Investigating God
Throughout history, humankind has sought God. Sought to find some proof, some indication and some hope that God is or might be. That search goes on today. Wisdom seeks to find a trace of God in the vastness of eternal space, seeks some indication throughout the far reaches of the cosmos, within the very heart of nature itself, that there is, or might be, some guiding intelligence, however remote, that would perhaps be God. Wisdom seeks, and continues to seek, a trace of God, but has not yet found that trace. Upon this tiny, remote, speck that we call earth and home, and across the endless reaches of space, wisdom and science finds only nature and the workings of nature. Nothing more!
Yet, while wisdom seeks and searches in vain for a trace of God, ignorance found God. Or, at least, believes it has found God, Ignorance not only found God, but has direct information as to what God said and did, what God wants, what God thinks, what God likes, and what God hates.
The ignorance that found God has nothing to do with religious believers today. God, or the illusion of God, was found long ago, in the childhood of the human race. Ignorance found God long before humankind found science; even before the wheel was invented, or fire was captured and made a friend of man. In that barren, cold, dangerous world stood our remote ancestors. Humanity was in its infancy, struggling to understand the forces of nature, to escape its enemies, to feed itself, and to reproduce its kind. The human mind was emerging from the darkness of animal instincts into the beginnings of reason. It is only thought: Survival! It was a dangerous world with enemies, everywhere and always. "How great and powerful was our leader who was killed last season?" they would think. "If only his might was with us now, we would easily destroy this enemy." "Oh great leader help us in this time of our greatest need!" Therefore, ignorance created faith in the face of necessity.
And God was born!
This God that ignorance found, or formed, looks a great deal like a man. They tell us it has a face, hands, bowels, a foot (maybe two). They tell us it has nostrils and likes to smell the burnt offerings upon the primitive altar. [Face: Ex. 33:11, 20, 23; Num. 14:15. Hands: Ps. 28:5. Bowels: Jer. 31:20. Foot: Is. 37:25. Maybe two feet: Ps. 18:9. Nostrils: 2 Sam. 22:9,16. Smell burnt offerings: Gen. 8:2] This God, that ignorance found or formed, also has remarkably human desires and emotions. It hates, it loves, it feels anger and it feels compassion. It has favourite individuals, and a chosen people. This God is definitely of the male sex, and has definite male tendencies. It is often angry, easily enraged, swears, destroys things, pouts, shouts, deceives, and often rests. Any wife would recognize God. [Hates: Mal. 1-2,3, Rom. 9:11-13. Love: Deut. 7:13. Anger: Ex. 4:14. Compassion: Ps. 111:4. Favourite: Ex. 3:21. Chosen people: Is. 44:2. Angry: Deut. 9:20, 1 Kin. 11:9, etc. Enraged: 1 Sam. 6:19. Swears: Gen. 12:3. Destroys things: Gen. 6:17. Pouts: Ex. 32:9-10. Shouts: Ps. 47:5. Deceives: Jer. 20:7. Rests: Gen. 2:2] This God that was found by a primitive and ignorant people some thousands of years ago, just happened to have the same world outlook, and the same beliefs about nature as the people who found him. This God thought the sun revolved around the earth, and that a day could be made longer by simply stopping the sun for a while. It is truly amazing, the number of similarities there are between the beliefs of God, and the beliefs of the people who discovered God. [Stopping the sun: Josh. 10:12] Those people, though primitive, possessed skills, and so did the God they found. This God gave instructions for building a boat, he designed clothes for the priests, gave the formula for a perfume, was a tailor and made coats of skins. This God also made many simple, often foolish, laws that are called "Commandments." And God did many other things very human, and very peculiar to the time and people who first discovered God. [Boat: Gen. 6:14-18. Designed clothes for the priests: Ex. 28:39. Formula for perfume: Ex. 30:34-35. Made coats of skin: Gen. 3:21] But of all the human-like things that God is said to have done, the most important thing of all, we are told, was to write books, or to guide the hand and mind of those who wrote. It is the books that God is said to have written, or caused to be written, that are to be considered tonight.
This story about the discovery of God is not unique. Anthropologists agree it has happened many times, and in many different places. Whenever primitive people needed a God, they have always found a God, tailor-made. It was their own God, and always resembled them a great deal. The God always had the same enemies and the same morals, as the people who found him, and many of those Gods were authors; they wrote books.
