Long Post! Don't read unless you like navel lint!
WilliamB's official 'definition' of God.
Please note, I put this up here as light entertainment for whomever might want to wade through it, but I did try to obey the OP to the best of my ability. I have not Googled [except for the spelling of Schweitzer] nor referred to my notes, because I want it to be loose and informal. I welcome any objections, and would attempt to address them. Just bear in mind, ye scholars: I cannot do formal logic or formal debate. All I can do is what I've done below. If you want me to address objections formally, with all kinds of symbols and language my brain doesn't know anything about, you will be sorely disappointed. This is NOT to say I don't want you to do that, if you feel like it; it's only to say that I concede defeat herewith and forthwith and even fifthwith, if necessary!
Angra Mainyu: if you should drop in and do what you do, I will try to hang, but odds are I won't grok a great portion of what you're telling/asking me. You seem wickedly bright to me. There are others, like fromderinside & Speakpigeon, but if I drop more names this post will just get longer and more tedious. Y'all know who you are.
Also note I've not bothered to use italics, bolding, or anything. Too. Much. Work. Bear in mind I'm an autodidact with a lousy day-job and I haven't got as much time as it appears I have to do such exhaustive examinations of my belly-button (inny).
Onwards!
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I'll attempt to define God, not just the word itself, which I admit is a cheat and doesn't address the OP, but the Being itself, at least as I conceive of that being, as long as it's understood that my concept of such a Being does not in any way constitute a knowledge claim, and as long as anyone reading my definition realizes that I cannot possibly have derived it on my own, but that it is a composite, or a distillation of prior definitions.
First off, I would not consider such a Being as supernatural, since I cannot conceive of what supernatural might be. God would be the single greatest and highest being imaginable, which I take from Anselm and others, such as Aristotle and Spinoza, each of whom had their own private conception of God and different modes of expressing that definition.
This Being is natural, as I cannot conceive of anything, being or otherwise, as existing beyond or transcending nature; but that being said, this Being is absolutely primary, as in Aristotle's Prime Mover, and by this it should be understood that nothing can be prior to or outside of this Being.
(Note: this is not to say that something supernatural does not or cannot exist; it's only to say that given my complete inability to conceive of what supernatural might be, I decide to avoid it completely and stick to a framework in which, and with which, I can grapple.)
Even if we conceive of any number of gods, we would always have to reduce (or extrapolate*) back (or forward*) to a single God in which all lesser gods are subsumed and from which those lesser beings derived their existence. To arrive at a proper definition of God, one would have to accept the fact that no further reduction* to something prior* is necessary or possible, unless one would prefer to drive oneself mad in a constant mental battle with infinite reduction. I derive this idea from Lactantius, who laid it out in the most clear way for myself personally. I don't expect anyone to respect this hypothesis, but rather I would expect them to object to it, since that's what thinking creatures do.
To know what is referred to by the word God, with a capital G, It is 'that than which nothing greater can be conceived', to quote (hopefully) Anselm, who, for all I know, derived that expression from others before him. (?)
To quote certain apologists, God IS the explanation, and requires no explanation of Him(Her)self. This is the starting point and necessary axiom for any theist. It is granted that no atheist is required to adopt that as satisfactory, hence the ongoing debate in respect to definitions of God. But at the same time, anyone discussing the concepts of Existence and cosmology needs to have some kind of initial axiom, a jumping off point. This could be argued as well, but why bother?
I guess the accepted secular definition of Existence is that Existence has existed eternally, with no beginning and no possible end. This has to be acceptable to the theist as well as the atheist, unless they can come up with a definition which has Existence beginning at some point. But such a definition would only beg the question: What caused that beginning to begin? And, what was going on before Existence began?
Are such questions remotely answerable? Do they make any sense at all? Is the problem merely one of semantics, or is it a philosophical (metaphysical, specifically) problem? Or a science problem? Who can sort this out better, a scientist or a philosopher? Or a theologian? Who the hell knows! No one knows at this juncture of our civilization, and any pretense to certain knowledge is just that: Pretentious.
*******(Noted and granted: Science currently has the best grip on the actual state of affairs as we as biological entities can understand it. I think it would be pointless and indeed, hugely ungrateful, to deny this. Without the scientific method, people like myself, who do not have a mind cut out for rigorous science, would not be able to sit here and speculate comfortably in front of others. It just would not have come to pass.)*********
Given that no one knows for sure how or why (if there is a why) Existence began, or simply, exists, all we need to know is that there is indeed something rather than nothing. Whatever that something is, it is manifestly obvious to anyone, or ought to be, that it exists, and that our conscious minds are capable of wondering what it is. Any denial of that, to my mind, is utterly futile.
