What Is God? Ctd

A reader writes:

Your empasse that your caritas-embodying universe should not, and in fact, cannot, permit. 

Pascal was wise when he dedicated his Pensees to "the one who is so made that he cannot believe." As your buddy Hitch is so fond of saying, "That's me." And believe me, I tried. I left religion when I realized I simply didn't have the capacity to believe a fundamental proposition about the universe on no evidence whatsoever. But if there is a God, then he made me this way. Indeed, there are multitudes who, like me, simply cannot believe on faith alone, so it would appear that God has created two classes: the favored group he endowed with the ability to have faith in Him (or It – if you like), and the unbelievers who he created with no such capacity. In other words, a large segment of people were created without the ability to feel or sense this all-consuming love you say surrounds us. If there was a God and he did doom multitudes of people to such a fate, than he would be a cruel God indeed.

But that's my point! It's a cruel universe. Leaving out the inhumanity of one man towards his neighbor, look at how inhospitable our universe is. Hell, look how inhospitable most of our planet is. The universe, it seems, loves us so much that life as we know it can only survive on this one rock (as far as we know), and even if we discovered somewhere else in the universe where we could survive, the laws of physics themselves would seem to doom us to never be able to reach them. The God that loves us so much set up a planet with a tectonic system that can cause cataclysmic damage without warning at any place at any time. When an earthquake or tsunami or hurricane or what-have-you kills hundreds of thousands, where is the universe's great carital love for humanity then?  When children starve by the thousands, are killed or maimed by disease and war, or are abused in horrific ways by adults in positions of authority, including religious authority, where do you see this love that you describe? Do you really want to postulate that the universe loves us in ways we cannot even fathom when such evils exist?

I anticipate that you would counter my charges with the assertion that an eternal life will settle all accounts, and more than compensate the suffering of children and others who are killed or made to suffer, often simply by the workings of our planet. I wish I could accept that answer. As a married man, and an atheist, I find no thought more depressing than the thought of death permanently separating me from my wife, and her from me. But I can't believe in an eternal existence simply on the say-so of millenia-old books written by men who claimed to have divine authority when modern science has not supported any of their claims, and no sane person since has been found who could speak with the deity like Moses or Abraham.

Moreover, modern science tells us that we are all, literally, stardust. Stars process the most basic elements into more complex ones, and over billions of years this is what has allowed the formation of planets, the beginnings of life, and ultimately, you and I to have this discussion. Yet even the stars themselves will someday burn themselves out. The particles that make up the universe, including you and I, will cease to exist. True, this is billions and billions of years from now, but nonetheless it seems apparent that the universe's existence is finite. Even leaving out any question of how the universe could be God when the universe will have an end, and God describes himself as without beginnings or ends, how am I supposed to accept that I personally could outlive the universe and the particles that literally make up my being? Call me an unfeeling materialist if you want, but I cannot accept that I, a primate like any other primate, could have some ineffable quality (call it a soul if you want) that every other living thing, supposedly, lacks.  My entire existence is based in this universe, and no other.  How could I outlive it?  How could anything?

Another reader makes related points:

You claim not to insist on an anthropocentric God, but of course you do, just in a slightly more abstract form.  Your conception of God apparently attributes to this entity capacities for consciousness and love.  But those are familiar human attributes, ones which you value highly, and so you grant them to your God.  In truth, those are conceptually powerful limitations on what form the ultimate explanation for the existence of everything could take, just as powerful in their own way as saying that God is shaped like a man in a physical sense–you are similarly claiming that God is shaped like a man in the cognitive and emotional sense. Drop those limitations as well, and your conception of God will be much more defensible as non-anthropocentric but then I think even you would have to admit the term "God" would no longer be particularly appropriate.

Indeed, you say, "the human mind is inherently incapable of grasping the reality of the highest consciousness."  But the word "consciousness" stands out in that statement as a declaration that you believe that your mind has in fact grasped something that it ought not be able to grasp.  Turn that to "the human mind is inherently incapable of grasping the highest realities," and you are once again on more defensible ground–but you are then no longer a theist, but at most an agnostic (and most atheists are just agnostics who have intuitively realized that Pascal's coin is not in fact a coin but a dice with infinite sides, only a finite number of which accord in any meaningful sense with the human conception of the divine).

You've also misconstrued your reader.  Your reader said that meaning could be FOUND every place in the Universe.  But that does not mean that some God has placed meaning in every place in the Universe for us to find, like a divine Easter Bunny.  Rather, it simply implies that we entities that undoubtedly do have the capacities for consciousness and love can find for ourselves meaning in whatever we observe.  That is a beautiful thing in its own right, but does not require a superhuman being to make it possible.

