Existence of God

I explain in what sense I understand the sentence “God exists”, and why I think it is true in the sense I mean it.

This blog post was first written as a series of text messages to an atheist friend who thought that he simply had no reason to believe it. I have edited it very little from what I sent to him, so the tone may be unusual.

First, notice that, for most of history, people have thought that they can prove that “God exists” is true from pure philosophy; and I think so too, but you have to understand the words right. It is obviously false if by “God” you mean a bearded man in the sky, for instance; there are many true, and many false meanings of it. I’ll explain what I mean by the words, and why I think my sense is good enough for all the mainstream religions, although some staunch bearded-man-believers would hate me for meaning what I do by it. Alright? ...

0. Contents

• 1. What God is said to be
• 2. That the forms exist
• 3. What the form of the good is
• 4. That the form of the good is God
• 5. Epilogue

1. What God is said to be

OK, so first we have “God”. The most ecumenical senses of the word, I think, are these two.

Sense A: The principle/cause of all other things, which is distinct from them and superior to them. (Wuellner)

This is usually what “arguments for God’s existence” are proving, and the most abstract philosophers have this in common with any religious grandmas. The latter two restrictions would exclude most kinds of ‘pantheism’ from counting here.

Sense B: Something “absolutely perfect” in some sense, usually including being perfectly morally good, all-powerful, all-knowing etc.

This one is also common. I would say that my sense of the word “God” fits both of these two common senses, which is good, since that means I’m not just making up a new sense for the word. I wouldn’t usually define God using these phrases, but what I mean by the word fits both of them. I’ll explain “exists” next.

2. That the forms exist

Now, the funny thing about “exists” is most people never define it, and they just talk about things existing and not existing without explaining what they mean, and I think that is what causes a lot of confusion nowadays. This is especially because I think there are two main senses of the word, so I am going to define both of them.

Sense 1: something exists if it can be perceived with the senses.

I think everyone agrees with this; you and I exist, and so on. I think when people are sure that God doesn’t exist, they are thinking that this is the only sense. But I think there’s the other one too.

Sense 2: something exists if it can be understood with reason.

In this sense, you can say that perfect circles exist, and the set of natural numbers exists, even though you’ve never seen them, but it remains true that married bachelors and other nonsense don’t exist. In this sense, we have to say that unicorns exist, although that’s weird, so we rarely do – to avoid ambiguity, we stick to sense 1 when talking about those.

Now, I think those are really the only senses of “exist”, since we human beings don’t have any other mental powers besides the senses and reason. And almost all the theologians agree that God doesn’t exist in sense 1 – it says in the book of John that “no one has ever seen God” (1:18), but even taking only the usual interpretations of the Old Testament, it is usually held that God doesn’t have any physical body, and the times he “appeared” to people were just visions that represented him. So I think you can only go forward with the proof if you agree that sense 2 is a good sense to use the word “exists”. And if that’s fine with you, then I’ll explain how you can understand one thing that fits both senses of “God”, although maybe you’re beginning to get it already.

3. What the form of the good is

I think the way we understand things is we form concepts in our minds, and those concepts are what we are expressing when we give definitions. Now, I think there is one most important concept that is involved with all the others. Plato called it “the form of the Good”, which is very awesome, but maybe not very useful. Sometimes I say it’s “being”, which is also not very clear. But basically it would be the concept of the “intelligible” or understandable or conceivable – it’s one concept, or form, that includes everything that exists in sense 2. Alright? This concept includes all the other concepts, just like the concept of “animal” includes all your ideas of each kind of animal.

4. That the form of the good is God

Now, if you take this central concept, or highest form, you see that it fits Sense A of “God” in a certain way – it is the cause of all things that you understand, insofar as you understand them, since it is involved in your understanding of all of them. Just like your concept of dog is the cause of there being any dogs in your life, since otherwise you couldn’t understand all those shapes and colors as dogs. So it’s the cause of all things insofar as they are intelligible; if you take sense 2 to be the truest sense of existing, which I think Plato did, then that’s perfectly sufficient. (After all, whatever exists in sense 2 has always existed in sense 2, so that’s a more “eternal” way to exist; and since sense 1 concerns “appearance” to your senses, we can say that, by contrast, sense 2 concerns “reality”.) This central concept is superior to the other concepts because it includes all of them, and it’s distinct from them when taken by itself, although it’s part of all of them.

It also fits sense B of “God”, again, only when taken by itself. This is harder to understand, but the idea is that “perfection” would be something fitting the concept. So a perfect dog is a dog that perfectly fits the concept of dog, while a defective dog would depart from the definition in some ways, e.g., dogs are quadrupeds, and the poor pooch only has three legs. Similarly, a morally bad man is departing from the concept of man because we understand that human beings are rational, and being immoral is irrational. Alright? That’s how classical philosophy works. Anyway, so, every concept perfectly fits itself, of course —the concept of dogness is a perfect dog, although particular dogs aren’t perfect— and if you take the universal concept by itself, it obviously has to include every possible perfection, since it includes every other concept – just like how “animals”, taken generally, can do anything that particular animals can do. So the central concept is absolutely perfect too.

5. Epilogue

That’s how I would understand “God exists” in a way that fits both of the common religious ideas about it. Many people would dislike it, but I think it’s pretty good, and good enough for the main religions. Maybe this leaves you a bit confused regarding prayer and miracles, but I can try to explain if you ask a question. If you don’t want to buy all these theories about how thoughts and reason work, then I guess there isn’t much I can do, but I tried.

Anyway, believing that “God exists” in some sense wouldn’t mean you’re a member of any religion, but you have to believe it in order to even be able to believe that a message is from God, right? So it’s a start.

Although you could technically stop there, if you wanted; there are many philosophers who believe it and aren’t in any religion. This seems less common nowadays than in early modern times, but it’s a thing. (I do have an idea of which religion you should join, of course.)