How we should and shouldn’t answer questions of God’s existence
A question someone recently asked online is “Why do we think we can ask questions about God and get good answers?” He argued that all we can present is opinions, which prove nothing.
Now obviously, we are unlikely to produce proof of God’s existence or lack of it through such discourse, but do this mean either the question or the answers it generates are all bad responses?
Take the most basic religion question. Is there a God? Answers can only run to a/. Yes there is a God. B/. No there is no such thing as God or a god. C/. No way of knowing either way.
Where the quality of the answer lies is in its originality and how the replier qualifies the answer. Someone believing in God may draw on personal emotional conviction, the fact that thousands of people believe in God, a smaller number claim to have met him, and philosophers have stated arguments like First Cause Theory. This is simply that all things happen because something else happened before them, causing them to happen. A ball rolls down a slope because someone kicked it. That someone kicked the ball is because they like football. They like football because their parents liked the game, etc.
To many religionists, the idea that God doesn’t exist seems frightening and inexplicable. Yes he exists is good enough for them in that it doesn’t open up a whole can of worms. I.e.; How can / does he exist? Is he just as described in the Bible, despite its inherent contradictions? Does her bring wrath or love? Is he a jealous God? Is he willing to tolerate a devil and evil or too weak to prevent them? Is he omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient? If he can do anything, can he lose himself or find something he can’t do? Is he male, female? Is he even humanoid? Is he pure energy? Where did he come from? Can he defy the laws of physics? No to many of these questions weakens his chances of existing or of being the God many believe him to be.
With the Universe, if we put God before the Big Bang Theory, we have a First Cause, prime mover or uncaused cause, in that God had no preceding cause.
Such would be a typical well considered argument for the case for a God existing.
A case for there being no such thing as God would run counter to this on many levels. A large number of people believing in something does not prove it so. Many people believed the Universe runs round the Earth, and not in our Earth orbiting round a Sun, which is not even in the centre of the known Universe. Millions of Children believe in Santa but (well, let’s not spoil the fun there, but you can hopefully see where that thread of logic runs).
The few people who say they have met God can be considered fanatics, liars, or drug fiends, or very mistaken.
First Cause? There is no reason why the primary mover would have to be a god, after all where did god come from? Parents, other gods, etc. Claims that he just always was there are no better than trying to say something was there before the Big Bang, or something just was. God ceases to be a cause at all, let alone the first or prime cause, when you question what could have happened before God.
The last option isn’t just ‘don’t know’, which takes the replier out of the loop; it is a positive reply that the answer cannot be known. Unless the sky opens and a god waves down at everyone, clearly visible to a mass of people, the debate on his existence or lack of it will continue. If he manifests, faith becomes obsolete. We would know he exists. In his absence, any answer has that edge of ‘what if’ to stop it being 100% Only the dead know, at least if gods exist. Being in oblivion doesn’t prove anything. It just stops the dead person thinking about the question. In a scientific empirical way, we cannot know God as things stand at present. If anything, the laws of science make the concept of God obsolete. They qualify Nietzsche’s rant that ‘God is dead’. The Big Bang created the planets. Natural selection makes people, rainbows are light refraction. The things we once saw as proof of God have become works of nature and science. God ceases to matter other than to those clinging to the yes and no answers.
Good answers to the question take what is stated already about such a debate and build on it. Note that this is not an answer as to whether or not there is a God, but an analysis of how that question is raised and responded to. I could add a poll here asking if readers think there is a God or not but by only answering yes or no, we prove nothing, whichever answer polls the majority of the vote.
That God doesn’t pop out and answer the question for himself leaves me inclined to surmise that the possibility is that there is no god out there able to do so.
In answering the question of god existing or not, we say much about ourselves and that makes it a very important question and we have to think hard to present a good answer and a good us
Arthur Chappell
