How should we understand what God is?

Part 7: One of the voices in my head is different, because it’s not me.

Let’s now apply this understanding to what could be happening in a believer’s life of faith. I must say again, I think what’s happening is best explained by accepting that there is an independent personal agent called God. However, some wish to undermine religion by claiming that belief is all just a psychological issue really. So, let’s follow this line of argument as though it has been fully accepted. I still claim that, even as “just a psychological issue”, belief in God is the most profound and beneficial thing a person can do and is an entirely valid and justified way of life. I accept that, historically, believers have made their commitment because they believed that there really is a God. Would anyone be willing to embark on this process if they saw very clearly from the start that God is their own creation – “just a psychological process”? It would certainly be harder, but I don’t see why people shouldn’t freely and with open-eyes embark on such a path. Instead of therefore adopting atheism, I am going to recommend believing in God.

For, what has actually happened when someone reaches the stage of saying, “I believe in God because I have met him through my religious experiences, and now he is my strength and guide in life”? I think it’s this. I will use the example of a Christian, but it works for all religions.

Through continual focus, and regular practice, the Christian applies their attention to God. In this scenario, God does not exist as a person, but they apply their attention to the idea of God. This God has all the qualities of the traditional God, except that this God is now a make-believe figure – he is “an imaginary friend”. However, the believer – in company with other believers who share the same ideas and use the same language in ways that they comprehend within their community of belief – immerses themselves in a value system. These values are embedded in stories with which the believer becomes intimately acquainted, stories which continue to be revered as revelatory of ultimate truth in just the same way as scripture traditionally is. The Christian returns to these stories and prayers over and over again, and as their own life develops so these stories keep speaking to them with ever more enriching overlapping layers of meaning, revealing guidance and imparting strength to the believer. These stories and values become completely embedded in your consciousness (and perhaps your unconscious too). Through the method of prayer – which as we are considering that there is no-one you are speaking too, must now be considered a form of meditative self-reflection – the believer learns to hold in their mind and heart the voice of what a person who was actually God would say. And this is what the essence of God is in this scenario: the believer has succeeded in creating the voice of God in their own mind.

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.

How should we understand what God is?

Part 5: Reasons why our belief in God developed: Just think it through as deeply and honestly as you can.

The third strand of support for belief in God is, perhaps, a combination of the first two, and I will put it under the heading of philosophical reasoning. If philosophy is understood as the examination of truth claims to determine their validity, then humanity has presented itself with a number of big questions. Why does the universe exist? What should I do with my life? Why do some people claim that a person called God exists? What is the nature of reality and how does my life fit into it? A long and noble tradition of intense thought has brought humanity a repository of wisdom and – while it is not proven – there are valid arguments for believing in the existence of God as integral to the human story. Some scientists think that scientific discoveries will make philosophy redundant, but I think some scientists don’t understand the pertinence of philosophy to our lives.

How should we understand what God is?

Part 4: Reasons why our belief in God developed: To help us explain things

Another key reason for belief in God to develop was as an explanatory mechanism. Early humans became aware that they lived within a system of creation governed by massive forces, compared to which our puny fragility made us excessively vulnerable, forces which we could not control and did not understand. Not unreasonably, we extrapolated from what we did know that there must be invisible powers at work to make the universe happen. Early people graphically experienced their relationship with these forces, to which they felt intimately connected, and which they regarded with reverence and awe. Today, we understand, well, nearly everything. Should we then just completely abandon this strand of support for belief in God? In many ways, it seems fair. We can understand why people did make this mistake, but accept it was a mistake and we should not be encumbered by it anymore.

The main objection to this is that loss of sense of deep connection to the elemental forces of the universe and our reverence for them. Modernity gives us such immense benefits in length and quality of life compared to “natural life”, say, roaming the open plains. Many also feel trapped in an artificial, superficial and in some strange way, unsatisfying world – though we are so busy working and enjoying ourselves within our human-made creation that we don’t have that much time to notice it. There are still some big philosophical problems to deal with, such as, “Why should there be something rather than nothing?” Many scientists feel confident that one day we will understand exactly how the universe came into being, and, when we do, it will have an entirely scientific explanation. There will be something about reality that means that, even before there was a universe, the forces that brought a universe into being had to exist.

This seems counter-intuitive: how can there be anything about reality before there was any reality? However, quite a lot of modern science is counter-intuitive, so it’s a possibility. Those who believe in God can still justifiably hold on to the view that God could be the reason as to why the forces that created the universe were possible, or that – if science alone can explain that – that God also exists alongside a universe that did not need him to exist. However, this seems an unnecessary conjecture to bring the existence of God into the equation if everything can be explained without him. There would still be the issue of the first reason to believe in God: the encounter with God we call religious experience. However, if this second point does become cut and dried, it may then be fairer to reassess the nature of religious experience. I will still argue that it is the most precious thing in existence, but the source and nature of it will have to be reinterpreted.

How should we understand what God is?

Part 3: Reasons why our belief in God developed: We encounter him

This idea of God developed for several reasons.

Key was the power of religious experience. Human beings feel that they have encountered this mysterious person, whom we call God. Certainly, this must partly be a response to the awesome reality of being alive. In our existential self-reflection on the fantastic fact that we exist, and in those moments of well-being when we are uplifted in spirit, and come to clarity of understanding, we are simply over-whelmed that we exist; we are so glad to be alive; and we feel at one with the universe. For brief moments, we feel that all that is absolute, infinite and eternal about existence is being expressed in our lives and we are sharing in these qualities. This is in itself a spectacular revelation. Yet even beyond this, in these moments of supreme clarity about our own reality, we do not simply become inspired by abstract principles such as love, truth, and beauty, nor are we just impressed by the reality of our existence – simply exulting that we are alive. Rather, we experience these moments as moments of personal encounter with someone. We have learnt over the centuries to give the name “God” to this experience, but that is just shorthand for the experience of meeting a mysterious stranger, I know not whom. And bit by bit, we have built up a picture of who this stranger is – and he fits the description given above of the traditional understanding of God. If somehow we could erase all knowledge of God, I believe that we would recreate our current faith because humanity would rediscover this numinous encounter with “someone”. This someone is the greatest mystery of existence/the universe and the greatest treasure.