The Many Faces of God
Throughout history, 'God' has been described in various ways - as a punishing, powerful being to be feared by many (as in the Old Testament), as a forgiving and all-seeing over-watcher (as in the New Testament), or in various other ways in other religions. Obviously, the societies of the time have something to do with the characteristics of their God, but I was interested in knowing what you thought about the idea of there actually existing only one God, which is identified under different names/personalities across all global religions.
Please note, I'm basing this question on the premise that a God actually exists. Please do not comment about how this is a pointless question because God doesn't exist anyway, etc.
Please note, I'm basing this question on the premise that a God actually exists. Please do not comment about how this is a pointless question because God doesn't exist anyway, etc.
Comments (39)
The problem is that many societies don't accept that there is only one god. How can there really only be one god that is identified across all societies just by different names when a single society might identify a half dozen gods all having different abilities?
Isn't that fundamental to the idea of "God", that there is only one God. And despite what you might say about God, you are saying it about that one and only God. The reason why different people attribute different properties to God is that they don't know God very well.
The idea that different representations of God, are actually different gods, is based in the atheist assumption that the representation is the god, i.e. that God is a fiction.
Those cultures which are not monotheist don't believe in God, do they?
Funny you should ask this during Passover, which celebrates the Jew's exodus from Egypt. So the story goes, the Jews were held in slavery by the oppressive pharaoh and not until God exacted 10 plagues of increasing severity did Pharaoh relent and release the Jews. The whole story can be found at Exodus chapters 7 to 11. Read it carefully. The purpose of God's (the Hebrew God) plagues was not to prove there was only one god, but to prove he was the most powerful god of them all. That is, his plagues showed his supremacy over the Egyptian gods. This makes clear that these ancient Hebrews were not entirely monotheistic, but were actually just of the opinion they had the best of all gods. It also shows that the Egyptians also believed in God, despite having their own inferior god. To be sure, though, their belief was more empirical than faith based, considering they experienced the plagues first hand.
Another example is Mormonism, although I claim no scholarship there. My understanding is they treat the trinity as three separate entities, thus causing some to claim they are a polytheistic religion. It's less important whether they are ultimately polytheistic than whether one can hypothetically believe in God and be polytheistic. It seems one could, especially if one held that the father, the son, and the holy ghost were 3 different things. I do know that Mormons find the concept of the trinity as set forth in Catholicism and most of Protestantism to be incoherent nonsense.
Some of us pretty much heretic protestants and catholics find the concept of the trinity kind of incoherent and nonsensical too. Press a priest and you get "It is a mystery." I'll say it's a mystery, all right.
As has been mentioned, in Christianity, the Trinity (God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit) is considered to be one being with three different 'faces'. As you said about Mormonism, some denominations of Christianity choose to interpret the Trinity as three separate beings. Could the same not be true about polytheistic religions, without being explicitly stated? In other words, all the Gods of that pantheon are, in fact, just the different personalities of the same God, which are being perceived as different beings.
I suppose you could say that if you were hell bent on modifying other people's beliefs to make them compatible to your own.
However, the wise know that the supreme principle is always beyond description.
I think the idea of a single God that presents itself differently to different cultures is an interesting one, and so is the idea of multiple gods.
I cannot see any way that we can figure out which of these is the case - or whether it's something else entirely - maybe no gods, maybe we are all gods, maybe we are all god.
I am not in a special hurry to die, but one of the things to look forward to about it is that, if there is a god or gods waiting until we die to reveal itself, that will be a nice surprise (as long as it isn't a horrid god).
God may not be revealed to you at the time of your death. I think the Christian notion, anyway, is that resurrection happens only at a later time. There may be some Purgatory waiting for you.
The classical depiction of the Trinity:
You will notice:
F = G
S = G
H = G
But:
F =/= S
F =/= H
S =/= H
Are we to understand that identity is not a transitive relation, or does Christianity claim for itself a special brand of "theological" logic, to which the normal rules of inference do not apply?
I've seen the trinity expressed as "Father", "Son", and "Holy Spirit". Holy spirit refers to the relationship between father and son. There is no father without a son, and no son without a father. So the existence of both Father and Son is dependent on the existence of Holy Spirit. Remember, God is supposed to be immaterial, having the same type of existence as a concept. Introduce the notion of a daughter and we could have a father without a son, thus breaking the logic of the trinity.
If concepts are here taken to be abstract objects, then I would disagree with this contention, as abstract objects lack causal efficacy, and any God worth believing in does have such efficacy.
If concepts are taken to be mental states of some sort, then this analogy may be closer to the mark, provided we do not adhere to an identity theory of mind, wherein mental states are identical to the physical states which realize them (as that would imply that God is physical, contradicting the premise that he's immaterial). If the ontology of mental states is understood as a substance dualist might understand them, i.e. as non-material entities possessing causal efficacy, then God might fit that bill.
