A Proof of the Existence of God
The entire content of this website assumes the truth of just one fundamental premise, which is that there is a God. You may fairly ask if we can know this with rational certainty. I answer yes, and will explain why in what follows.
There have been many more or less compelling attempts to prove the existence of God, but none that I am aware of have taken a strictly metaphysical approach to this undertaking, and certainly not the metaphysical approach of excluding all other possible schemes of existence than the one that assumes the existence of one all-powerful God. The purpose of this paper is to do precisely that, and in so doing to prove the existence of God.[1]
In what follows, my precise enquiry is into the fundamental point of division between the metapysics of true monotheism and that of every other conceivable scheme of existence. That point of division is the seemingly innocuous question of how many primal principles there were before the Cosmos or Creation came into existence. If the answer to this question is one, then we are well on our way to discovering a proof of the existence of God. There is, by the way, no disagreement between the three Abrahamic religions on this point, all three of them insisting that there can only have been one before Creation, and that this one was the Divine essence that is God. However, none of the three have proven the truth of this contention. Science enters into this debate with the theory of the Big Bang, which posits the primal existence of a singleton of some kind that explodes under the impetus of its own inherent divisiveness. The scientific theory of primal existence would be accepted by Pantheists, who are atheists, and so can represent both in this debate. I mention Pantheism specifically because of its claim to be Monist (i.e. contending that the Cosmos, or God, is one).
First let us establish whether any number of primal principles greater than two is possible. To that end, let us consider what we can know with empirical certainty. We can know with empirical certainty, from the disorder that we witness or experience every day, that there is a force of Division at work in the Cosmos, and we can know with empirical certainty, from the order and love that we witness and experience every day, that there is also a force of Unity in the Cosmos. Indeed, the only conceivable primal principle that could cause there to be anything other than perfect Unity in primal existence would be the principle of Division. So we may now confidently identify and name two hypothetical and diametrically opposed primal principles as those of Unity and Division.[2] To determine whether or not existence might be constituted of three or more primal principles, we need only ask if there is any other conceivable primal principle in dynamic balance with the principles of Unity and Division, or Harmony and Chaos, or Order and Disorder. There is, to my understanding, no such conceivable other primal principle, and positing an absolutely neutral principle would be absolutely pointless. That is all we need to know. We can now rule out the possibility that there were three or more primal principles in existence before creation, which leaves us only to consider the merits of Primal Monistic and Primal Dualistic schemes of existence.
Beginning with Primal Monism, this is the contention that there was only one principle in primal existence. The only noteworthy example of a Primal Monistic scheme of existence is that of Monotheistic Monism, best known to us in its highest conception as Mosaic Monotheism, the Monotheism first articulated by Moses.[3] Mosaic Monotheism posits a condition of primal existence where 'All That Is' was God; where God and existence were identical because there was no existence besides His.[4] Because God was 'All That Is', we understand Him to be infinite in essence, because before He created there was nothing else in the realm of existence to limit Him.[5] That God was alone in existence before creation also informs us of the provenance of the stuff of Creation, because there was no other place but God for the stuff of creation to have come from.[6] We understand God to be all-powerful, because before He created there was nothing else to which or to whom power could belong. In God, power is identical to essence. To the extent that we see power on display in Creation, to that extent has God empowered His creation through His own essence. We say that God is eternal because He is not subject to essential change, and as such is not within any measure of time. We say that God is life to point to the fact that in God life is identical to essence, and that all created life is by His gift. We say that God loves because love is the only way to reasonably account for His having created at all, as explained in An Explanation of the Purpose of Creation in this website. The experience of loving and being loved in return was all that God did not have when He was alone. We say that God is all-knowing to point to the fact that all knowledge is in God and is perfect, and so too must be His knowledge of His own creation and creatures. We say that God is perfect in reason to underscore the fact that we as reasoning creatures are equipped to understand Him and His will if we put our minds to it. We say that God is omnipresent because His spirit is everywhere evident in creation, most notably in the form of created life. We say that God is perfect in unity to underscore the fact that when 'All That Is' was God, there was no other; no other beside Him and no other within Him. Therein lies a sufficient understanding of Mosaic Monotheism, which I believe represents the very zenith of rationality.
