Objectivism 101

Lesson 3: Reason Applied to the God-Concept

Problems with the god-concept

Our first question must be, what are we studying ? Without a basic identification of what we are talking about, we cannot examine it.

A standard monotheist definition is usually composed of these three parts :

1. God is a personal being.
2. God is the creator of the universe.
3. God is infinitely powerful.

We immediately fall into our first problem : how do we know this ? What instances of gods do we observe in reality that help us integrate the concept "god" ?

No one has ever seen a god in person, legends notwithstanding. All our instances of gods are in religious scriptures. But the validity of these religious stories is not established. Therefore we cannot verify whenever our definition is rational or not.

But that is not necessarily a problem. After all, we do define concepts for things which are not yet observed, even in science. But we should at least have a substantial, non-contradictory definition.

Now we have a second problem. For we have defined God as both creator of the universe, and infinitely powerful. Both of these attributes imply that God is immaterial, supernatural. But this doesn't mean anything, since we have no concrete definition of what the properties of supernaturalism are.

Let me give you an example. I say the following sentence : "the ball is red". You understand this sentence. It makes sense because balls are the kind of things that can be red. They are made of solid matter.

Now I say the following sentence : "the sound is red". Does this sentence make sense ? In a metaphorical way, maybe, but not in a strict way. Notes are not made of solid matter, and so they cannot be red. They can be soft, or loud, or low-pitched, or high-pitched. But they cannot be red. The reverse is also true : a ball cannot be loud.

Now, if we start from the premise that a god is supernatural, does the sentence "the god is red" make sense ?

The answer is : we do not know. Because we cannot define what supernaturalism consists of, apart from it not being natural (material), we cannot understand what are the properties of a god. Likewise, sentences such as "God is good" or "God is just" may sound descriptive, but we cannot judge them at all. They are simply undefined.

As George Smith explains in Atheism : The Case Against God (p60) :

As long as the Christian God remains in the realm of the unknowable, as long as he is totally different in kind from anything with which we have experience, we can never meaningfully ascribe positive qualities to God. To say that God is "good" or "wise" is to say nothing more than some unknowable being possesses some unknown qualities in an unknowable way. The positive qualities of God only repeat, in a somewhat devious fashion, that God is beyond man's comprehension. As one theologian cryptically admits, "God is so far from being meaningless that its real meaning is more positive than anything we can comprehend."

(for more on the god-concept's undefined nature, read Atheism : The Case Against God, p29-47)

Is a coherent definition of "god" possible ? Certainly. But we would need to present either empirical instances of the concept, or some kind of coherent concept (on the pantheist alternative, see Atheism : The Case Against God p32).

The undefined nature of the god-concept is already enough to stop our investigation. Obviously, we cannot examine something which has no nature whatsoever. However, for the rest of this lesson, we will assume that the term "supernatural" has some meaning yet undiscovered, and analyze the subsequent arguments.

In this case, we do not need a competing alternative, since we are simply trying to evaluate if the concept "god" is a valid concept. If we were to evaluate whenever belief in god (theism and its associated religions) is rational, we would have to compare it with the alternatives - including Objectivism.

No empirical data is available either, since we are dealing purely in the realm of concepts. While simple observations are needed in all cases (basic observations such as "the universe exists"), they are not the kind of thing susceptible to quantification.

  1  2  3  4  5  6