Another reader is in similar territory:

I can't be the only person to have brung up Spinoza in responding to your latest. I've been reading your blog since before it was a blog and was instead merely a website with your published work scrolling down the side. In that time, I've gotta say you're religious belief has been getting less and less Catholic and more and more catholic. I can appreciate the pull of a Spinozian God (were I religious it would be the one I'd believe) – but I see you're not really willing to go all the way there. You still want God to love us. Spinoza was a smart man and I tend to think he got this one right: If God is the Universe, he cannot Love us.

I don't think Spinoza decided this was the case because he was just trying to justify a pre-existing atheism. I think he couldn't avoid that conclusion once he started doing the same thing you've been doing: Coming to an understanding of God that is, as you put it, "not encrusted with myth and irrational literalism." Once we let go of a God who is merely a magical Father (with a human temper, a human desire of obediance, a human capacity for offense and subsequent thirst for revenge, etc), and instead conceive of a God who is the animating, organizing force of the Universe, it's unclear why this other human capacity, a little thing we call "love" would remain. "Unclear" is not the right word, though: "unjustified" is more appropriate.

The retention of a capacity for Love in your conception of God is not inexplicable however: We all love to be loved. As humans, we also value love in its social context: To be loved by those you respect or admire is better than being loved by just anyone (indeed, love from those you don'tadmire is one of the most uncomfortable things to endure).  The Christian slant to the "God is Love" argument takes this one step further: God's love is not merely the love we have of friends, God's love is the love of parents for their children – unconditional. In this view, God cannot help but love us – hence the promise of salvation available to us all.

You claim that "nonbelievers need to let go of anthropocentric" conceptions of God, yet an anthropocentric love for us is essence of the God you are now vigorously defending. I realize you think you've salvaged a new conception of the Holy from an outdated theology, but it looks surprisingly the same to me: God is the Universe – and humans are its beloved center. Maybe one day you will realize this hope is, in fact, a conceit. When that happens, Spinoza (or Buddha) will be waiting.

A final reader on this facet of the debate:

The universe does not love us.  While not a true authority on god or the cosmos, the words of Stanley Kubrick better encompass my beliefs than what you wrote or anything else I could type here:

"The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death — however mutable man may be able to make them — our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light."

We, as humans, supply the love. And no doubt, you may contend that without God we would not be capable of love. I contend otherwise.  We love because we can.  Because we have evolved to do so. Love binds us tighter than other species and those binds have made us stronger than other species. This world, much less this universe, is a cold and cruel place. Without the bare minimum of love from our mothers (or now civilization), human infants would undoubtedly face their own mortality before attaining the ability to perceive their own vitality. Or the ability to perceive beauty. Or meaning. 

On the other side of the debate, a believer explains her faith:

Your description of your faith is exactly how I define my own.

I believe, deeply, in God as you described him — an entity that we can't understand, that is all, was all and works through all. It is beautiful and profound, and transcends the petty rules that men of the Church imposed on Catholicism, and really, on any faith. It is a mystical interpretation of the faith, but I don't see how faith can be anything else. What kind of all-powerful God would be something that ancient people could condense in an age-old book that we, now, could perfectly comprehend? That never made sense to me.

I was also raised Catholic, by a mother who came from a long, deep Irish tradition of faith with a grain of salt– believe in the creed but not necessarily the dumb human rules (to hate gays, avoid birth control, etc) the church had imposed atop the doctrine; and a father who converted from the Baptist faith because the Catholic mass was a lot shorter. We went to Church and they taught me to believe in the doctrine of the faith. But what they taught me, and what I absorbed, was a deep and abiding love of God and a connection to Him that I found not just in church but everywhere good existed, not just in nature, which I know is a cliche, but in the warmth of a hug or an act of goodness by a stranger. I simply felt His presence in stillness, inthe quiet of my heart. And in the dark times of my life — and there have been plenty — when I have felt most alone, in the depths of despair, the only times I have lost hope entirely is when I lost touch with that feeling, when I stopped seeking Him.

These days my parents rarely go to Church; they were deeply offended by the child-abuse scandal. At 30, I find it difficult to attend mass for the same reasons, listening to priests ask for donations for the Church when I know they're going to pay off those they have wronged because they cannot admit their own sin. But none of us has abandoned belief in God.

I find myself seeking out empty Catholic churches, quiet spaces with a cross, where I can devote myself to worshiping Him. I tried other Christian traditions, but found that none of them resonated in the way the Catholic Church has done. The Episcopalians, especially, are tremendously warm and wonderful, and I appreciate their embrace of a progressive faith that focuses on social justice. But I seek God, and God alone, not fellowship, or gluten-free Communion wafers, or anything else. I simply want to feel close to God. So it breaks my heart to see the church turn from God to repeatedly, on gays, on women, and on the safety of children. But the church's behavior doesn't affect what I believe.

