What is God?

What are people talking about when they talk about God?

Let’s start from some assumptions. Let’s assume that human belief in an almighty God is more than just foolishness and ignorance. Let’s give the billions of believers through the millennia some credit and grant that they see something at work in the universe that they cannot deny. Religious people are often heard to say, “Look around you! The evidence for God is everywhere!”

Let’s also assume a scientific approach to the question. This is no small step, for the great majority of believers don’t believe science has much to say about this question (and some say about any question!). But the scientific method has proven again and again it can come up with useful answers to difficult questions, and actually each and every one of us relies on the scientific method to some degree in practically everything we do. All the method needs to go to work for us is solid evidence.

So two assumptions: the religious believers are seeing evidence everywhere for something they call God; and the scientific method might be able to look at the evidence and tell us what God is.

Can we know what God is?

All knowledge derives from experience. That is to say, whatever we know comes in some direct or indirect way from something that has really happened. Either we can see it for ourselves, or we learn of it from someone who has seen it. Or, importantly, we know it by induction, which is to say, we infer it because all evidence seems to point to it and it looks like there is a high probability that it is so.

As I have argued in an earlier blog post, we can never be 100% certain of anything – we can only say there is a very high (or very low) probability of something being true. We know the sun will rise in the morning, because given our past experience it’s a pretty good bet. But we also know that an asteroid could strike the Earth overnight and ruin the morning for us.

How can we “know” that the sun will rise in the morning, and at the same time “know” that it might not? Because neither is certain. They are only probabilities based on real-life observation of the movements of heavenly bodies. No knowledge is certain. Knowledge is nothing more than a reliable guide to action. Science, and all knowledge, are all about probability, about reasonable certainty rather than absolute certainty.

Every day in life we assess the probabilities of this or that happening and plan and act accordingly. Common sense – and the best science – tell us that the physical world usually behaves in predictable ways. Our brains are therefore wired to look for patterns, and out of patterns to infer cause and effect, history and trajectory, the better to make intelligent decisions.

Our ability to identify patterns is critical to our survival as a species, which is why it has been hard-wired into our brains. For example, take a look at the photo above. It’s just a rusty piece of antique machinery, but we instantly see a face. This effect is called Pareidolia. (For some fun examples of this effect, see the Pareidolia group on Flickr.)

When we look at the universe, we immediately see patterns emerge. Some take this as evidence of the craftsmanship of a human-like intelligence. And it is. It is because the intelligence of the universe resides within us. Our intelligence is an expression of the intelligence inhering in the universe itself.

It’s important to understand that we see humanity in the universe because we are of the universe. The logic of the universe is our own logic, the “logos” (or “point”) of the universe is our logos. We are so inextricably bound to the cosmos as to be an expression of or a microcosm of the universe itself. We carry the logic of the universe into our daily lives. Unsurprisingly, therefore, we see ourselves reflected in it.

While the bible says that God created man in his own image, atheists tend to believe that God was created in the image of man… In fact when we look at the universe, we stand before a sort of mirror that reflects our own characteristics – and it does so because our own characteristics are inherited from this universe and are not separate from it but indelibly a part of it. To use the words of the religious, we are one in God.

This, I think, is what religious people are getting at when they say God is everywhere, God is omnipotent and omniscient, etc. They are saying God is actually the universe. Scientists would say the universe is actually the universe. If we assume that what the religious people are referring to is not an old-fashioned, anthropomorphic, and fundamentally pagan view of God as an old man with a white beard and robe living on a mountaintop or cloud, but is actually the universe itself, then we have some evidence we can work with.

Many religious people would agree that God is the universe and all that is in it. Others, led by more sophisticated theologians, would argue that God is supernatural, outside of the natural universe. God can only be known by his works. This is of course the showstopper for intelligent discussion and the ultimate hidey-hole for the religious. If the existence of God lies outside the world of evidence, it lies outside the world of knowledge, and we must throw up our hands and say, “We don’t know.” It’s just a way to say, “We don’t have any arguments left, but our blind faith will see us through.”

But we are here to take religion seriously, and if God can only be known by his works, does that in the end make any difference to a scientific analysis? After all, His works are the universe, and the scientific method has proven itself the most robust approach to understanding the universe. There are scientists who carry on the business of science in a perfectly rigorous way, and yet believe that there is something outside the natural world. Very well, it makes no difference, science carries on.

Could it be that God is really the universe and all that’s in it and therefore that science is the best and most reliable method to understanding God?

Sartre and the Meaning of Life

“Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre

I would agree with Sartre, except on his point that being eternal is an illusion. Life has no meaning if you have no understanding, as Sartre apparently did not, that you are part of the eternal.

Of course our mortal bodies inevitably perish, and our consciousness with them, but we live on in other ways – in our children, in the memories of those who knew us, and in our contributions to humanity. But in a larger sense, we are the eternal. This is what gives our life what meaning it has.

Eastern philosophy tells us life is a swirling brook. We individuals are like the small eddies and whirlpools that form around certain rocks and fallen trees in the brook. We come and go in a moment, and then come back again, yet somehow each new instance follows a recognizable pattern, is recognizable as one of us. The brook itself is recognizably a brook, the mountain from which it flows is recognizably a mountain, which is itself on land flowing to a sea on what is recognizably a planet.

The swirls and eddies come and go but are indistinguishable from the eternal. They are an expression of the eternal. Contrary to M. Sartre, humanity is an expression of the eternal, and our meaning is indistinguishable from the meaning of it all.

And from this insight comes theories of God. God the creator, God the omniscient, God the omnipresent, God the holy spirit that flows through us all. God that gives meaning to our lives.

