RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.
Countrymen,
One of my two favorite bloggers, Stacy McCain (the other is Dan Riehl), posted yesterday on the question “Does God exist.”
This is a common lay and professional question and I commented as follows:
BLUF 1: God does not exist and no theologian has said that He does. The assertion is absurd on its face. The God who “exists,” as Nietzsche rightly said, “is dead.” He never lived except as a figment of a whole lot of peoples’ imaginations and Nietzsche despised figments. “God exists” is fantasy. “There is proof that God exists” is mendacity, intentional or not, mendacity.
BLUF 2: All “arguments,”demonstrations,” etc. for “the existence or non-existence of God” rely on assuming that He does. They are tautological and so prove nothing, one way or another.
BLUF: 3: A long and distinguished history attends the effort to “prove” that “God exists” and, whereas several brilliant efforts have been made to that effect, each in turn failed for relying on a hidden tautology, namely, assuming its result at the start of its “proof” process.
BLUF 4: The final nail in the coffin of “proof” for “the existence of God” was driven by Immanuel Kant, who, notwithstanding, rounded immediately and offered as “proof” for a “moral imperative” (i.e., for an Unconditioned, which would be God) a sophisticated version of one of the “proofs” (the so-called “ontological argument”) he had just evacuated as tautological.
BLUF 5: Notwithstanding, lay and professional (to include Kant himself!) susceptibility to the seductive charm of using conditioned intelligence to “prove” the existence of anything unconditional (to include “Global Warming,” “Evolution,” “Over Population,” “Peak Oil,” “Social Engineering,” “Morality,” “Relativism,” “Absolutism,” “Science,” “Public Relations,” “God,” “Government,” whatever) continues unabated and will so long as someone rises from their bunk.
The most sublime sage can be upended by delusion in the flicker of an eye without knowing it. Caveat Emptor applies foremost to the leaping gyrations of one’s own monkey mind.
A “proof for the existence of God” is the mother of all forlorn hopes.
The demonstration of THAT fact is tedious even for those with a technical background capable of grasping it. And it does require a technical background and I am not going to run it here. I will say only that this matter is thoroughly and brilliantly (and accessibly) digested during the preceding three millennia and its outcome is certain: there is no proof for the existence of God. God does not exist.
One can take that to the bank.
Epilogue: Godel demonstrated that there is no proof for anything whatsoever, not even proof itself. And unlike Kant, he did not round on his work and try to overcome its outcome.
The problem is in the language. If God exists, He is a being among beings, which means He is conditioned and not God. He is an object.
(Or, he is one of two gods, both objects, each conditioned by the other, usually one “good” and one “evil,” a favorite modern assumption informing the work of the Weather/Alinsky/Brooks/Sullivan/Matthews/Angela Davis set and promoted by them.)
I will not detail the reasons the problem is in the language. They are tedious and technical. They can be found in the literature, well laid out. The gist of it is, if God is an object, as of a “proof,” He is conditioned and a god not God.
BLUF: Outcome: Never say what God is or Who God is. Never try to talk *about* God. God is not an object. What do you know!? Remember Job. If one must talk *of* God, first say one does not know God (does an ant know the ocean?) and then say what He is not or say that He is “not only [whatever] but also ….” and leave it open-ended.
Any language regarding God that is less than caveat-strewn and open-ended omni-directionally makes God an object, a god, a being among beings; it throws conditions on the Unconditioned Unconditional. A conditioned Unconditional does not exist.
The intrinsic intent of the “proof” is not too prove anything but simply to express joy and faith in the direct experience of Himself God has granted one. That is a good and worthy thing to do, but it is an expression of experience, not a “proof” of its source. God is Unconditioned and Unconditional or He is not God.
It is unseemly to overstep the reality of one’s experience and claim for it something it is not. Doing that falsifies the experience.
If one must use the words “God” and “existence” or “God” and “being” in proximity, one says that God is the root, abyss or source of existence, that God is the Ground of Being (Tillich) or that God is Being Itself (esse ipsum, Augustine but going back to Parmenides).
God does not “exist.” God is existence (Phenomenological Ontology) and much more. It is not true, however, that existence is God (pantheism).
God only is convincing regarding God. Man has no power of self-salvation, no ability to grasp much less “prove” God. He depends absolutely for his being, existence and nature — and the better part of his destiny — on the self-revelation of God, Who, like wind (Spiritus, Geist), “bloweth where He listeth.”
Genug!
In Honor of Mary Jo Kopechne Day, 26 August 2009
Democrats! Listen Up! It is known you have the mind to punish Americans for being Americans but not the means. Impeach the cat in the White House and lose your Racist, Stalinist, Islamist and Misogynist elements or kiss your Party goodbye.
Signed:
The Rev. David R. Graham
Theologian, United Church of Christ
Elkhart, Indiana
AMDG – VICTORY