A Primal Dualistic scheme of existence is a hypothetical condition in which the realm of existence is composed of two primal principles. Primal Dualism may be implicitly or explicitly atheistic, but it is most often a feature of a serious effort to understand God. So, for example, it is a feature of Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism and the Gospel of John (e.g. Chapters 1 and 8). The reason for this religious and theological popularity is that Primal Dualism affords a ready explanation for the existence of evil and suffering in the creation of a perfectly good God. However, that appeal is only superficial. From a strictly rational standpoint, the embrace of a Primal Dualistic scheme of existence reflects only a limited grasp of metaphysics, or a limited deductive ability, or both, because Primal Dualism is demonstrably false, as I will presently show.[7] It can, for convenience, be considered under two headings; Inanimate Primal Dualism and Animate Primal Dualism.
Inanimate Primal Dualism is defined by its espousal of the absence of any living entity (Inanimate) in the primal condition of a twofold existence (Dualism), before the Universe came into existence (Primal). It thus posits the non-existence of God. Each of the two primal existential principles in such a scheme would be an absolutely distinct, irreducible and indestructible pole of some impersonal character; say for example Unity and Division, Order and Disorder, Harmony and Chaos.[8] Animate Primal Dualism, by contrast, is defined by its espousal of the presence of a living entity in the primal condition of existence, with the living entity or entities being identified as God and Inanimate Something, or God and Satan respectively, the former of which is the metaphysical underpinning of the Potter-and-Clay scheme of God and His creation, and the latter a feature of the Gospel of John.
Dealing first with Inanimate Primal dualism, there are two possibilities to consider. First is the scenario in which the two principles are identical in potency, as one would naturally expect of absolute opposites. If this were the case, then nothing would change, and so this cannot account for the existence of our ever-evolving Cosmos. Second is the scenario in which the two principles are unequal in potency, so that either Unity or Division is the stronger. An example of this thinking is the implicit metaphysics of the Big Bang, in a system we may designate as Scientific Dualism.
Scientific Dualism takes as a default position the non-existence of God, because there is no empirical evidence of His existence, and it is therefore inanimate in its existential leanings. In inanimate systems, anything that explodes is not in a condition of perfect unity or balance, and only that explodes which is greater in the power of Division than Unity. Hence Scientific Dualism implicitly posits a condition of existence wherein the primal principle of Division was more powerful than the principle of Unity. However, in Inanimate Primal Dualistic systems, the power of Division would necessarily be weaker than the power of Unity, because there is everywhere order and hence Unity in physical systems. The Cosmos could not be ordered if the principle of Division were stronger than Unity, and yet the cosmos could not be at all unless there was a primal incident of Division bearing testimony to the greater power of Division than Unity.
And so we have a contradiction in the heart of the metaphysics of the Big Bang, on the one hand bearing testimony to the greater power of Division in existence and on the other hand bearing testimony to the greater power of Unity. We need it to be one thing to account for certain of our natural phenomena, and another to account for the fact that we are here at all. We cannot have it both ways, and yet we must have if we are to account for the Cosmos as a product of an Inanimate Primal Dualistic system. It is therefore clear that Inanimate Primal Dualism cannot account for existence as we know it, and it is thus rejected. Hence the scientific scheme of existence falls, and with it falls Pantheism.
Moving on to Animate Primal Dualism, which contends that in primal existence there was a mindful entity or entities. There are two schools of thought in Animate Primal Dualistic thinking. The first would say there is something other than God in the realm of existence with him. This something might be identified as Satan, or as the primal stuff out of which Creation was made. In the Satan scenario, Satan was with God before He created, and Creation is the battleground for the two in a cosmic struggle for domination. This is a colourful notion of existence, but it suffers from the same problems as does the suggestion that there was some primal stuff beside God that became the stuff out of which Creation was made. According to these scenarios we are to believe that Satan, or some stuff suitable for Creation-building, just happened to be side-by-side with God in the realm of existence before He created; an entity, or stuff, that was not from God and was absolutely other than Him, but that just happened to be there in opposition to Him, or well suited to the task of Creation-building. These propositions are impossibly unlikely. Moreover, the suggestion that some suitable 'stuff' for Creation-building just happened to be at hand also suggests that Creation is made out of some imperfect, serendipitous stuff, which God being idle decides to mould into Creation. This is a ludicrous characterisation of God, as well as being impossibly unlikely, and so it cannot be true. A third possible implication of such a scheme of existence is that there is an intelligence beyond God who is responsible for the existence of both God and Satan, or God and the raw materials for Creation-building. This intelligence would therefore be a Creator God beyond God, and so this line of speculation is completely pointless because we now have to ask the very same questions about the hypothetical God beyond God.
The second school of thought would say the 'other' is within God in the form of imperfection, and they would point to the suffering in existence as proof that God must be imperfect. If suffering were impossible to reconcile with a perfect, and therefore perfectly good, God, then no one would believe in Him. Rather we must search for the place of suffering in the creation of a perfectly good and loving God. That place is not hard to find.
