When considering one's belief in a god, one must first establish that there is a god for one to believe in. This may seem like a simple task, but if one lends sufficient thought to it, one realises that before one can even begin to do this, he must first define what a god is.
Before you have much of a chance to conjour your own response, first let me paint a picture for you, a picture which began my own reflection on the subject. You're walking along a rather small beach. There's no surf, and it's not particularly warm, but this means the beach is empty and you have an opportunity to collect your thoughts. This beach happens to be covered in many small rocks and pebbles, as many beaches are. For no reason in particular, perhaps to marvel at its colour or simply to skip it along the sparkling surface of the sea, you pick up a rock at random. Upon closer inspection, you find nothing remarkable about the rock whatsoever- it is a smooth rock, and flat, an inch across with a dark, dullish grey colouration. Your first instinct is, perhaps, to drop it, or throw it; after all, it holds no significance to you.
But then, for no reason in particular, you ponder the rock. Your thoughts were adrift, and they happened to float upon the topic of the small object in your hand. Where did this rock come from? You look around- the sea, most likely. After all, it is smooth. You know that exposure to the waters of the ocean would do that to a rock, eroding it until it became smooth. So the rock came from the sea. Most likely it came from nearby, perhaps it has always been here, perhaps it, over time, was pushed down the beach from some other location. Or perhaps it came from much further out to sea, or even from across the sea, from some peninsula somewhere. How long would it take for such a rock to travel 100 metres down the beach, let alone across the ocean?
At this point, you are struck by a certain feeling, a feeling you are not familiar with. You realise that this one, small, tiny and insignificant rock is so much older and has travelled so much further than you, and from wherever it came, having left however long ago, it has come to you, you of all people, and is now sitting in the palm of your hand. In less than a century, you will be dust, but this rock, who knows? It could be somewhere else, to lie in someone else's hand. You feel insignificant compared to this thing which easily fits into the palm of your hand. This feeling that fills you, to say it was magical is to belittle it: it is more than that. It is a sliver of revelation. You see in this simple object something special, and you look up, and see hundreds of rocks upon thousands of grains of sand. You are overcome with awe, and feel that you are in the presence of divinity. But this is only a shadow; in the whole universe, you are standing on a small beach in on the edge of some continent on a backwater planet in an insignificant system in an unremarkable galaxy, one of hundreds of billions.
So, you acknowledge that something special has happened, something perhaps godly. But what is it? Well, what has happened? You've realised something, pretty much. So then that then begs the question as to whether or not the feeling you have encountered stems from without or within. If we assume that this experience really has to do with some sort of god, and we thus extrapolate our experience to the point of 'godliness', then it leaves us with perhaps two options. Either these rocks, and these grains of sand and all the rest, are God, and from your consideration, you have seen a hint of this godliness, or your knowledge is a hint of this godliness, and hypothetically, were you to gain a great enough understanding, you would be God, or at the least, a god.
I considered both, myself, and found the second one did not sit well with me. I thought that only a god could truly appreciate the whole of the universe at once, but having that ability does not make one a god. Consider if a human could achieve this. Yes, he may have unlocked the secrets of the universe, no mean feat, but he would not have any practical use for this. He would not be omniscient, omnipresent or omnipotent. He would, for all intents and purposes, have the potential to be a god, but potential alone is not enough to grant one such a status, if it were possible to do so in the first place. Hypothetically, he would be no better equipped for detecting or even defending against a person sneaking up behind him with a knife, and would be just as mortal as the rest of us. Though perhaps infinitely enlightened, such a person is not a god, and so we can discount that alone as being a critereon for divinity. That leaves the first option, whereby the universe is God, or perhaps is a part of God or a manifestation of God.
Naturally, my little story alone is not sufficient to determine which of these three is the best answer. As a matter of fact, it works only on the premise that there is a god to be considered, when in fact the case may be that there is none. I will touch on that more soon, but I think it best that we continue with the presumption that there is a god or gods, for now.
Where we go from here is a matter of personal preference, but as this is about my philosophy, I will kindly show the way. I will state now that I do not believe in any personalised god. This includes Jehovah, Jesus, Allah, Ganesh, Zeus, Jupiter and Odin, though I do recognise of course that Jesus was a real person. Allow me to explain why: on a most simplistic level, I have no need for a personalised god. Naturally one might say that one has no need for the colour blue, and though this may be true, it does not mean that blue does not exist. However, there is no evidence for a personalised god such as there is evidence for blue, that being solid and undeniable; in fact most modern religions rely to some degree, some almost entirely, upon the concept of faith, which is belief in spite of a lack of evidence, or to some, belief in spite of evidence to the contrary. I must admit that I find this concept somewhat suspect, and I will delve into that shortly. First of all, though, I must level my greatest criticism of the personalised god. Through all of my research, I have not found a god who was truly logical. Every god I read about acted in a fashion which was secretive, deceptive, roundabout, and all for reasons which themselves were indirect and unnecessary. Why, for example, does not God simply reveal His existence to us? As a test of faith. But why must we have faith? Because God does not reveal himself to us. Examples of circular reasoning of this kind permeate almost every religion on Earth to this day. If one looks back in history, one finds that many philosophers have looked for reasons to explain god unto man, some of which are astounding in the lengths they go to in reading logic into the illogical. While one must admire them for their effort, one must question why a god would not be logical. But now I must check myself, for I have not explained why I believe a god must be logical in the first place- the reason is simple. The universe follows a set of rules, rules which we are able to deduce through logical means. I cannot accept that there would be a god who would create such a universe and then go out of his way to act at such odds with his creation.