Questioning the existence of God
Some people falsely believe that it is impossible to prove the non-existence of anything, but they are wrong. It can, for example, be proved that there is no even prime number greater than two. Other people use to say that there is no way to prove if there is a god or not, or even that we cannot get any knowledge of god (agnosticism).
Defining "God"
To prove the non-existence of God we first need to define the word "God". When Christians talk about God, they mean an almighty being
Some people (Einstein for instance) believe in a God who is not a personal God, but a Spinozan kind of God. This is not the “type” of God we want to have a look at. To say that God is universe, by getting knowledge of the universe, we get knowledge of God, is to redefine the meaning of the word God. This has nothing to do with the word God as it was defined by the "primitive" cultures that preceded neither our present civilization nor the current Christian, Jewish and Moslem religions.
If God is not omnipotent, there is nothing that prevents Him from being a product of the universe. If that is the case, what makes God divine? Then God would only be an alien, a being of matter; probably containing flesh, blood and DNA like all life we know of. Everything God is able to do would be things that human beings also will be able to do, all his knowledge would be knowledge we will also achieve.
Many people justify their faith with God as an explanation. What is the meaning of life? Where does time and space come from? Who created the physical constants? Et cetera. Because we lack knowledge of these things and maybe never will, since they are questions like "what is the colour of a second?" or "how does sound taste?” God is there as an explanation.
Let us say that God is the meaning of life, what then is the meaning of God? If God has a nature, who created that nature? If God created time and space, how can God exist without it? Since creation is an event in time, how could God create time? Moreover, who created God? To answer these questions God must be almighty, or else you cannot explain them. In fact you can if you say God stands above time and space and so on (which he indeed does if he is almighty), but to be able to prevent God from being tied to future phenomena, you must give him the quality of omnipotence so he can stand above everything.
If God is almighty, there are several qualities he must have. They are as follows:
» He must know everything. Everything that is, everything that has been and everything that will be. To be able to know everything that will be he must know every position and every momentum of every particle in cosmos (Laplace's "World Spirit").
» He must be worth our worship. A being that is not worth worshipping is no God.
» He must be able to do anything. If there are things that God cannot do, he certainly is not omnipotent.
» He must be above time. Something that even St. Augustine deduced. However, not only that, God must stand above all possible dimensions.
» He cannot be 'good' or 'evil' or, indeed, have any subjective characteristics. If God is all-good, he cannot do evil things and cannot be almighty. Most people would object and say that good can do evil but chooses not to do it. Well, if God is all-good he can't choose to do evil things, can he?
The “qualities” of God
What did God do during that eternity before he created everything? If God was all that existed back then, what disturbed the eternal equilibrium and compelled him to create? Was he bored? Was he lonely?
God is supposed to be perfect. If something is perfect, it is complete and it needs nothing else. We humans engage in activities because we are pursuing the elusive perfection, because there is disequilibrium caused by a difference between what we are and what we want to be. If God is perfect, there can be no disequilibrium. There is nothing he needs, nothing he desires and nothing he must or will do. A God who is perfect does nothing except exist. A perfect creator God is impossible.
Nevertheless, for the sake of argument, let us continue. Let us suppose that this perfect God did create the universe. Humans were the crown of his creation, since they were created in God's image and had the ability to make decisions. However, these humans spoiled the original perfection by choosing to disobey God.
What!? If something is perfect, nothing imperfect can come from it. Someone once said that bad fruit cannot come from a good tree, yet this "perfect" God created a "perfect" universe, which was rendered imperfect by the "perfect" humans.
The ultimate source of imperfection is God. What is perfect cannot make itself imperfect, so humans must have been created imperfect. What is perfect cannot create anything imperfect, so God must be imperfect to have created these imperfect humans. A perfect God who creates imperfect humans is impossible.
God is perfectly just, and yet he sentences the imperfect humans he created to infinite suffering in hell for finite sins. Clearly, a limited offence does not warrant unlimited punishment. God's sentencing of the imperfect humans to an eternity in hell for a mere mortal lifetime of sin is infinitely unjust. The absurdity of this infinite punishment appears even greater when we consider that the ultimate source of the human's imperfection is the God who created them. A perfectly just God who sentences his imperfect creation to infinite punishment for finite sins is impossible.
