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Is God an invention of man's mind or true being?
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| True Being | 53% | 2174 votes | Total: 4123 votes | |
| Invention | 47% | 1949 votes |
True Being
by Orestes J. Gonzalez
Created on: March 08, 2009 Last Updated: May 25, 2012
Those who affirm God's existence by faith or reason or both have no difficulty in recognizing God as true being. And the supporting facts and convincing evidence on which they base their belief and knowledge are not figments of the imagination.
Of greater interest in the context of the present discussion are the difficulties confronting those who postulate God as an invention of man's mind. For even the idea of God present in man's mind has been successfully taken to provide evidence for God's true being.
A serious analysis of how the idea of God present in man's mind leads to God's true being is reported in the works of Anselm of Canterbury. A close look at Anselm's prayerful formulation of the inference should prove helpful here to clarify why God cannot be an invention of man's mind.
Here I report a brief summary of the argument in the words of Anselm of Canterbury.
"Lord, grant me that I may understand, as much as You see fit, that You exist as we believe You to exist, and that You are what we believe You to be. Now we believe that You are 'something than which nothing greater can be thought.'
"Or can it be that a thing of such a nature does not exist, since 'the Fool has said in his heart, there is no God'?
"Surely, when the Fool hears what I am speaking about, namely, 'something than which nothing greater can be thought,' he understands what he hears, and what he understands is in his mind, even if he does not understand that it actually exists.
"For it is one thing for an object to exist in the mind, and another thing to understand that an object actually exists.
"Even the Fool, then, is forced to agree that 'something than which nothing greater can be thought' exists in the mind, since he understands this when he hears it, and whatever is understood is in the mind.
"And surely 'that than which a greater cannot be thought' cannot exist in the mind alone.
"For if it exists solely in the mind even, it can be thought to exist in reality also, which is greater. If then 'that than which a greater cannot be thought' exists in the mind alone, this same 'that than which a greater cannot be thought' is 'that than which a greater can be thought.' But this is obviously impossible.
"Therefore there is absolutely no doubt that 'something than which a greater cannot be thought' exists both in the mind and in reality.
"You exist so truly, Lord my God, that You cannot even be thought not to exist.
"Lord, not only are You 'that than which a greater cannot be thought,' but You are also 'something greater than can be thought.' For since it is possible to think that there is such a one, then, if You are not this same being 'something greater than You' could be thought - which cannot be."
The passage just reported is from one of Anselm's major works, the "Proslogion," also known as "Alloquium de Dei existentia." (1)
And "Fides et Ratio" praises Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) as "one of the most fruitful and important minds in human history." (2)
The argument that 'someone than which a greater cannot be thought' must exist, applies only to the concept of God in whom everything is absolutely absolute. God is absolutely 'that than which nothing greater can be intellectually conceived.'
There is indeed that which is greatest relatively as the members of a class fall in a gradation with respect to a higher or maximum value. But that which is greatest absolutely is a being that transcends all classification. This is the concept of God, and to this concept alone the argument applies.
In the category of lions, for example, a unique lion greater than which another lion cannot be conceived does not exist. In the category of trees, the perfect tree does not exist.
Only in the realm of the absolute and transcendental notions there exists someone at the summit of the chain of beings who possesses the transcendental perfection in fullness, someone who does not receive the perfection from another. And this is known to all under the name of God.
The reality referred to by expressions such as "the Unmoved Mover," "the Uncaused Cause," or "the Supreme Being," and the facts of revelation are not figments of the imagination. The expressions highlighted refer to a real being and revelation is a historical fact.
There has to be an Unmoved Mover, otherwise nothing would move. There has to be an Uncaused Cause, otherwise the phenomenon of causation would not be taking place. There has to be an Ultimate Cause of the real, otherwise nothing would be real.
And the revelation of God has set within history a reference point which reason cannot neglect.
There is abundant evidence to corroborate the fact that God is not an invention of man's mind. God is true being.
Notes
(1) See Anselm of Canterbury, "Proslogion," in "Patrologia Latina," vol. 158, pp. 223-248.
(2) Pope John Paul II, Encyclical Letter "Fides et Ratio," 14 September 1998, no. 14.
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Invention
by Gwen Reed
Created on: February 02, 2011
Man invented God, but who invented man?
There are billions of names for God and there are 6.8 billion variations on a human being theme presently on planet Earth. A mathematician could calculate how many variations on homo sapiens there have been since we first walked upright and had a degree of functioning brain-power, used language, made tools. We have no such formula to pursue the many facets of the identity of God.
Arthur C. Clark, the futurist science fiction writer wrote a short story called “The Nine Billion Names of God” in which a Tibetan lama and a computer scientist work together on a program that will project all the possible names of God using only a nine character alphabet. The project takes a nasty turn as they have come near the end of exhausting all possible names for God. The computer scientist finds out that when they reach the end of all permutations for the names of God, God will have finished his Universe experiment and there will no longer be a need for life on earth.
How many Gods are there?
When my son was four years old he came home from pre-school in a quiet mood. He sat at the kitchen table coloring for a while, then looked up and asked, “How many Gods do you think there are, mama?”
I sensed this might be a trick question, as four year olds enjoy playing word jokes on grown-ups. “Well, just one honey,” I said. “How many Gods do YOU think there are?”
My little boy tilted his head and looked up at the ceiling with a smile. “Ohh… about 5 billion Gods,” he said.
With shock I realized he had named the number of the world’s population at that time. I took a pause then asked him, “You mean for every person on earth they have their own idea, their own words, their own God like so many tails on a kite?”
“Yes, exactly,” he said and that was the end of the conversation. He had won that guessing game and now, 24 years later I have still not come up with a better concept of God than his own.
Reverence For Life
Dr. Albert Schweitzer told a story of how he discovered his greatest principle, Reverence for Life. He was treating a man who was dying from parasitic microbes. While examining the man’s blood under a microscope Dr. Schweitzer observed the tiny organisms who were destroying their host animal. He noted that the microbes were as beautiful in their orderliness as was anything else in nature, and that what was driving the parasites was the same drive as the dying man. Life seeks life.
Dr. Schweitzer called his reverent attitude towards all living things: “Reverence For Life,” and this became the foundation of his life works that resulted in his winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952. Reverence for life is a person’s humble expression of awe before the mystery of creation. It followed, for Schweitzer, that if one adopted the basic value system of Reverence For Life that most of the world’s suffering could be eliminated. Reverence for life is also the foundation for a world ecology that will sustain plant and animal life and the balance of ecosystems.
Why should the God-idea be a problem?
It is amusing that from the time of the Ancient Greeks to today we still have not solved “the God problem.” On the one had revealed religion does not make a very good show of itself when arguing creationism. On the other hand it is a common misunderstanding that science is antagonistic towards the “God-idea.”
Albert Einstein said: “What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.”
The only problem with the “God-idea” is that it must be ever expanding, ever inclusive to embrace the orderly (and disorderly, or random) patterns that reveal themselves as science and technology advance. So, our concept of God both must expand to include what science discovers, and the “reverence for life” ethic must be increasingly applied to all branches of science. Seen this way, Einstein’s unified field theory is just another of the billions of names for God,
____________________ __
See also: Arthur C. Clark, The Nine Billion Names of God
Learn more about this author, Gwen Reed.
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