So why would a god not be logical? The simplest and most reasonable explanation is that the god was made by man. If one were more hesitant in their blasphemy, they might suggest that god has merely been corrupted by man, but the effect is the same- the gods people worship are not true gods. One only has to look back into history to see this creation or corruption happening consistently whenever something occurs which goes without rational explanation. When the ancients felt an earthquake, they could have no comprehension of the movement of tectonic plates, and so they did the best they could- they deduced that a god had caused the earthquake. And judging by the devastation, he was mad, punishing them perhaps. If one looks carefully, excepting certain times and places, such as periods in Ancient Greece and Rome, the medieval period and more so, the Enlightenment in Europe, one finds that most major progressions in theology occur after natural events given supernatural explanations. This so-called 'god of the gaps' is inefficient and illogical because it is necessary, else it could easily be explained away. This is a root of another of my major criticisms of certain modern religions. People should not be compelled to do good through fear. People are perfectly capable of acting morally and ethically in both peace and harmony without the threat of some horrific, eternal punishment. Jesus' message of love and acceptance, for example, is often mixed inextricably and perhaps tainted by the threat of Hell. Fear is only necessary as a means of control, for a people without fear of retribution for deserting a religion will look for their own explanations of right and wrong. One pertinent example might be the Reformation, where people who looked for their own interpretation of God, despite having found one astonishingly similar in many way to the Catholic conception, were actively persecuted all the same: when supernatural fear is not enough to dissuade dissenters, perhaps some more mortal pain is in order, it would seem. Fear comes from and breeds hate, and it should not be the basis upon which a religion is founded, but I will go into this in greater depth in Part Two. However, this is Part One, and it is about God, not religion.
Fear of god is also important for reverence, for after all, a personalised and sentient god would be perfectly capable of striking you down if you do not obey him. If one fears death, and especially Hell, then one will try and avoid this. But a god so hell-bent, if you'll excuse the choice of language, on punishment is not a kind god, and it is of my opinion that if your god is omnibenevolent, he must be kind. You might say that he is not kind to test us, but I have already touched on illogic above. The God of the Old Testament, Jehovah or Yahweh, is not a kind god. He is cruel, vain, and at times even sadistic. Of course, not all profess to have benevolent gods, so that, it would seem, lets them off the hook for now. However, I cannot accept that any god would try to hurt his creation in any form, and I cannot accept that this harm is for the good of that creation. If one were to beat a child, one would be sent to jail for a very, very long time, and arguing that it was for his own good would not justify it in the least.
And then there is the matter of the sheer number of gods. If one accepts one god over others, one must ask why. The Christian might say that it says so in the Bible, but of course it will- if the Bible said that God was nonsense, then it wouldn't be the Bible. Lacking any hard evidence, the same evidence I speak of when referring to the analogy of the colour blue above, that being verifiable beyond doubt ('miracles' or personal revelations do not count, I am afraid, for they persuade only prior believers), one must accept all gods as potentially being true, equally so. Taking the argument from inconsistent revelation, one finds that simply given the sheer number of gods (and interpretations of god within the one religion), the odds of selecting the 'right' god to worship are simply astronomical. From this point of view, it makes little point which god one worships as most likely one will ultimately be sent to some sort of hell in any case. If deciding what god to worship becomes a matter of inconsequential trivium, then one must acknowledge that the worship of any god becomes unnecessary, especially when doing so will most likely cause you to act in a manner you might not like. Though I do not particularly like him, I feel a quote by Richard Dawkins is relevant here: "We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."
Of course, there are some personalised gods to which most of the above criticisms do not apply. Deism is one of them, which believes in a singular God who created a self-governing universe and then left it be. I admit that this is somewhat appealing in the light of the above, but there is one problem I find with it- why? I hate to bring up Occam's Razor, as it is too often misquoted and misconstrued to support arguments where it oughtn't be used, but I think it applies here. If one can observe only the universe, and the universe is self-governing with no interaction with God, then why even bother believing with God? There is no need for him but to explain why the universe began, which makes him simply another god of the gaps. To an extent it seems like retaining tradition for the mere sake of retaining tradition, which is ridiculous to say the least.