A God who knows everything cannot have emotions. The Bible says that God experiences all of the emotions of humans, including anger, sadness, and happiness. We humans experience emotions because of new knowledge. A man who had formerly been ignorant of his wife's infidelity will experience the emotions of anger and sadness only after he has learned what had previously been hidden. In contrast, the omniscient God is ignorant of nothing. Nothing is hidden from him, nothing new may be revealed to him, so there is no gained knowledge to which he may react emotionally.
We humans experience anger and frustration when something is wrong which we cannot fix. The perfect, omnipotent God, however, can fix anything. Humans experience longing for things we lack. The perfect God lacks nothing. An omniscient, omnipotent, and perfect God who experiences emotion is impossible.
The theodicé problem
We also have the theodice problem, stated by David Hume: If God intends the evil in the world, he is not good. If it violates his intentions, he is not almighty. God cannot be both almighty and good. There are many objections to this, but none that holds since God is ultimately responsible for the existence of evil. Besides, if only God can create he must have created evil. If somebody else (the devil) created evil, how can one know that God, and not Satan created the universe?
» A benevolent God all-knowing being only has one option in any situation and that is the option that causes most good. Therefore, a perfectly good all-knowing God has no free will.
» If God has free will, but never chooses evil, it is immoral because it could have created life in the same way: With free will, but also never choosing evil. Therefore, God must be immoral, not all-powerful or not all knowing.
» "If God is all-powerful and all-good, it would have created a universe with no suffering and no evil. But, evil and suffering exist. Therefore, God does not exist, is not all-powerful or is not benevolent.
There is a test, based on the ontological evidence against God that you can do to try the existence of God. Pray, and ask God to provide you with a clear and undisputed proof for his existence within a week. After that week, if you have the proof that God exists send me the evidence. If not, there are only three reasons I can think of that are plausible: (1) God does not exist; (2) God does not want to send you evidence or (3) God cannot give you this evidence. Because of the ontological evidence, alternative (2) and (3) are not worth your worship and thus they equal alternative (1). Therefore, if you get no response there is no God.
The meaning of “existence”
What do we mean by existence? The very definition for existence is that a thing is, said to exist if it relates in some way to some other thing. That is, things exist in relation to each other. For us, that means that something is part of our system (‘the known world'). God is defined to be infinite, in which case it is not possible for there to be anything other than God because "infinite" is all-inclusive. However, if there is nothing other than God then either God cannot be said to exist for the reason just explained, or God is the known world, in which case, by definition, God is not a God.
Some things are impossible to do
There are things that are impossible to do. For example, nobody can cover a two-dimensional surface with two-dimensional circles, without making them overlap. It is impossible to add the numbers two and two and get 333. You cannot go back in time (without passing an infinite entropy barrier). The numbers of things that are impossible to do are almost infinite. If God were to be almighty he would be able to do them, but it is impossible to do so.
Some people say that he can only do things that are logically possible to do, but what is? Is it logically possible to walk on water? Is it logically possible to rise from the dead? Is it logically possible to stand above time, space and all other dimensions and still exist? I would say that everything that violates the laws of physics is logically impossible and thus omnipotence is logically impossible. Besides, if omnipotence is a relative quality there is no way to tell omnipotence from non-omnipotence. For omnipotence to be a valid expression, it must be absolute, but we have no objective criteria to measure omnipotence so the word itself is useless.
Omnipotence is impossible due to paradoxes
Another way to disprove the almighty God is that omnipotence leads to paradoxes. Can God make a rock that is too heavy for him to carry? Can God build a wall that even he cannot tear down?
In addition, if God knows everything, he knows what he will do in the "future" (in any dimension, not necessary the time dimension). He must have known that from the very start of his own existence. Thus, God's actions are predestined. God is tied by faith, he has no free will. If God has no free will God is not omnipotent. Another way to put it is that to be able to make plans and decisions one must act over time. If God stands above time, he cannot do that and has no free will. Indeed, if God stands above all dimensions God is dimensionless - a singularity, nothing, void!
» The existence of a moral, all knowing and all-powerful God is in contradiction to Free Will in many ways; both for God itself and any living beings.
» An all-knowing God instantly knows all of its future actions and therefore has no free will to change them. A God with no free will is not moral.
» If an all-powerful and all-knowing God exists then this (by a long chain of cause and effect) denies any free will of any living being.