This is not to say that I do not grant anyone the right to entertain a denial. Anyone may do as one pleases. This is what thinking creatures do; however, I cannot be bothered to try and argue against such a denial, as my arguing against it would constitute proof, to my mind, that the position of the denier has already been undermined, second by my arguing with him, but first by the denier himself by virtue of his denying. This makes sense to me, but I don't require it to make sense to anyone else, nor do I have to trouble myself with it any further, as it would be a waste of time.
Lest I run away with the thoughts rattling around in my noodle, let me come back to God. My definition of God is a composite, or perhaps a distillation (I don't really know which would be the proper term, could be they both apply, or neither) of everything I've ever heard, read, thought, or felt about God. This is the same for anyone, regardless of what they might say about it.
If the fundamentalist suggests that his definition of God is derived from the Bible and that alone, then he is forgetting (maybe) that the Bible is not a single work but a collection of works written over the course of nearly a thousand years, from the earliest Hebrew writings up to the later books in the New Testament. He might also be forgetting (willfully, or not forgetting at all, but with his private rationalizations, or understanding) that those works that make up the Bible in its current form were selected from a vast amount of similar documents by a select group of selectors, themselves selected by other selectors who entrusted them with the selecting.
We are all cherry pickers. Any and all rational humans are cherry pickers, whether they be fundies, agnostics, or skeptics. The fundamentalist, by deciding that the Bible is perfect and inerrant, has only selected for himself one big, juicy cherry from an even juicier body of other big juicy cherries, such as the Quran, various Hindu and Buddhist texts, and a plethora of similar scriptural works. Even Ayn Rand's school of Objectivists are cherry pickers, and have selected Rand's system of thought as one big juicy cherry among thousands of other cherries of organized thought.
As it can be seen, there are splits and divides among any groups of thinkers, be they theistic or secular. Even among fundies who are inerrantists, there are splits, dissensions, branching-offs into subgroups, which can often be extremely vicious with one another; the same with Objectivists, who have already, in an extraordinarily briefer amount of time, subdivided and twigged into various subgroups and bicker amongst each other with vitriol and venom that would impress the most zealous cleric or theologian.
[I'm only using Ayn Rand as an example here, not singling her out. Just look at the Scientologists! Eek!]
Onwards!
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What follows is my personal definition of God: personal to me but not originated nor owned by me:
First: the sentence: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, is true, and if it's not plausible, then my whole definition of God is not plausible. Everything in my conception of God as it currently stands hinges on the fact that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. To cut to the quick, before I go too far off the mark:
God is the greatest Whole that is greater than the sum of Its parts.
A car is greater than the sum of its parts. This should be apparent on any examination of what that sentence means, but in case it's not - and it isn't to quite a few people - imagine a car taken apart bit by bit, into its constituent parts, then reassembled in some willy-nilly fashion by people who do not know how to assemble a working car. The product achieved by this half-a55ed reassembly would not be a car, and hence would not be greater than the sum of its parts. A car is only greater than the sum of its parts if all of its parts are assembled correctly, so that the finished product will be a vehicle that operates as a car is designed to operate.
The universe is constituted of a ridiculously vast number of bodies which are not only wholes that are greater than the sums of their parts, but are also parts in some still greater body. God is that Body we come to when we have arrived at a Whole that is NOT a part of some still greater whole. That still greater whole is a phantom of the imagination and doesn't exist, and if it did exist, than It would be God. See? Prudence tells us that we have to stop somewhere, in respect to extrapolations as well as reductions. Our imaginations are limitless, but nature, or God, Itself, need not be so. In fact, I cannot conceive of a limitless God, an unbounded and uncontained God.
But while this is so, I cannot possibly conceive of God as God is, in and of Himself. All I can do is agree with myself to stop at some point and call that God. God is beyond the human mind's capacity to comprehend. If this is not so, then what we are talking about is not God, but some sub-god, some super alien, or AI. It may actually be the case that Jehovah in the Bible is a sub-god or even some super alien or AI, that the literature we call the Bible is only a stepping stone to something far greater, a local map of, and to, a local god; part of a far greater Map which IS God. I think that may be the case, but it doesn't have to be.
Jehovah, Allah, may be the God of all, the Father of fathers, or the God of one universe among a vast array of universes. I'll stop there for now and suggest that, again, we could go on forever extrapolating to something grander, but we don't have to, and God may in fact not be limitless or even infinite. He probably is, but maybe He's not?
