How should we understand what God is? Part 6

How should we understand what God is?

Part 6: How our minds work: we talk to ourselves

A modern view

Let’s suppose for a moment that there is the final triumph of science in explaining the universe. Let’s suppose that humanity becomes no longer willing to take that step of faith which is essential to believing in God. (Though perhaps that willingness to take a step of faith is the very essence of humanity). Will there be any role left for God? What would God be in that scenario!? I am going to outline a possibility that I think is an impregnable defence for belief in God. The essence of the position is that, if God does not exist, in his own right, then (the idea of) God is humanity’s greatest ever invention. If God is not a personal, independently existing agent, then he is a voice in our heads that we have created. Rather than seeing this as a reason to abandon God because: “he’s not real; he’s just in our minds”, I will instead argue that God is supremely precious, because it is not simply  the idea of God that is humanity’s greatest ever invention, we have actually succeeded in creating God.

We all know what it is like to have a conversation with ourselves. We have the ability to debate the pros and cons of a course of action and we seem to have the ability to put forward several points of view, all of which are our own. Or, at least, it’s the point of view of a section of our thinking. Or it’s a possibility which we regard as valid, and we are not yet certain which of the several points of view we will finally adopt as our considered judgement. Famously, Freud regarded our psyche as being made up of 3 parts: the id, the ego and the superego. Without saying that Freud is right, it’s easy for many of us to accept that this is a helpful way of understanding what is going on in our heads when we are deliberating a course of action: that we are having an internal debate with ourselves. Likewise, we readily understand the position of those who take account of particular voices – not voices in our heads in a mentally ill sort of way, but we understand when someone says, “I always try and think what my mother would say”. We may also accept that a person may subconsciously be always trying to please a person whom they hold in authority or love.