I hope to show in this
post why the traditional Judeo-Christian-Islamic idea
of God is inherently and irredeemably contradictory.
Now, at the outset I need
to make one thing perfectly clear. When we speak of the ‘traditional' idea of
God we are referring to the supposed and presumed existence of a
'supernatural,' 'infinite' and 'immortal' personal or superpersonal being who
is said to be all-powerful (omnipotent), all-knowing (omniscient), all-loving
(omnibenevolent) and everywhere present (omnipresent), and who, at least
according to the traditional interpretation of the Christian scriptures,
is said to have taken human form uniquely in the person of Jesus Christ, who traditionally
is said and held by Christians to be both fully human as well as fully divine.
One more thing---this infinite God is said to be entirely separate from His [sic] finite creation, even
though it is asserted that it is possible for us to 'know' this God.
Here’s one reason why the traditional theistic concept of God is inherently and irredeemably contradictory. In the course of this post I will give you some other reasons as well. If a supposedly supernatural God had an existence or presence before reality, that is, before the supposed creation of all that which is, then that God must be ‘unreal’, and therefore not God. Why? Because it is impossible to postulate a reality before it was present.
Christian apologists and other theists postulate the existence of
some ‘atemporal’ reality, but that is a meaningless
proposition. Why? Because action implies multiple states, and multiple states
in turn require some form of time. Now, it is asserted that God exists ‘outside’
of all time, but the God of the Bible and the Qur'an is supposed to both think and create. ‘“For My thoughts are not
your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD’ (Is 55:8). ‘Your thoughts are of great worth to
me, O God. How many there are!’ (Ps 139:17). ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth’ (Gen 1:1). ‘I form the light, and
create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things’
(Is 45:7). ‘That is Allah, your Lord; there is no deity except Him, the Creator of all things, so worship Him. And He is Disposer of all things’ (Qur’an
6:102). ‘Allah is Ever-Knowing, Ever-Wise’ (Qur’an
8:71).
How,
please think about all this for a moment. Thinking
and creating (making) things are both
time-related activities. In other
words, God is supposedly timeless but also causally efficacious, that is, God
can affect material objects (the latter being a time-related concept). However, the only truly timeless things that
we know are abstract objects---for example, numbers and sets---and they have no
causal properties. But, God is supposedly abstract as well as having causal
properties. That is a contradiction, and nothing with a contradictory nature
exists or can exist. So God---at least the traditional theistic God---cannot, and
therefore does not, exist.
The
well-known Christian apologist William Lane Craig [pictured right], in his book
Time and Eternity: Exploring God’s Relationship to Time (2002), states that ‘outside of time, God is eternal;
and with creation, God has entered time’.
Well, if Craig is right, it means that God must have changed, but God,
so we are told, is supposedly immutable. Now, if God is not subject to time,
having entered the natural world from ‘outside’ (whatever that means, for it is
impossible to conceive of anything existing ‘outside’ the universe), God can no
longer be said to be supernatural or infinite.
Why? Because it is impossible to speak meaningfully of the supposed
infinite acting in the finite, the supposed non-temporal acting in time or
entering into time.
Here’s
another contradiction that cannot be resolved. I ask you this---why would a
supposedly supernatural God (again, how can we conceive of anything being ‘supernatural’)
bother to create a ‘natural’ universe, assuming for the moment that the
universe was ‘created.’ Did God feel a lack of something? Did God want company,
or something? If so, then God was not perfect in Himself/Herself/Itself. You
see, so-called creationism and perfectionism---God is said to be both creator
as well as a perfect being---are mutually exclusive.
Of course, there is no such thing as the 'universe.' That's
right! You see, the word 'universe' is just that---a word. It simply means the sum 'total' of all there is, with the
totality of all things being what is known as a 'closed system.' Each 'thing'
is a cause of at least one other 'thing' as well as being the effect of some other 'thing,' so everything is
explainable by reference to everything else. End of story.
Hence, all theological talk of the supposed need for some 'first
cause' is, well, nonsense. As the Scottish-Australian philosopher Professor John Anderson [pictured left] pointed out, 'there can be no
contrivance of a "universe" or totality of things, because the
contriver would have to be included in the totality of things.' (In any event, the entire notion of a
supposed 'Being'---the 'contriver'---whose essential attributes [for example, omnipresence,
omnipotence and omniscience] are non-empirical is unintelligible and inherently
contradictory. In any event, why would a supposedly supernatural 'contriver'
bother to 'create' a natural universe, assuming (once again)
that it was created?
