I find my self in the difficult position of too much to write about, but not enough time to write! Where do I begin?
Well, I suppose I ought to go with something basic. What is God?
Usually the question is “who is God,” but I think it better to establish “what” before we can even try to answer, “who”.
One of the most common things I hear from the anti-theists is the dismissal of God with derogatory and insulting terms such as “sky fairy”, “invisible man in the sky”, “imaginary friend,” and similar mockery. This serves two purposes for the anti-theist. On the one hand, they get to pat themselves on the back over how smart they are by reducing God to the equivalent of the tooth fairy and Santa Claus. On the other, they get to pat themselves on the back over how handily they’ve put theists in their place; namely that they’re idiots.
There are, of course, several problems with this. To begin with, it’s not possible to have a rational discussion with someone who’s already a) defined for you what you believe in (even though it has no basis in reality) and b) essentially reduced you to a deluded idiot for believing in something you don’t actually believe in, in the first place. They’ve created a logical fallacy for themselves that allows them to “win” no matter what evidence is provided or what argument is used. (Argumentation is another area the anti-theists fail at. No surprise, since few even understand what argumentation is anymore.)
Here’s another problem with the use of mockery by anti-theists. The anti-theist insults and degrades those who believe differently than they do, and they justify it by claiming that their position is one of logic, rationality and evidence. After all, if one believes in the Bearded White Guy in the Sky, they must be fools. When you challenge their claims of logic and rationality, they never respond in kind. Instead, they troll around with circular bluster, insisting that they know what theists believe more than the people who hold theistic beliefs, explaining nothing yet claiming to have disproved their opponent’s views, then fall back on insults.
If the only position the anti-theist has is one of insult, in reality, they have no position at all.
What the anti-theists don’t seem to realize (or don’t care to) is how much these derogatory insults backfire on them. They’re not making themselves look smart, except perhaps to their fellow anti-theists. They seek to build themselves up by tearing others down, which ultimately serves only to display for the entire world that they are little more than closed minded, unimaginative bullies.
Unimaginative may be an understatement. The scripted nature of comments made by anti-theists is perplexing. I’d be more willing to accept these points if they were able to better demonstrate why they’ve come to believe them. A typical example of the “logic” involves the anti-theist mocking people for believing in invisible men in the sky, then when someone objects to the definition, they come back with, “but that’s what you really believe, so I’m right, you’re an idiot.” Hardly an example of intelligent and rational thinking. This from people who claim exclusive use of rationality and intelligence (because clearly anyone who believes in sky fairies is neither rational, nor intelligent).
The targets of such attacks are almost universally Christians, even when they blather on about how “all religions” are (evil, stupid, deluded, myths… ) and make token references to other faith based systems. You just don’t see anti-theists launching these sorts of attacks against beliefs in Hindu deities, for example. Non-Judeo/Christian religions are generally not even on their radar. It is the Judeo/Christian faith that they are most threatened by. For now, I will discuss my own conclusions regarding the Judeo/Christian god. I’ll have to save talking about the generalizations for another time.
Despite what the anti-theists insist, theists don’t believe in invisible men in the sky. What seems to be happening is that the anti-theists have taken metaphors literally – but only some of them. The Bible uses a lot of metaphors for God and more of them are maternal metaphors than paternal. God as Mother is hardly mentioned by anyone, on either side of the theological divide.
Let’s first go back to the Old Testament. Here we’re looking at what, for centuries, was an oral tradition. The Bible is a collection of these oral and written histories, poetry, song, parable, and so on that spans thousands of years. It’s also a collection of records, laws, traditions and more. This makes dismissing The Bible as nothing but myths and fables rather silly. The Psalms and Proverbs, for example, aren’t histories to be proven or dis-proven.
