Just THINKING OUTLOUD about God.
Suppose you wanted to have a conversation about God with someone. If there is to be any communication you’ll have to both mean the same thing by the words you use. The most important word in such a conversation will be God, and at least some minimal assumptions of what God is have to be shared to have the conversation.
Assumptions:
- God is a living entity.
If God is not then what are you going to be talking about? - God is superior in all ways to all other life forms.
If God is not superior to all other life forms then God is just another living thing and our discussion is no different than a discussion of any living thing and needs we need to be defining a different term. - God is not subject to the laws of nature.
If God is subject to the laws of nature then God is just another part of the universe and a subject to be studied along with all other natural phenomena by science.
These are the assumptions that are necessary to have this discussion. If any of these assumptions are deleted then the subject itself comes into question. No longer is the subject GOD but rather the existence and nature of divinity. That is a separate issue and not the one under consideration here.
A lot of additional assumptions could be made (and most people do so), but that also changes the subject. Adding any additional assumptions changes the discussion from GOD to a specific definition of GOD and thus, essentially, a specific religion.
Ok, so we assume there is a living entity, superior to all other life forms, and not subject to the laws of nature and we will call this entity GOD.
- Now come the questions.
- Why would we want to know anything about GOD?
Curiosity of course and there may be others. - How can we know anything about GOD?
Not by any means of human intelligence. Human intelligence can not discover anything that is not part of this universe and subject to the laws of nature which govern it. We may not know or even be able to fully understand all the secrets of the universe and certainly can not, by intelligence alone, discover anything about that which lies outside of it and is not subject to natural law. - Who knows anything about GOD?
Many claim (and throughout history have claimed) to know many things about God. Even that they and God are one and the same. But has the “knowledge” of any two individuals ever been totally identical with absolutely no differences- What do they know about GOD? If all the things that all who have claimed to have knowledge of God were written down there would not be enough trees on earth to make all the paper that would be needed to write it on. Would there be even one bit of that knowledge that would not be contradicted elsewhere in that mass of words?
- When did they learn it?
None of those who claim to have knowledge of God were born with it. Does anyone think that knowledge of God is instinctive? - Where did they get this knowledge?
In every case those who claim knowledge of God have acquired that knowledge from someone else or have “claimed” to have gotten it from God directly. - Even if one does not claim God as the direct source there can be no other source ultimately of any knowledge of God except God. Can there be another source of knowledge about that which is undiscoverable by humane intelligence other than the the undiscoverable itself?
Where does this leave us?
As individuals, unless God chooses to speak directly to us, we can not have any knowledge of God. The most that we can do is to accept the word of someone else, someone who claims that God has spoken directly to them. Or we can accept something written down by someone who claims that what they’ve written is what God spoke to them or to someone who told the writer that God spoke to them … or God spoke to someone who told the person who told the writer … or spoke to someone who told someone who told them … or … so on and so on.
Some where down the line God spoke to someone. (At least some writer claims that God spoke to someone.)
The bottom line is that there is no way for any individual to “know” anything about God.
Whenever anyone says they know something about God they don’t know it, they have simply decided to believe what someone else has told them or written down somewhere.
Some more questions:
- Who are you going to believe?
It doesn’t matter how you answer this question, you still have to answer the next one. - Why?
Any answer you give will require adding one or more assumptions and turn the conversation into one about a particular religion. - Why doesn’t God just talk to each one of use individually (or all of us at once) and tell us what we need to know?
To answer this question would require knowledge of God. Without knowledge of God one can not explain why God does or does not do something.
Which brings us back to the assumptions that govern this conversation.
- God is a living entity.
- God is superior to all other live forms.
- God is not subject to the laws of nature.
Until we hear from God there is nothing else we know or can know about God. In fact we don’t even know this much. We’re just assuming.
If we don’t want to make these assumptions then we have nothing to talk about. If you want to add to these assumptions then you want to talk about a particular religion. The assumptions you insist be included will not be the same as those someone else may make. Starting from different assumptions there can be no conversation, only conflict.
Anyone who believes in God can accept these three assumptions. Anyone who wants to avoid conflict will not insist upon any more.
With the minimum set of assumptions that are necessary to have a conversation about God we’ve said all that can be said and the conclusion is:
- Nobody knows anything about God;
- Nobody has ever known anything about God;
- Nobody will ever know anything about God beyond what we have assumed, and these are just assumptions.
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