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CHAPTER 1
A Traditional Definition of God
Perhaps what makes us human more than anything else is our ability to ask the same questions that mankind has asked since the dawn of civilization: Where did this universe come from? Is there a Creator? Why are we here? Is there a purpose for our existence, a grand design?
There are no clear, definitive, and universally accepted answers to these questions. However, since they are central to our existence, to our very being, we must try to provide some semblance of an answer, however incomplete it may be. Without answers to these questions, we are, on some level, unable to direct our lives and find meaning in our existence. As human beings, we have not only the ability to ask these questions, but also the propensity to remain profoundly dissatisfied until we find plausible answers to them.
In just about every culture, answers to these questions have been inextricably linked to the existence and nature of God. Lacking logical explanations, the only way forward has been for humans to invoke an entity so powerful and pervasive that it can provide an answer to any question.
God has been defined in so many different ways — by different denominations of religions, by agnostics, philosophers, scientists, and atheists — that it is difficult to clearly spell out one unambiguous definition of God. It is, therefore, important to define up front what we mean when we invoke the word God.
The Big Guy in the Sky
If you asked a million people how they define God, you will likely get just about as many definitions. Within Christianity, there are well over 3,000 denominations, all of which interpret God and God's will slightly differently. Hindus are said to have thirty-three million manifestations of the one Supreme Being. Are these manifestations of God, or should the one Supreme Being be defined as God? Then there are definitions of God put forth by philosophers and scientists that vary from the material universe to nature to a figment of our imagination.
The concept of God that most religions espouse in practice is one of a divine, generally benevolent, but sometimes vindictive being who not only created the universe, but is also responsible for order in it. Praying to this entity can lead to the fulfillment of hopes, aspirations, and wishes. Ignoring or disrespecting him can incur his wrath. This being can be merciful to the good and merciless to the bad.
Indeed, there are some common attributes that such a God has been commonly ascribed. This God —
• Can do anything
• Can see everything
• Exists everywhere
• Can be appealed to for intervention
• Is difficult to completely comprehend
• Must be worshipped to get on his good side
• May have offspring or avatars that descend to earth who are, in turn, to be worshipped
For brevity and convenience, I refer to this definition of God as the Big Guy in the Sky (BGITS).
This common belief in a supernatural and all-powerful being who acts as a caretaker for this universe is aptly captured in a few verses in the hilarious, satirical poem "In Westminster Abbey" by the British poet and humorist John Betjeman. The poem was written in 1940, during the most trying times of the Second World War.
Gracious Lord, oh bomb the Germans.
This is perhaps the best definition of a BGITS God anyone can muster: a benign fatherlike figure who protects the good and smites the evil and, above all, listens to the prayers of true believers.
What Do We Believe?
A national poll of 900 registered voters conducted in the United States in 2003 for Fox News showed that over 90 percent of those polled believed in God. The survey results also showed that "about a third of Americans believe in ghosts (34 percent) and an equal number in UFOs (34 percent), and about a quarter accept things like astrology (29 percent), reincarnation (25 percent), and witches (24 percent)." The survey had a margin of error of three percentage points. Those of us who are surprised by these results may question the validity of the survey. However, similar surveys conducted by other organizations have come up with broadly similar results.
The number of Americans who say they have no religious affiliation has doubled since 1990 and now stands at over 16 percent of the population. However, only 4 percent of the population identifies itself as atheist or agnostic. These numbers are by no means universally accepted. In fact, an article in the Washington Post claimed, "Surveys designed to overcome the understandable reluctance to admit atheism found that as many as sixty million Americans — a fifth of our population — are nonbelievers." Significant differences in the percentages of people believing in God do arise, depending on how the question is asked, because people define God in so many different ways that it is virtually impossible to decouple the question of belief in God from a definition of God.
There is very little reliable data on the percentage of people who believe in God in other countries. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal presented data on the percentage of people in Europe who attend church at least once a week. The numbers are low, with Denmark reporting less than 10 percent of its citizens attending church regularly.
The same article reports that the percentage unaffiliated with any religion varies from a high of 52 percent in China to 42 percent in Netherlands, 28 percent in France, 25 percent in Germany, 21 percent in the United Kingdom, and 16 percent in the United States. By contrast, the numbers for less-developed countries, such as Brazil (8 percent) and Nigeria (0.4 percent), are much lower. From this data, it also appears that the percentage of religious people is higher in developing countries than in developed countries.