So, if we discount the personalised god, what are we left with? If a personalised god is sentient, all-knowing, all-powerful, everywhere and nowhere, existing beyond time and yet for eternity, of flesh and blood or of the ether, then what god is there that is not personalised? I now ask you to cast your memories back to the start of this text, where I told you the story of the person on the beach, and before that, the question of what defines a god. Having reached this point in our reasoning, these two things become suddenly important. The question of a definition spawns the question of, if a god is not these things above, then what is it? And I will attempt to answer it using that story I told you.
I take a small tangent here when I say that during my research, when researching stoicism, I found the stoics' beliefs to be particularly interesting. Regarding cosmology, most of their beliefs would now be discounted as nonsense, especially regarding the elements. What did influence me, however, was their conception of Logos. What their idea of Logos was is not particularly important in this context, for I did not adopt it; rather, it sparked a thought which I carried through to a point where it touched where I last left our reasoning, regarding the nature of the universe and God.
The thought was this: what if, rather than a God creating a self-sustaining universe, something I touched on earlier, what if it was this self-sustaining nature, this driving force which made the universe work, what if it was this which was God? Immediately this appealed to me, as it was a thought I had not encountered before. Clearly, as I mentioned, the universe works according to a number of rules, rules which we have observed and deduced via scientific means. It may seem strange to you, but I assure you that this is due merely to my inability as a writer to describe it, when I suggest that it is the force behind these rules, this innate driving force which is God. It does not think or do, it simply is, and its being is sufficient to cause the universe to work. The analogy of the watch might better explain it: if what we see on a watch, the ticking of the hands, is the observable universe, and the cogs and wheels inside the watch the laws which govern the universe, causing what we see to occur, then this God would be the electricity which makes those cogs move; in the same way, this God is the force which causes the universe to work. If we now relate this to our story, we can marry the two concepts: what we have seen from our consideration of the rock is, for a split second, a hint of this force.
While this appeals to me, I must admit that from the start there was one feeling nagging me as I concieved it. What need was there for it? Perhaps there ought to be some universal god as I hypothesised, but that doesn't mean that there is one, and even if there was, what then? No religion could possibly be founded upon it- how does one pray to an entity with no concpetion of itself, let alone you?
I have up until this point chosen to dance around my actual beliefs, preferring instead to explain the journey I took in reaching them, in a perhaps too indirect fashion to keep your interest. If so, fear not, for we have now reached the business end of the work.
There was only one satisfactory explanation I could find after my journey. That Nature and God are inextricably linked. For the universe is so wondrous, how else could such divine beauty exist but were it God itself? I personally cannot help but marvel at the mysteries of the universe, and this idea was the only one that could explain this higher feeling to me within the confines of my aforementioned preconditions. Some would say, quite correctly, that this would make me a naturalistic pantheist. But this somehow seems wrong to me. I can accept that there is something higher, above me, almost spiritual in a sense, and to say that it is divine. But it is a God in words alone- it cannot be worshipped. How can one believe in a god and be irreligious? So, somewhat paradoxically, I believe that this 'god' of the universe does and does not exist. For belief in this god in no way affects my thoughts or actions, except indirectly in my shunning of all other gods in preference to it. It is almost not fair to call this god, and I do so almost out of convenience alone, as it cannot be described as a being of any kind. So in a sense I am caught in between my disbelief in personal gods and this believe in a wondrous universe, trapped by words of unclear meaning and use. But ultimately what I call it does not matter. So long as I know, and you know what I mean when I speak of this God, then it makes very little difference indeed.
I will add on one more thing as an addendum: one reason I sometimes refer to myself as a nontheist, besides to resolve the awkward paradox above, is that most people would not consider such a passive deity to even be a god. If I accept this, then I cannot say I am an atheist, for I do not disbelieve in a god, nor would I profess to be an agnostic, though I accept that it may be the case that some things may be unknowable, for the reason that I think what is unknowable is often largely irrelevant. If I cannot know if there is an afterlife, why should I bother considering it? "Nontheism" is sufficiently broad to cover my position for informal discussion.
Additionally, I freely admit that throughout this work I have gone in search of God, and I recognise that it is all based on one, admittedly possibly flimsy presumption: that one finds majesty in the consideration of the rock. I am well aware of the possiblity that one might have no interest in the history of the rock, and no care for the stars above us. I likewise admit that there will be people who will criticise me and say that my belief in a higher entity is the exact illogic I deny others, and that these feelings of mine are incompatible with my thoughts of deities. For the present, I will say that those statements are valid, and I have considered them greatly, for I cannot honestly say to know the Truth. Only when the Truth is known will thought be unnecessary, and so for most likely the rest of my life, I will continue to reflect on the nature of God, and perhaps find my beliefs will change over time, as they have already. I am greatly looking forward to Part Two, in which I will go into a complementary topic which ought to dicuss a great deal I have omitted here which may serve to fills any and all gaps I have left in this, Part One, regarding my philosophy.