You don't think that the concept of a circle, pi, the right angle, or the Pythagorean theorem have any causal efficacy? I beg to differ.
Quoting Arkady
I agree, this would be a problem, but there is no reason to adhere to an identity theory of mind. If a concept is a mental state, it is an unchanging state of mind, an idea, held like a belief. When referring to the physical brain, there is no such thing as a "physical state", because the brain is continuously active, even in sleep. So there cannot be "identity" between these two.
I said that if concepts are taken to be abstract objects, then they lack causal efficacy, by definition of abstract object.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abstract-objects/#CausInefCrit
Well I probably don't agree with your definition of "abstract object" then. I just constructed a building. I used the Pythagorean Theorem (abstract object) to lay out a square foundation. Are you claiming that the Pythagorean Theorem is not a cause of the building being square? Or are you saying that the Pythagorean Theorem is not an abstract object?
Then you have an idiosyncratic definition of the term, which is at odds with its actual usage in philosophy. That being the case, then I see no point in continuing to talk about it, as a conversation in which the participants don't even agree on the definitions of basic terminology is bound to be unfruitful.
Well, I'm a philosophy graduate and I've been exposed to much usage of the terms. According to your link, your definition is provided by Frege, who defines an abstract object as "causally inefficacious". So I think it's really you who is trying to restrict usage to an idiosyncratic definition.
Quoting Arkady
Those who define their terms such that their arguments are simply begging the question, and then refuse to examine their definitions, shouldn't even bother with philosophy.
I've not begged the question, and, speaking of the article, you may note that it says "According to the most widely accepted versions of the Way of Negation: An object is abstract (if and) only if it is causally inefficacious." But, I suppose that point is moot now. Cheers.
If the Pythagorean Theorem is causally efficacious then it just isn't an abstract object according to Frege's definition (even if it's an abstract object according to your definition). But this is hardly an important issue. We can do away with the term "abstract" if it helps avoid unnecessary semantic disputes.
To better explain this, I'll refer to the SEP article:
"This illustrates a general point: when technical terminology is introduced in philosophy by means of examples but without explicit definition or theoretical elaboration, the resulting vocabulary is often vague or indeterminate in reference. In such cases, it is normally pointless to seek a single correct account. A philosopher may find himself asking questions like, ‘What is idealism?’ or ‘What is a substance?’ and treating these questions as difficult questions about the underlying nature of a certain determinate philosophical category. A better approach is to recognize that in many cases of this sort, we simply have not made up our minds about how the term is to be understood, and that what we seek is not a precise account of what this term already means, but rather a proposal for how it might fruitfully be used in the future.".
The actual philosophical issue (as opposed to just terminological) is whether or not the Pythagorean Theorem is causally efficacious. You say it is, but others say it isn't. Instead they'd say that you used your hands to lay out a square foundation, and that the movement of your hands was causally influenced by electrical activity in the brain. The Pythagorean Theorem isn't to be equated (or so some say) with any of the physical processes that actually caused your body to move the way it did, and so isn't the cause of the building being square.
An all powerful, all knowing, all present God just doesn't need this divine ménage à trois. Whatever happened, the omni-etc. unitary being (God, period) is perfectly capable of doing it. The cosmos-creating god can manage a few miracles and can comfort a bunch of troubled believers without needing to add personnel to himself, or play different roles.
So I guess I would be a Unitarian on the days that I ambivalently believe anything about God's existence.
All that aside, I understand that the Trinity has a long history, and the trinitarian formulation was uttered as early as the second century.
Aside from the difficulty of extricating the trinitarian invocation from ritual (along with cross-sign-making) the trinity is also a major plank in the creed. Not much chance of revisiting the Council of Nicaea (325 a.d.) at this point.
Besides the theological investment in the Trinity, there would be many expenses involved in dropping it. Billions would need to be spent renaming buildings, institutions, and colleges, plus all the stationary that would have to be reprinted. Then the behavioral therapy to suppress sign-of-the-cross making among Catholics, Lutherans, Anglicans, and Orthodox would be high. (It would be a boom for pavlovians or skinnerians, though. That's a plus.)
I'm not an expert on the historical aspect of the Trinity, but I would imagine its development was motivated at least in part to reconcile the apparent tension for Christians in believing that God is unitary and yet also had son who was himself God.
Of course, some Christians also maintain that God is simple, which itself seems to be in some tension with Trinitarian ideas.
This theory doesn't do much for people who thought God was part of this world anyway, and it does nothing for people who were planning on meeting God in heaven. God isn't in heaven anymore. I haven't heard what actually is in heaven, these days; maybe just unsupervised spirits of the deceased -- perish the thought. This theory doesn't do much for people who thought that God was co-terminus with the cosmos.
As regards the Trinity - comparative religion notes the idea of 'the three' in many different religious cultures. There is a Hindu trinity - Brahma, Vishnu and Siva, as the Creator, Maintainer and Destroyer of worlds. There is also a trinity in Mah?y?na Buddhism - the Tri-Kaya, or Three Bodies of the Buddha. I think a Jungian analysis would be, these represent an archetypal structure or form which appears universal.