Although these numbers don't tell us directly about people's opinions about God, one thing is clear: A large percentage of people on our planet, particularly in the developing world, believe in a BGITS God. The overwhelming evidence of people's fervent belief in divine intervention is all around us. We need only observe the large number of people flocking to churches, temples, mosques, and synagogues to ask him for favors or seek his forgiveness.
Paradoxes and Questions Arising from This Common Definition of God
If we stick with the BGITS definition of God — an omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent creator of the universe — then we have at least a consistent and common definition. Let's see how we can reason for or against the existence of such a God.
Many arguments have been put forward to support the existence of a BGITS God. For a believer, nothing could be more self-evident than the existence of an omnipotent creator. For an agnostic who is open to questioning this belief, the matter is wide open.
I do want to emphasize that my approach here is one of reason, not of belief. I cannot and do not intend to address anyone for whom belief is sufficient, and logical reasoning unnecessary. I have tried to present the arguments most commonly made for the existence of God and the questions and paradoxes that can arise as we reason our way through this eternal question.
The Creationist Paradox
The most common argument for the existence of God is the creationist view. This point of view, in short, states that this wonderful, intricate universe of ours must have been created by intelligent design. A deliberate and purposeful creator must surely be responsible for its existence. How else could we have such a marvelous and wonderfully complex creation? The creator, in all his wisdom, surely must have a grand design, a purpose, and a master plan for his creation. Why else would he create it?
The fallacy in this argument is obvious. The argument presupposes that everything must have a creator. If this is assumed to be true, God must also have a creator. Alternatively, if we are willing to admit that not all things have a creator (for example, God does not have a creator), it might well be that the universe has no creator.
Bertrand Russell, one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, describes his discovery of the fallacy of this first cause argument in his autobiography:
At the age of eighteen, however, shortly before I went to Cambridge, I read Mill's Autobiography, where I found a sentence to the effect that his father taught him the question "Who made me?" cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question "Who made God?" This led me to abandon the "First Cause" argument, and to become an atheist.
The point is humorously illustrated by a famous story retold by Stephen Hawking in his book A Brief History of Time and ascribed to Bertrand Russell: A well-known scientist was giving a lecture on astronomy. After the lecture, an elderly lady came up to the scientist and told him that he had it all wrong.
"The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise," she claimed.
Not knowing how to respond, the incredulous scientist asked, "And what is the turtle standing on?"
The lady triumphantly replied, "You're very clever, young man, but it's no use. It's turtles all the way down."
Arguing that the universe must have been created by God because everything needs a creator-God is a circular argument. It leads to the unavoidable question, If everything must be created, who created God? And if God has simply always existed, there is nothing that prevents me from claiming that the universe has also always existed. The first cause argument is not logically sustainable.
Does the Existence of Life on Earth Require a Creator?
Until recently, the existence of life on earth was proof enough for the existence of a creator. Since man is unable to create life in any form or shape, the argument goes, the existence of the wide variety of life-forms on this planet is clearly proof that a creator must be responsible for this incredibly wonderful creation so abundant in diverse life-forms.
Scientists are just beginning to understand how life on earth began spontaneously from nonliving building blocks 3.5 billion years ago. In the 1950s, Stanley Miller and Harold Urey, at the University of Chicago, showed that amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, could be formed quite readily under the right conditions from the basic elements present on early earth. Going from amino acids to proteins and enzymes turned out to be a lot more challenging. This process was thought to be fundamental in the creation and self-replication of DNA, the basic building block of all known life-forms.
In a recent article in Scientific American, Alonso Ricardo and Jack Szostak pointed out the basic paradox that scientists have struggled with for many years: It takes preexisting proteins and information stored in the DNA's double helix to make specific proteins. How, then, did the first organisms convert amino acids into specific proteins and enzymes? One possible solution to this paradox is that the first organisms may not have required specific proteins at all. Perhaps the RNA and DNA for these first organisms formed spontaneously, without the genetic code of an existing DNA helix. It is well known that molecules called lipids that contain hydrophilic (water-loving) and hydrophobic (water-hating) properties can self-organize into membranelike structures. These lipid bilayers constitute the basic building blocks of most cell walls. Within these self-organized cell walls, molecules similar to RNA and DNA could self-organize.