Besides there can exist no free wills at all if God is almighty. If you had a free will, God would not know what you would do tomorrow and would not be omnipotent.
We would never notice God
This is not evidence against God, but rather describes the lack of sense in praying to a God who stands above time.
If God stands above time and created time and space, he cannot be the first link in a time dependent chain of events. Rather he would affect every step in all chains, and we would only see God in the laws of physics (Davies, 1983, chapter 4). This God is an unnecessary entity to describe the world and should be removed with Occam's razor if somebody would pray to God and God would listen, the laws would change to achieve the desired result. Thus, the world would be different and the prayer would never have been said. Besides God would already (in an "above time" sense of view) know that you would pray, and already have changed the world. Prayers would be meaningless. We would already live in the best world possible, and any prayer would be to doubt the wisdom of God.
Even worse, for every prayer said, God has not acted, or else the prayer had been undone. This means that the more people have prayed the more bad things in the world have persisted. Therefore, the more you pray, the more evil persist (provided God exists and stands above time).
A much better way to change the world is to do it yourself. Then you would know that it was you who made the world better. The effect of prayers are not scientific provable, whilst the effect of actions are. Instead of praying you should set to work at improving your situation. This is what humanism is about.
Nobody really believes in God
Schopenhauer once said something like, "Man can do anything he wants, but he can not want whatever he wants."
People who claim to believe in God do not really do so. They just wish to believe in God. They somehow feel that their lives are meaningless without God, so they choose to close their eyes to evidence against the existence of God. The Christian view is well expressed by Cardinal Ratzinger: "Religious liberty can not justify freedom for divergence. This freedom does not aim at any freedom relative truth, but concerns the free decision for a person to, according to his moral inclinations accept the truth." (The times, June 27 1990, p9)
It is as clear as it can be! For a Christian you accept the "truth" according to your moral and then have to be strong in your faith to keep your specific believes. You decide a priori what to believe and then try to convince yourself and others that it is true. However, theists do not really believe, because to believe something is to take it for true, and just like in Nazareth's song, sold my soul there is no sign of God in the world. When you have the evidence for and against something your sub-conscious works on it and make a conclusion. The process can't be affected by your will, only delayed or suppressed, which will lead to psychoses, and those are far more common among (catholic) priests than any other group…
I have personal experience of this believing what you want to believe. When I was a child, I believed in many crazy things. I believed in Santa Claus. I thought there were monsters under my bed at night. I even later on believed in God. Then I became older and realized that these things were not true. When I look back I don't understand how I could believe in them, it must have been that I wanted to do so. Even looking back on my Christian day’s I can honestly see that I wanted to believe in it very badly. When many religious people are confronted with criticism of their religion, they convert to atheism or agnosticism. Examples of people who became critical to the dogmas of Christianity are Charles Darwin (Darwin, 1958), Dan Barker (Barker, 19??), Ernest Renan plus many former "Catholic modernists" in the 19th century such as Alfred Loisy and Antonio Fogazzaro (Baigenth, Leigh, 1991). The Catholic modernism evolved in the late 19th century and was banned in 1907 by the Vatican (Baigenth, Leigh, 1991). These people are to me clear evidence that an enlightened person will after considering the facts, reject Christianity and other religions that contain deities. This is not the "Plead to authority" fallacy. I am talking people here, who were trying to prove the existence of God and turned atheists. They did not want to do this, but had to after reading many books and doing a lot of thinking on the subject.
This is the only God that can be philosophically justified and show some examples why this God cannot exist. You may object and say that God is beyond human understanding and cannot be defined in scientific terms. This is the view of agnosticism.
If God is so mysterious, how can we know anything about him? Through the Bible? How do we know that the Bible and not the Koran or the Vedha books, for example, are the words of God? (or the bible if you believe in any of the other two books). Considering the cruelties, contradictions and faults shown in this book about the bible, how do we know that not all religions are made by Satan?
If there is no way to know this but to trust people who claim they have had "divine experiences" there is no way to tell true from false prophets. One has to give up his free mind and follow the authority of a dictator. Remember also that it is the person making a positive claim who has to prove it. But I do think that I have supplied more than enough proof in this book to disproof the Christian religion and their God.
"We shall not believe anything unless there is reasonable cause to believe that it is true" - Ingemar Hedenius