As a sidenote, I recall that Spinoza (I think) defined God as a Being of infinite attributes; but he goes on to deny emotion to God. Hmm. Why should I conceive of God as being unemotional, since if I have emotions, it seems only logical that my capacity for emotion is not special to me and cannot possibly be unknown to God? If God knows me, He must know my emotions, and if He knows my emotions, He must have emotions Himself; else, why would, or could, I have them?
It reminds me of something Socrates is supposed to have said to someone (can I be more vague?), and I shamelessly and loosely paraphrase: 'How is it, so-and-so whose name probably ends with 'es', that the universe has no intelligence, and yet you do? You, being only a tiny part of the cosmos, which as you say is blind, unthinking, and without purpose? How is it that tiny you are intelligent, yet That which you come from, and of which you are a constituent and infinitesimal speck of matter, is not?
Anyway: to reiterate: God is the greatest Whole that is the sum of Its parts.
As with the analogy of the car, it has to be understood that all of these parts are perfectly organized and assembled, in an exact and precise manner, and that there can be no possible alternative to the manner in which this Whole (God) is assembled. To consider an alternative to how God is composed is to entertain Chaos, when Cosmos is the state of affairs we actually have and in which we exist. Chaos is a mental fabrication only, it is imaginary, and cannot come to pass.
Chaos theory, random variables, stochastic universe theory (I can pretend to know what all of these terms means, but I have only the most rudimentary grasp of them, as any scholar reading this will know) are all well and good, but no theory has upset the natural order of things, at least as far as we know. All we can do is seek to understand nature (God); we cannot alter it. We can use nature to further our ends, to good or evil, such as agriculture and medicine, or whips, chains & hand grenades (Zappa) and WMDs; but we can only do so while obeying nature and its laws.
Ultiamately, I propose a God Who, while infinite in respect to time and space, is nonetheless limited: As in contained, defined, with specific and perfect parts in perfect and precise order, working eternally, without possibility of successful interference or alteration from, or by, internal forces [man, bombs, angels, demons, aliens, AI, etc.] (there are no forces external to God). I also ascribe intelligence and purpose to God, although I cannot possibly describe what Her ultimate purpose is. I can only speculate, going on what seems to me is entirely obvious in our current world:
We seem to be progressing, albeit with much bloodhsed and suffering on grand and unforgivable scales, as a species. With the help of the Internet, people are coming together and understanding one another in an unprecedented manner. While that is true, there is also the opposite: we are also misunderstanding one another in an unprecedented manner.
Pascal said something like: The opposite of a truth is a falsehood; but the opposite of a profound truth may be another profound truth.
Go back to the Biblical story of the tower of Babel, where God decides to put into play factors which will result in mass confusion, mass misunderstanding, mass contention, prejudice, and all the ugliness contingent on that. Now realize that God is not the actual author of the Bible or any of its stories, but is probably, and I would say almost certainly, the inspiration and true source of those stories, as well as all the other religious stories around the globe, past and present.
The Bible was written by men (and women who didn't get nearly enough credit, if any) who had the same imaginations and fancies that we have now, but they lacked technology and what they wrote appears barbaric to us. I don't find those writings barbaric - although there are bits here and there which I find repugnant and disgusting - I regard them as humanity's infantile expression of what would eventually unfold and develop into the moral and legal concepts extant on this planet today.
The problem of evil is not a problem philosophically or theologically, at least not in my conception. However, it IS a tremendous problem for the inhabitants of this planet. If we conceive of a Prime Motive Power that is Nature, which is in fact (not fact literally, I say it as a figure of speech) endowed with consciousness, intelligence, and purpose, then we must realize that there is a balance that is and must be kept, by sheer necessity.
In order for things to have life, they must live at the expense of other living things. This is a fact of nature that cannot and will not be altered. The most benevolent fruitarian lives by consuming living things. By boiling his water to make it less harmful to him, an Albert Schwietzer has to routinely kill an inconceivably vast number of living organisms. When we plant crops for the vegetarians among us, we are killing the innumerable little beasties that live in that soil. Etcetera, etc. When we bathe we are killing, etc, etc.
That's why I say the problem of evil is not a problem philosophically or theologically. It's only a problem for us, for the beings who suffer for the gratification of beings more powerful. Spinoza said something like, 'there is no power so great in the universe wherein there is not something even more powerful that can destroy it.'
This does not apply to God, Who cannot be destroyed by anything more powerful. If we conceive of something that might be able to destroy God, then we are not speaking about God any longer, but about a god, super alien, or AI.
The above is simply my ruminations and I don't expect anyone to read it, take it seriously, or have anything to do with it. I offer it up to please myself, and hopefully, God.
If this in fact pisses God off, well, I guess I'm in for one hell of a ride.
If there is no such thing as God, then, it is what it is.