When modern cells make proteins, they first copy genes from DNA into RNA and then use the RNA as a template to make proteins. The last stage could have existed independently at first. Later on, DNA could have appeared as a more permanent form of storage, thanks to its superior chemical stability.
Scientists have created simple life-forms such as viruses and bacteria in the lab as far back as 2002 using other precursor molecules or organisms. More recently, they are attempting to synthesize such building blocks of life from chemicals available in a laboratory. The story of the making of synthetic life-forms (without the use of any existing life-forms) still has a ways to go, but most scientists today agree that simple and complex life-forms will be synthesized by humans in the laboratory from basic elements and compounds.
One thing is now crystal clear. We do not need to invoke a supernatural creator to explain the existence of the different life-forms on earth. Biology and chemistry have provided us adequate explanations for how simple precursor biological molecules were created and how this led to the creation of the first simple life-forms. Subsequently, much more complex life-forms evolved from these simple life-forms. The incredible diversity of life-forms on earth is a product of our evolutionary past. Simple life-forms leading to ever more complex life-forms. The empirical evidence for such evolutionary pathways is overwhelming.
The Purpose of Existence Paradox
Another line of reasoning leads to what I call the purpose of existence paradox. According to this argument, God put us on earth for a reason. Each of us has a purpose; otherwise, we would not be here. This line of thinking is clearly motivated by a desire to provide a purpose to our existence and can be quite inspirational.
Everything around us appears to have a purpose. Most of us can quickly identify the useful purpose most inanimate objects serve. But when it comes to explaining our own purpose, it is a difficult, if not impossible, task. In most religions, our purpose is linked to God's purpose for us. There are many passages in scripture that clearly state that we are here to serve God's will. This begs two important questions: What or who is God and what is his will?
The answer, of course, depends on whom you ask. Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Islamists point you in the direction of their holy books to look for answers, and you will find many different interpretations within each faith. The acceptance of such revealed truths about the purpose of our existence requires a giant leap of faith (for example, we must accept the writings as divine revelation), and they each have their own view of our purpose in life. Does this imply that people of different religions have different purposes in this world? Is one holy book better than the others? Is our purpose in life simply a matter of unquestioning faith and belief in a book written a few millennia ago? No rational person can reason their way to this conclusion.
There is very little doubt that there is a deep-rooted emotional and psychological need in each of us to discover a purpose for our existence. This is, of course, very different from saying that there is a logical requirement for it. Although we may believe in the Big Guy in the Sky (BGITS) conception of God or in a holy book (that we can choose or that is chosen for us on the basis of our upbringing) to provide a purpose to our lives, there is no logical basis for this.
Whatever the purpose of our existence — assuming there is one — it must transcend religious scripture or belief. An example of such a purpose that would apply to all humanity would be to make the world a better place. This human-defined purpose is independent of religious scripture and does not require postulating the existence of God.
Bad Things Happen to Good People
Steven Gideon (not his real name) was an honest hardworking father of two who had led, by all accounts, an exemplary life. A family man and an honest factory worker who attended church every Sunday, Gideon was a volunteer firefighter and had gone on missions to poor parts of South America to build medical facilities for the less fortunate. He was a deeply pious and generous man. Steve was diagnosed with an incurable form of cancer that took his life in a matter of six months at the young age of forty-five. He left behind his beautiful wife and two adoring children. Why?
One of the apparent paradoxes that arises when we invoke the existence of a kind and benign God is the lack of a reasonable explanation for why terrible things happen to the most wonderful and God-fearing people. If God is all-powerful and merciful, why does he allow these kinds of injustices to happen? Does he not see the good being slaughtered by the evil? Does he not care when an innocent child dies of starvation?
As you might imagine, there has been a great deal written about this topic, starting as far back as the Book of Job in the Bible. Among the many religious discourses and treatises written on reconciling this paradox, I recommend two popular contemporary books with remarkably similar titles: Harold S. Kushner's When Bad Things Happen to Good People (Anchor Books, 2004) and Melvin Tinker's Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People? (Christian Focus, 2006). Judging from the popularity of these books, a lot of people have been bothered by this question and have thought about it a great deal.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Coming Full Circle"
by .
Copyright © 2016 Mukul Sharma.
Excerpted by permission of River Grove Books.
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