I get frustrated by the scorn of atheists who see me as a deluded fool
as much as I abhor the fundamentalists who insist that everybody who doesn't follow their precise customs, is going straight to hell. The truth us, none of us really know everything about our world. Science, which is an essential tool for trying, has told us so much and we have so much yet to learn. I am not one of those who sees science in opposition to God, but as a way of understanding as much as we can. But we do not, perhaps will never, understand it all. I wish that everyone could acknowledge that we are all simply humans, struggling through this existence, and we all have found our own ways of understanding our world, and that it's okay. That I believe in my heart with a certainty that even I can't fully explain, that God exists in this way, shouldn't trouble anyone else.

Another supportive reader makes a narrower point:

It should be noted that the Orthodox churches, whose beliefs are arguably closest to those of the earliest Christians, do not believe in a salvation theory of atonement. The salvation theory of atonement is generally considered to have arrived in the 11th century. Orthodox Christians believe that through following Jesus, one is working on theosis, the process of becoming holier. You are not the only person with your general religious beliefs, and people should not accuse you of making up your own religion when arguably, your beliefs are closer to what Jesus's orginal followers believed. This is just one more example of how people tend to define Christianity by one sect (usually the fundamentalists), when there are more viewpoints on Christianity than there are Christians.

Another reader echos:

To state the obvious — when you say that belief in a grey-bearded man in the sky is *not* Christian, it's hardly new.  It's not some effete 20th century, post-Enlightenment re-imagining of Christianity — it's fundamental, traditional, and orthodox  (or even Orthodox). The words of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (4th c.) describe God as "ineffable, invisible, incomprehensible, ever-existing, and eternally the same."  The writings of early fathers of the Church such as Gregory Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, Basil the Great, Isaac the Syrian are replete with sweeping, poetic, profound statements that God is not and cannot be anything that we understand as "being" in based on our own, limited existence.  

Another reader agrees with my understanding of beauty:

You wrote:

“The idea that science can explain beauty is a non-sequitur.”

Indeed. Science quantifies and is unable to truly explain any of the qualities of subjective experience (“qualia” in philosophy). No amount of knowledge of electromagnetic frequencies, photoreceptor cells, or the firing of neurons can explain the subjective experience of seeing the color red, much less the wonder of a Van Gogh painting.

Another reader differs:

This statement is simply and demonstrably untrue.  Many good, scientific studies have been done on this topic and as many more are done, our understanding of what causes humans to perceive “beauty” will continue to grow. Here’s a good recent article from the non-professional literature. I hate to say this, but you seem to have fallen into a common philosophical trap. I (or we) don’t know the answer to this question yet, so it must be God.  You can justify almost anything with that kind of thinking.

Another atheist takes on my understanding of meaning:

I think you've misrepresented your original reader's words:

"If the Universe is anything, it is proof that meaning can be found in
the smallest of existence, from atoms to neutrinos and down beneath it."

That is not the same as saying the Universe cares about us. It's saying that a human being can find meaning in the Universe as it plainly exists. It could even be an indifferent Universe that holds meaning for a person. If you would still call this a religious move, then you're really saying that every non-nihilist is religious. And maybe that's what you mean to say. Your disagreements with your non-believing readers then become semantic arguments. For me, religion implies a belief in the super-natural. Not a gray-bearded man, but at least souls and perhaps an afterlife. The big atheistic epiphany of my life was that you can have meaning without these things. The material world is sufficient, regardless of what it thinks about me.

Another reader has a related question:

Do you think anyone who finds meaning in the physical universe is a closet theist? That seems to be the implication of your every response to atheists who claim to find such meaning. You seem to equate atheism with nihilism, with no argument. So, on your view, Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, Harris are all closet theists, since, I'm sure, they all find enough meaning in the universe to support strong moral convictions. Worse, they're closet theists without knowing it! 

A final reader, echoing many other readers, asks why I cling to Catholicism:

I am a Catholic who hasn’t felt like a Catholic since high school.  Reading your postings on God reminded me of the positive emotions I used to associate with going to church, participating in CYO and learning to read deeper meaning in the scriptures.  It was a moment of nostalgia to the point where I thought about going back to church this weekend.

But then I was reminded of all the personal issues I have with the institution that is the Catholic church and many of its teachings.  And it got me thinking, why do I need an institution to commune with God and of all institutions to choose, why the Catholic Church?  And I don’t have an answer.  So I was wondering Andrew, of all the religions, of all the different types of Christianity, why Catholicism? 

For my part, I always had an issue with the infallibility of the Pope.  The bootstrapped and circular logic that makes him the final arbiter of all Godly matters on Earth rang wrong in my ear at age 12, let along age 29.  Transubstantiation, I don’t believe it.  I believe in the symbolism of the Eucharist, but wouldn’t that make me more Episcopalian than Catholic?  The immaculate conception, I don’t believe that either.  What is it that makes Catholicism the correct or most correct of religions?

I greatly respect your views on the divine.  What I have trouble understanding, and perhaps that is because of my own struggles with my faith, how do those views lead you to Catholicism when there would seem to be so many better options available?

I'm so grateful for these challenges. I can't answer them all right now, but I hope over the next week to address each point in turn.