The childish notion of God as a bearded elder on a mountaintop, the architect who draws up the blueprints of our lives, is a projection of our own image onto the heavens. We are that creature who makes a plan and creates. As Karl Marx said,

“A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality.”
— (Capital, Vol. I, Chap. 7, Pt. 1)

Our capacity to visualize is certainly one of the defining features of humanity. But it comes at a price. We live in a world of symbols that continually encroach on reality, and sometimes become more real to us than reality itself. We have Santa Claus, we have ghosts, we have first-person video games, we have sports fantasy leagues, we have our avatars, and all of these are expressions of and symbols of ourselves and of humanity. And we have God.

Of course, humanity is in the midst of outgrowing its superstitious and primitive concepts of God as some sort of all-powerful father-figure with a flowing white beard. Humanity has looked out into the vastness of space and seen a great universe that cares little for our conceits. That an omnipotent, curiously human-like being has personally created all the complexities of the universe and has a carefully mapped-out plan for each and every one of us is a childish fantasy. This is the concept of God it is right to deny.

But it is an unjustifiable conceptual leap to go from pointing out what should be obvious – that there is no Zeus on the mountaintop taking care of us – to saying that because there is no great CEO in the sky who has given our life meaning, it must be the case that our lives have no meaning at all.

Those evolutionists who say there is no purpose to it all confuse me. They claim to be men and women of science. They claim special insight into the development of species. And yet in their zeal to deny God they remain wilfully blind to the obvious – that every living creature is imbued with great purpose, indeed is defined by it.

I will take up the issue of the real meaning of life in a later post. Suffice it to say for the moment that the meaning of life is not to be found on a mountaintop, but in our actual day-to-day experience of life as it is lived by humanity. If your life had no meaning, you would not get out of bed and go to work, you would not chase sexual partners, you would not eat, you would not help a friend. The purpose of life is to flourish as an individual and as a member of a species that lives on a planet that also has to flourish as a condition of our survival.

There are some religious folk who recognize that an anthropomorphic God is indefensible. They try to evade the question by simply saying that God is the universal – He is everything around us, He lives in all things, He is the earth and the heavens, etc. If God is indistinguishable from the natural world, then it seems clear that God, whom we cannot see, is a symbol for the natural world that we can see. In which case, why worship the symbol when we should be worshipping the reality?

As Joseph Campbell said, and here I am paraphrasing, those who take religion literally are like diners at a restaurant who try to eat the pictures off the menu. They are missing the real feast.

The Mainspring of Intention

Where does intention come from? Why do we know that some things have intentions while others do not?

In an earlier post, I noted that the earliest forms of life were unintentional by-products of chemical interactions under certain environmental conditions. When some elements (such as oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, etc.) come into contact with other elements, they will bind and form complex molecules and chemical compounds. No matter the urgency with which these elements are drawn to one another, they bind as a strictly unintentional by-product of their inherent properties.

I also noted the obvious, that those things that do not persist through time cease to exist. Turn this around, and we can say that those things that exist have the capacity to persist through time.

A living creature is the result of a series of reactions and interactions between groups of chemical compounds and the environment in which they find themselves. Through processes that are under active investigation and research and about which scientific understanding is growing daily, certain types of chemical compounds – amino acids, proteins, RNA, DNA, and other genetic materials developed the capacity to record the sequence of organic chemical reactions that result in a given life form.

We can therefore think of DNA and other genetic materials as a kind of technology for recording a pattern of reactions between chemical elements that result in a life form. This is why DNA is often referred to as the “blueprint of life”.

DNA allows life forms to reproduce – in effect, to make copies of themselves. But because copies are not always perfect, the development of DNA unleashed the grand experiment we call evolution. Over millions of years, an inestimable number of imperfect copies, mutations, and variations of RNA and DNA were produced, and for the most part vanished just as quickly as they arose.

But some of these genetic variations gave the creatures that carried them a greater ability to persist through time. Some of this genetic material recorded patterns that even in simple life forms we can begin to describe as “behaviours”. Some behaviours helped the creatures that displayed them to survive and reproduce. Other behaviours led to extinction.

Over a myriad of generations, our genetic material and our DNA “learned” what organic composition and what behaviours will allow a species of living creature to survive and to persist through time.

Genetic learning results in intention. Understand that this intentionality is hard-wired into the instincts of every living creature. Behaviours that help an individual and its species to flourish become the instinctual intentions of that species. Every creature from the simplest virus on up unconsciously or consciously intends to behave in such a way as to enable its species to survive, to persist through time, and to flourish.

We consider a behaviour to be intelligent insofar as it accomplishes its intentions and enables the creature exhibiting this behaviour to flourish.

Which brings us to a consideration of the concept of “Intelligent Design”. According to this theory, the universe and the creatures within it show signs of having been designed by an intelligent force, which is usually interpreted as an omniscient God. Various authors, among them Wayne Dyer, author of “The Power of Intention”, argue that God’s intention is immanent in every living creature.

If we understand the origin of intentionality as the intention to survive, to persist through time, and to flourish as an individual and as a species, then yes, we can say that there is intelligence and intention immanent in every living creature. But from this there is no logical necessity to impute the existence of a superior being, still less a personal God. The intelligence and intention inherent in the universe is a logically necessary result of the march of time.

This is the “logos” of which Heraclitus wrote as the fundamental organizing principle, the logic of the universe. This is that same Logos we read of in the bible: “In the beginning was the logos [usually translated from the Greek λóγος as “the word”], and the logos was with God and the logos was God.”

One of my goals for this blog is to map basic religious concepts to natural phenomena, to show that religious symbology is more than just fanciful mythology, but that is a pointer to and a metaphor for characteristics of the real world.

In the language of religion, the logos is the Holy Spirit. It is the immanence of God in nature. And Christ is “the logos made flesh”.