Anything said about god is wrong.
It seems more like it is the holding of ideas by concrete individuals which is causally efficacious. I cannot see how the idea of formal constraints as being causally efficacious makes sense, because the idea of causal efficacy just is the idea of efficient causality, and to say that formal causality is efficient would be to dissolve the distinction between efficient and formal causality. I don't believe we even have a coherent notion of formal causation, as we at least do of efficient causation.
So, for example if the laws of nature are real, acting constraints, rather than merely abstract formulations of what is observed and conceived as generalities, then they cannot rightly be thought of as merely abstract entities.
Perhaps we may never find anything out about it...
:-O
I suggest that this is because our thinking has become so 'concretised' as a consequence of cultural conditioning. Formal causation is not efficient in the sense of water causing iron to rust, but that kind of causal relationship is mostly what is sought by scientific analysis nowadays.
Case in point. Dawkins was in a TV debate with a Catholic bishop on Q&A. An audience member's question lead to a brief discussion of the question of 'why evolution occurred' in the first place. Dawkins said it was a nonsense question, 'you're playing with the word "why" there'. He said, we (scientists) can give a reason in the sense of 'antecedent factors', but that it's useless seeking a reason in any other terms. There is no 'why'. So the idea of 'reason' in the formal sense, i.e the reason why something comes to be has been completely extirpated from his outlook. Never mind the traditional sense that philosophy itself is wondering why things are as they are, or why there is something, rather than nothing.
So, where can something like a formal or final cause be seen? Well, if you said that evolution was directed by an end of some kind - perhaps by attaining self-awareness, rather than simply assuming forms that can replicate endlessly for no purpose. That would be a teleological view of evolution, But, of course, such views are generally deprecated nowadays as being archaic, romantic, superseded or whatever. But that again might just be a consequence of the prevailing cultural attitude.
And that's why I keep returning to the medieval debates between scholastic realism and nominalism. It was scholastic reailsm that preserved the connection between formal and final causes and material and efficient causes.
http://anamnesisjournal.com/2014/12/whats-wrong-ockham-reassessing-role-nominalism-dissolution-west/
The reason we don't notice all this, is because we're sorrounded by it; we don't notice it any more than a fish notices water.
Yes, but notice that I am not arguing against formal causality, or even final causality; I am just pointing out that if they are actual, then they cannot be merely abstract entities. We conceive of our conceptions of them as being abstract, is all, so those conceptions, if anything at all is 'really' abstract, are the only abstract 'entities'.
The problem I see is that if we cannot "notice it", then how could we ever know it is the case?
Final cause isn't an empirical question, even though it masquerades as one. It's the misapplication of reasoning about causality to logic.
The "why" question is asking: "What is so that I may mean or have logical significance?" It's an attempt to describe a force which causes us to have one logical meaning or another. A lot of people want to treat our significance in ideas as if it were a predetermined outcome of a force of reality.
In our heads, it's? way of eliminating what we fear. If I'm predetermined (by final cause) to follow God, then there is literally no possibility I will find myself without meaning or as a heathen who abandons the tradition of God.
So final cause has an identity crisis. On the one hand, it wants to be causal, to predetermine the world has one meaning rather than another, but because it deals with the infinites of logic and meaning, being any sort of causal state which changes is closed to it: it's proponents are left gesturing at a "mysterious force" without any wordly definition because the final cause is really only in their imagination.
It's possible that the final cause ('final cause' here understood in the sense of 'first cause' or 'ultimate cause', not in any teleological sense) may be more than merely imaginary, but if it is then it must also be 'something' more than merely abstract; that is all I have been concerned with arguing. I don't find your negative assertions about it any more convincing than the positive assertions of others.
There is no doubt that I used my hands to lay out the foundation, so my hands are the cause of the foundation. But I did not lay the foundation in any random shape, I made it square. The question is what caused the foundation to be square, not what caused the foundation. It's a different question to ask what caused X to be X, from asking what caused X. Each is a different question of causation.
There's a very simple answer, and that is that the Pythagorean theorem is the cause of the foundation being square. As you say, some people might deny this, but then what is the cause of the squareness of the building, if not the Pythagorean Theorem? Why deny the obvious?
The "Way of Negation" is specifically Frege's way. Why restrict yourself to Frege's way when there are scores of other philosophers? Honestly, I often find SEP to be very narrow and misleading. I would not consider it a very good authority.
We intended to build the foundation 4 square according to the Pythagorean theorem, and we built it in the dark (we didn't have a permit). When the sun came up we discovered the the foundation has 7 irregular sides. Clearly the theorem was not up to the task.
Are you sure it wasn't your mathematical skills that weren't up to the task? Maybe a little too much liquid incentives to the volunteers?