Ask yourself what you would feel and do if faced with suffering experienced by any sentient creature? I believe most people would feel distressed, and would do their best to relieve the suffering, or would at least wish it away. This is compassion, an expression of love, and it is this that is the silver lining to every suffering; this that gives it a place in God's creation. Love is ultimately all that God wants for us, and all that we want for ourselves, and to love suffering sentient creatures is a way of loving God in this life and thus bringing His purpose to pass. Love is undoubtedly the greatest good. Moreover, the one who suffers not uncommonly searches more earnestly for a greater understanding of existence, and that search if properly pursued should ultimately bring them to God, or to a greater understanding of God for those who already have faith. And so they are more likely to discover or deepen their relationship with God, which is a rich reward. Having identified two conceivable reasons for suffering in existence, I find no other cause to ponder the possibility that God is imperfect, and we can thus reject the suggestion that there was something 'other' within Him, in the form of imperfection, before He created.
There is one final Primal Dualistic scheme of existence that I want to pay separate attention to, and that is the one that contends there was such a thing as 'non-existence' with God before He created. The concept of non-existence (or non-being) has attracted the attention of philosophers ever since Parmenides first addressed it some 2,500 years ago. According to Parmenides, all that can be said of non-existence is that it is not, and that it therefore cannot constitute a valid subject of philosophical enquiry. To illustrate the issues under consideration, there is only one example that any reader of this paper need consider, and that is the irreconcilability of the Christian and Jewish understandings of God. The Christian idea of God is that He is three persons of one essence, and the Jewish idea is that He is one Person of one essence. Both of these ideas are undeniably in the realm of existence, but both cannot be true. For most readers of this site, I would expect that either one or the other of them is accepted as true, and therefore the other as false. It would be absurd to suggest that the one that is false is in the realm of non-existence. Try telling that to two billion Christians. Therefore, ideas can be in the realm of existence and be content-rich but have no basis in reality.
The concept of non-existence is unique in that although it is in the realm of existence, it is absolutely devoid of conceptual content. Indeed it is the only concept in the entire realm of existence that is absolutely devoid of content. If you think about non-existence, and in so doing your mind comes to rest on any idea, that idea is in the realm of existence, like the concept of non-existence itself. So the concept of non-existence is in the realm of existence, but it has no basis in reality and is absolutely devoid of conceptual content.
The best way I can think of to illustrate the concept of non-existence is as follows. Open your documents folder on your computer. Create a new folder and entitle it 'non-existence'. Now send the document to your desktop as a shortcut. Now delete the 'non-existence' folder in your documents and close your documents down. You are now left with a short-cut on your desktop entitled 'non-existence', which when you click on it does not open onto anything, not even a blank page. That is precisely what non-existence is, a concept entirely devoid of content. Therefore, I believe it is just as Parmenides said, nearly 2,500 years ago, that 'non-existence' cannot constitute a valid subject of philosophical enquiry.
Thus it is that any number of primal principles greater than one is impossible. And so we are left with only one possibility, one that makes perfect sense, which is that before creation there was only one, and that one was perfect in Unity. But why should we go one step further and declare that one perfect in unity to be a mindful God? Here is what I think.
- 1. How else does a singleton perfect in Unity start to develop into the Cosmos as we know it, except that it was directed to do so by a mindful entity?
- 2. How do life and mind enter the Cosmos except from One Who is Himself living and mindful? Are we really to believe that they accidentally emerged from a primeval soup?
- 3. What is the Cosmos expanding at an ever-accelerating pace towards?
- 4. I regard as truth that which is at once the most simple, the most beautiful, the most rationally compelling and the most spiritually satisfying answer to any question that I ask. I regard the existence of mind in primal existence in the same way as I regard all other truth; absolutely without doubt.
- 5. The Order and beauty in creation. I do find this a particularly compelling argument. After all, why is there any such experience as beauty? I cannot imagine it to be one of those characteristics that evolutionary scientists would argue allowed a brute beast to best compete with its nearest competitors. So why do we have it at all? Just a fluke? It is far too powerful an experience to be a fluke.
And so the One perfect in unity was mindful, and that mindful One perfect in Unity was and is God. Thus it is that we can declare with certainty that there is a God.