Here’s
another inconsistency, assuming you're still 'with' me. God is supposedly blameless, yet there is the supposed
reality of divine punishment, hell and eternal damnation. Those two ideas don’t
sit comfortably together. I much prefer the Buddhist idea that we are punished by our 'sins,' not for them. Further,
the existence of gratuitous evil and suffering in the world is incompatible
with the notion of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God. Evil or suffering is gratuitous if, in the
view of reasonable persons, the world would be improved by its absence. Now, an
omnipotent God would be perfectly able to create human beings that were
genuinely free but who never used their freewill to do evil, but only to do
good. However, it is said, at least by Christian apologists, that God knowingly
created human beings who, God knew in advance, would use their
freewill to do evil. I am sorry, but such a God is then morally responsible for all the evil and suffering in the world that has in fact ensued. Why? Because, as I have said, if God is all-powerful, God could
have created human beings that were genuinely free, but who only used their
freewill to do good. For example, a recovering alcoholic, who wishes to stay
sober, chooses not to drink, one day at a time. Yes, he or she could choose to
drink, but they consistently choose
to exercise their freewill not to drink. If human beings can do that, then
surely any decent God, who was all-loving and all-powerful, would want to
create people like that.
Now,
if the existence of certain state of affairs is logically incompatible with the purported existence of an all-powerful
and all-loving God, or if it is intrinsically
improbable that those states of affairs would subsist in a universe with such a God and more probable than not that they would subsist in a universe without such a God, then there are more than good grounds for believing
that such a God does not exist.
Here’s
another contradiction or dilemma. (I
could give you many, many more, but that's for another day---and post.) Does God have a body? If so, where can we
locate that body? You see, if God does not have a body, the alleged properties
attributed to God (for example, that God is powerful, loving, good, and just)
are totally misleading. Why? Because all such predicates apply to bodies whose
behaviours are publicly observable. They do not apply to so-called ‘disembodied
minds.’
In
this post I have tried to use logic. Now, when I debate Christian apologists,
they invariably assert that God is ‘above’ logic. That cannot be the case.
God---or at least any concept of God---cannot be ‘above’ logic, whatever ‘above’
means. You see, the assertion that God is above logic is not an a priori proposition. Where is the theist’s
proof for this assertion? In fact, the theist, although rejecting the
applicability of logic, is still applying logic, albeit wrongly, in their arguments
for the existence of God. The theist is tying themselves into a knot of their own
making. What, I ask you, is the point of reasoning about God if the principal
tool of reason---logic---is inapplicable. Never forget this---logic is about things, not thought. Logic is about how things
are related to other things. In logic it is always
a case of … what is. As philosopher John Anderson pointed out many times, there is only
one order or level of reality such that a single logic applies to all things
and how they are related to each other. There can be nothing ‘above’ or ‘below’
the proposition---not even God. If anything were above logic we simply could
not trust our senses. That’s right---if God is above logic there can be no
interpretation or logical extrapolation of God’s word, nor could there be any system
of apologetics. For example, the various arguments for the Christian doctrine
of the Trinity would immediately and totally collapse.
The
theist is often a hypocrite. Theists do in fact use logic when expedient,
that is, when it suits their purposes. Take, for example, the law of
contradiction (that is, that anything with a contradictory nature cannot
exist). The theist affirms that God cannot contradict Himself [sic]. Thus, God
cannot create a rock that He [sic] can’t lift. God cannot create a round
square. God cannot make the immoral moral. God may be all-powerful, says the
theist, but God is still constrained by logic. If that were not the case, then
there would be nothing to stop God from creating a rock so heavy that God could
not lift it and then in the next moment lift it.
In short, a God ‘above’ logic doesn’t make any sense---not that a God subject to logic does either, as I’ve tried to show. Be that as it may, the idea of a God ‘above’ logic is inconsistent with the very attributes that go to make up the traditional theistic concept of God. Reason and observation tell us that nothing can be done by anything, including God, that is not otherwise part of God’s capabilities.
In short, a God ‘above’ logic doesn’t make any sense---not that a God subject to logic does either, as I’ve tried to show. Be that as it may, the idea of a God ‘above’ logic is inconsistent with the very attributes that go to make up the traditional theistic concept of God. Reason and observation tell us that nothing can be done by anything, including God, that is not otherwise part of God’s capabilities.
Assuming, for the moment that the
traditional God of theism does in fact exist, that God would not be above logic
nor below it. As with morality or goodness, reason would have to be seen as part
of the very nature of God. Yes, any sensible concept of God would have to accept
that God does not ‘submit’ to logic nor arbitrarily ‘create’ logic. Reason would
have to be seen to be part of God’s nature. A sensible believer would also have
to accept that God cannot contradict His/Her/Its own nature.
Are
there more sensible concepts of ‘God’? Indeed, there are. Here is a previous
post of mine that may be of interest to thinking---as opposed to believing---people.
RELATED
POSTS
MINDFULNESS AND THE TOTALITY OF ALL THINGS
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.