Humans have always sought out something beyond ourselves. We have within us an innate urge to worship. Some cultures and traditions held that all things, living or not, held spirits. Others created pantheons of gods and goddesses. During the time of Abraham, polytheism was the rule of the day. Humans viewed gods and goddesses as human-like beings (sometimes with animal attributes) that had a lot of power. They tended to be fickle, and to interfere with humanity at a whim. (Yes, I’m making some generalizations here, though I do recommend looking into historical belief systems. They’re really quite interesting.) In some cases, humans were deified. Pharaohs were both kings and gods by birth. Roman Emperors were decreed deities by the senate.
The God of Abraham, however, was completely different. For starters, there was only One, not many. Even more unique, this One God actually cared about each of us individually and personally. For another, the God of Abraham wasn’t made in the image of Man or animal, but rather we humans were made in His image.
Just what, exactly, was that image? Certainly not our physical selves. God is described as a light, as Truth, the Strong One, the Word (with Jesus described as the Word made flesh), and as “I am,” meaning eternal and self existent. He appears to Moses in the guise of a burning bush. He appeared to St. Paul as a blinding light. There are other descriptors, but the main thing you’ll notice is that none of these things involve any sort of physical, human-like being. God is not a material Being at all, but something that exists outside our material existence.
At this point, I need to clarify something. I use male pronouns when referring to God. There’s a few reasons for this. One is habit. I grew up Catholic, and God described in male gender terms is just the way it was. Two, male gender terms tend to be my default, whether it’s in reference to deities or in reference to the car that cut me off in traffic, but whose driver I couldn’t see. Three, the English language doesn’t have a suitable gender neutral term. In the original language of the early Hebrews, the word for God was gender neutral. Their description of God was neither male nor female, yet both, so terms like “it” don’t work very well. Typing He/She all the time gets clumsy and I’m not quite ready to start using the new "xe" as a gender neutral term to replace he or she. And finally, as we go into the New Testament and the birth of Jesus, God takes on the descriptor of Father. This sort of had to be, since that whole pregnancy and birth by a human kind of requires that human to be female.
So while I use male gender terms, one thing we can say about God is that He is actually gender neutral, spiritually encompassing both genders, rather than being non-gender.
How else can we define God? He appears to be a being that exists outside of time and space, since time and space did not exist until the Big Bang. One of the biggest objections to the Big Bang theory has been that it requires the existence of a creator. A material universe with a beginning and an end requires a non-material source. Since many physicists are materialists who refuse to entertain the notion that such an entity might exist, they go through amazing intellectual gymnastics to try and find some other explanation. Nothing is too unrealistic, so long as no God is involved, which has lead to such notions of 26 dimensions and a whole bubbly froth of alternate universes. Or an egg in a sac filled with nothingness that exploded into something-ness.
Seriously.
This leaves us with a God that is non-material. He is unaffected by space or time because He does not exist within space or time; He exists outside of our material world, yet is capable of interacting with it. Interestingly, we’re seeing similar interactions in the quantum level.
The Biblical God is also described as a trinity, a notion rejected by some. Here we have an amorphous entity that transcends our material world that somehow manages to be three entities in One, the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. Metaphorically, St. Patrick is famous for using the clover to explain how this can be – the clover’s three petals being distinctly separate, yet still part of the same plant. In the past, I’ve equated it to the sacred union of marriage (note that I am referring to Biblical marriage; a statement that needs clarification that will wait for another time), where two people become one. Obviously, they are still two, autonomous individuals, yet they are united spiritually as one – soul mates, if you will, who complete each other. At least one would hope to have such closeness with their life partner. In a non-metaphorical sense, we’d have to delve into the realm of particle physics, a fascinating subject all on its own.
So what is God?
God is an amorphous, intelligent being that exists outside our physical realm, including time, yet capable of interacting with our material world. For this reason, God is eternal and unchangeable. God is a single Being consisting of three autonomous entities. There are also limitations to God. He cannot lie and He cannot change (though He can certainly change His mind). As we are created in His spiritual, not physical, image, and have free will (something atheism insists we don’t have), He cannot force us to believe in Him.
It is up to us to either choose Him or not.