June 25th 2011
References and Endnotes
[1] The following link is to a useful summary of the various attempted rational proofs of the existence of God. These are, in truth, more like evidences that might cumulatively be sufficient to bring a willing person to faith, but they are unlikely to be individually sufficient to do so. However, to one who already has faith, several of these evidences are really quite compelling, and so are deserving of everyone's attention. The summary is here: http://www.bci.org/bahaistudies/conferences/capetown/robert00.doc, but please note that its author apparently belongs to the Baha'i religion, about which I know little, and so I take no responsibility for anything that he or his fellow adherents have to say on any subject. It is only his reportage of facts that I am recommending to you, and for which he should be commended.
[2] Good and Evil are value judgements, and so do not belong in any scheme of existence in which the absence of mind is assumed until proven otherwise. Likewise love and hate. There are several absolutely impersonal, though in fact not entirely un-emotive, bipolar fundamental principles that I can think of, such as Harmony and Chaos or Order and Disorder, but I believe the opposition is best articulated as Unity and Division. Unity and Division are impersonal and objective values that can be acknowledged equally by all, and they are sufficient at a metaphysical level to yield simplistic and uninteresting answers to many complex and fascinating theological questions. This hypothetical scheme of existence is the theological position of Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism and the Gospel of John.
[3] Mosaic Monotheism is the monotheism first articulated by Moses. It remains the highest conception of Monotheism after 3,000 years because the truth cannot be improved upon. Its rivals are Christian Monotheism, which is not truly monotheistic at all, and Islamic Monotheism, which, though truly monotheistic, lacks the depth, breadth, beauty and authority of Mosaic (i.e. Jewish) Monotheism.
[4] This is why in philosophical theology the 'nature' of the Divine essence is identified as pure existence.
[5] This begs the question, does God's creation limit Him in any way? After all, I am quite certain that my pen is not God, which would appear mean there is some place in Creation where God is not. The nature of the relation of God to His creation is an extremely intriguing subject to ponder, and will be considered when I explore the process of creation. For now I would only respond that if before creation God was without limitation in the extent of His essence, then it is impossible that he would be so limited after creation. That would require that God create something greater or as great as Himself, and thus infinite in extent. It is impossible to create infinity. Therefore God's creation cannot limit the extent of His essence. Whether or not it can limit the presence of His essence will be explored elsewhere.
On the subject of God's infinity, the simplest way to imagine this is to bring to mind a hard-boiled egg. If God is not infinite in essence, then he is like the yellow of the egg surrounded on all sides by the white. However, unless there is something else limiting the white, it must extend to infinity, and so would be infinitely greater than God. That is impossible, and so the Divine essence must be infinite in extent. Some might ask why there cannot be two infinites in existence, or even more? The reason this cannot be so is that there cannot have been any more than one of anything before the Cosmos came into being, as explained in this paper. The apparently self-contradictory concept of 'Limited infinity' refers to a hypothetical condition of existence in which God is limited only in one direction or dimension; limited by an intelligence besides God, or by something absolutely other than Him that is the outcome of a single mixture of primal principles dividing into just two principles, one of them being God. These are expressions of Primal Dualism, and so are dealt with in that part of the main paper.
A final point in relation to Divine infinity is that it is also the rationale for the commandment not to make or worship images or statues of God. It is precisely because God is without limitation on His essence that He cannot be conceived to have any form, because only that which has an outer defining limit can have a form. To suggest otherwise is to misunderstand and misrepresent God, and it is thus forbidden in Jewish Law.
[6] If there was none other than God before creation, then there was nowhere else for the 'stuff' of Creation to have come from. It is pointless to protest against this on the grounds that God cannot possibly have anything essential in common with His base and sinful creation. To any who hold this point of view, I would suggest that God might be quite offended to hear His creation disparaged in such terms. Because we are God's creation, we can rest assured that we are made from the very best 'stuff', and that we are splendidly made by the Master of every art and science. Creation must have come forth from God. It cannot be any other way. The only alternative is that there just happened to be 'something' suitable for Universe building side by side with God in primal existence. This is the potter-and-clay scheme of primal existence, which is Primal Dualistic in conception and will be dealt with below. For now it is enough to say that this alternative conception to the God Who was 'All That Is' is impossible. Those who insist on the one hand that God created 'ex nihilo' ('out of nothing') and on the other that the 'nothing' out of which God created did not come from Him are proposing a metaphysical impossibility and rational absurdity.
[7] By the way, despite the obvious metaphysical limitations of the author of the Gospel of John, and his explicit espousal of a Primal Dualistic scheme of existence, he is nonetheless highly regarded by many Christian thinkers and mystics. It should, however, be noted that mainstream Christian theology is not Primal Dualistic in its conception.
[8] Please note that when I am referring to Unity as a hypothetical primal principle of existence I capitalize it.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
