god exists, for a valid meaning of the word 'exists'.  In other words, the claim is so vague as to be meaningless.

 

Physical or conceptual reality?

 

In the above list there are different levels of reality, some of which are only real in terms of a concept within an intelligent brain. e.g. The number one isn't something, it is a descriptor for something that is observed by an intelligence able to grasp the idea of counting. Likewise the other numbers. The square root of minus one (i) doubly so, as it it impossible to point at something(s) and say there are  i rabbits, or i coins.  Emotions are like this too.  There is no physical thing that is 'love' or 'empathy' or 'hope'.  But those words are descriptors for things that the majority of people experience and we understand what people mean when they say, for example, that they hate something.  Some things are also conditional, such as the assertion that faster than light travel does not exist, in that it should be qualified by 'as far as our current understanding allows'.  There is also perhaps a difference between saying that 'dodos do not exist and 'unicorns do not exist' as  dodos did once exist (and therefore may still, depending on our understanding of time relativity, but as far as we know unicorns haven't (although the rhinoceros does of course!).

 

 

The Christian God

Arguments about the existence of the Christian God generally assume a common understanding of 'God', but different Christians in the past have used all the various (generally mutually exclusive) definitions of 'God' listed above as their understanding of the deity they are talking about.  You can use the term 'the Christian God' if you choose, and it may sometimes be meaningful, but it is generally as helpful a term as 'the English person'.

 

It is my personal understanding that the most correct and helpful use of 'the Christian God' is to refer to the God which Jesus of Nazareth believed in and taught about.  This turns the issue from a question of my personal definition to a question of what we can understand from the historic record.  [Paul - I don't think it matters at all what I believe God to be, but I think it matters a great deal who and what Jesus (and the early Church) believed God to be].  [Mark - Of course before this definition for to be meaningful, we have to first assume that the sayings and words of Jesus attributed to him are in fact accurate and to be trusted, secondly that there is a qualification that what the words actually mean is something that is clear from the recorded text - that so much disagreement clearly exists suggests this is not the case.  I also don't think it is particularly easy to know what the early church believed about anything as so much of the documentation appeared later.]

 

 

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