DOES GOD (NOT) EXIST ?

ESSAYS ON PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

by M. A. Paz y Miño

. Introduction

. Chapter 1: On Gods

-What we are talking about?

-One thousand and one gods!

-Arguments in favour of and against

-Knowledge, Thruth & Religion

-Notes

. Chapter 2: Critiques of Religion

-Finally, what is religion?

-Against God and Religion

-In favour

-Plus et contra

-Notes

. Chapter 3: Does god hear us?

-Only to believe and to unbelieve?

-Human nature and behaviour

-Philosophy of Religion or Social Philosophy?

-On intolerance, fanaticism and prejudices

-Notes

. Appendix: Related Bibliography

-On Anthropology of Religion

-On History of Religion

-On Philosophy of Religion

-On Psychology and Psychiatry of Religion

-On Sociology of Religion

-On Religion in General

Why to write about the existence of God? Has people believed in him certainly in the past and still now? Then is a topic that it doest not need more discussion?... Are not there other matters of prior-ity?... Those and other questions have reason... until certain point. The question on God and Religion in general has its own impor-tance: People around the world and in all the times has looked for a hope and help from the heavens in order to live better. But also many human beings have been killed because of believing or not in this or that dogma...

Chapter One: ON GODS

I think then I am a human being

Descartes (paraphrased)

What we are talking about? God or gods (word from latin deus and this of the indo-european root deivos: heaven, brigthness) have been a evident and unques-tionable reality for the most of people. People have any trouble in accept the existence of supreme being. His existence is so true as the day light. To such believers have not any interest in philosophical matters nor they suffer torments with doubts or another type of inquiry: they have faith simple and plainly. For that they are known as fideists. But all of people have not been believer nor all the believers have been fideist: there were exceptions ever. We can see through history that there was an intent -more than once- of testing rationally and philosophically the existence of God, or in the opossite case when it was unsatisfied or unconvincented they came to use threaten and force against a few of unbelievers' attack. They have diverse positions like that of agnostics (in greek without knowledge. They do not know if there is a god, and they do not worry about and are not interested in that matter); that of skepticals (who consider God as a possibility and they are sure of nothing except their doubts); and that of atheists (in gr. "without God", they take party against his existence, i. e., they value to God as a false and unnecessary hyphotesis).

Let us abandon for few moments the question of how God is, of what kind his essence is, if he is one with the universe (pantheism) or if he is various (politheism), or if he is a being who trascends cosmos and matter dominating and ordering them, and that he has also personal characteristics -all goodness and knowledge, allmighty, etc.- (monotheism), or if he is a mysteri-ous being of whom we know nothing more than his existence (deism) a cause of nature say it to us and no sacred book or writing revelation does, we can distinguish, in a general way, according Kant's analysis about this classic topic, four classic argumentos on the existence of God. They come from distint authors and times and they can be explained in diverse manners: The Cosmological Argument, the Teleological Argument, the Ontological Argument and the Moral Argument. In fact there are more arguments but we only shall add the Historical-ethnological one, that of the Religious Experience and that of the Written Revelation. We enunciate them inmediatly with their respective discussion.

The Cosmological Argument

It says all movement, change, thing or being given in universe has an former cause and so to come to the first one what God is. It was developed by Agustin and Aquinas who were influenced by Plato and Aristotle correspondently. But if all of thing has a cause, why would God have as well? Someone could answer like that: because God is God, if he had needed a above cause to him for existing then he would not be God, that means the supreme being for excellence who exists by himself. However those ideas are notions predetermined what we believe God is, that is, the creator of all the things. Then if we are consecuents with the causality principle we should apply to God as well. And we do, of course, it we go to a endless way, "ad infinitum", in what God could be a impersonal being or a creature. So we can ask about the creator of God. But we say it was not necessary create him a cause of he is the one and only eternal being, it would not be his existence to explain the origen of universe and matter. We could postulate the eternity of matter what can not be created nor destroyed, it only changes. Then the hypothesis of God would not be indispensable to know the natural reality (as Laplace said).

The Teleological Argument (or that of Goals)

It is based in the order or finality of all event produced in universe. That argument says us there are natural laws that domained all event produced, what are produced now and what will in the future. There is not a pure casuality neither azar nor chaos. Like there is a clock-maker who made a clock-although that sounds an anthrophormization of God- we can deduce the presence of an ordenator and clever designer behind all marvel-ous and beuty that exists. We can find antecedents of this argument in the Bible: "Heavens say about God's glory, and the firmament anounces his handwork" (Psalms 19, 1), "For his (God's) invisible cualities can be seen from the creation of world to forward, for they are seen through of things made, unto his sempiternal power and Divinity" (Romans 1, 20). This argument is systematized by Aquinas in the Middle Age. But what commentary we can do about? Natural order -movements of planets and stars, secuels in the seasons, cycles of life and death, etc., etc.) such we know, it is the only and one possible order?, Maybe we understand so a cause we used to see in that way. Such a wonder order not ever was interpreted in a equal way according to the past and present cosmologies either mithological or scientifically ones. Our order could be undestood in other ways by the handicapped people physically and mentally. Of course someone could argue the right way it would be that of the normal perception -without deficien-cies- of a common healthy person who would feel his/her environ-ment like it is really, that is, an `ordered and perfect' nature. But as we know, in a similar way how we learn to speak a language or to behaviour in a such or a such manner, we also learn socially to feel and to understand the phenomena in nature (Of course for do this it is necessary a determinaded brain capacity and development that our specie has). Also if we believed in a perfect god (1) we should be perfect beings but we are not -in a certain view. Human beings have not only the capacity of creating but destroying as well, circunstances that God himself knew it before the creation of world. Life of people can be happy, fruitful or positive as also miserable, unhappy or tragic.

The Ontological Argument (or that of Being)

It claims it can be proved there is a God necessarily because there is a certain kind of ideas in the human brain as that of a being absolutly perfect and then with all possible cualities -including that of his existence-. That argument is the most known of Descartes and his most notable antecedent was enunciated by Anselmus of Canterbury. But after Kant objected this idea of God give us a possibility but not a cuality. A poor man could imagine to have one million dollars in the bank however that is only a possibility not a proof (of course there is many people with that count of money and much more). If we could prove something only speaking or thinking there would be any thing. Such is the case of religious creeds written in the sacred books that believers accept a cause of their faith in a supossed divine authority of the source but not in a rational evidence.

The Moral Argument

It postulates the necessity of believing in a God of justice to live morally and with a ultimate propose. That can be read in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. If we make to God the undispensable condition to practice and support a moral then we could deduce like Dostoievski: "Should not be a God then all things are possible", goodness and the other human virtues would have not an absolute value because man's life would not has a final goal. But it is that so necessarily true? In the past Protagoras said "man is the standard of all the things". So people can have an ethics based in its own reality as a human being -one without God- that points out what is good or harmful to it, with a moral code that let it to have a development and full life. In the modern and contemporary ages those ideas humanists were divulgated and perfeccionated even more. By other side, in the everyday reality only a few of believers are really interested in practicing their religions' ethics norms in a frank manner. Indeed people learn dialy from society where it develops and grows how to behaviour and most of its moral values.

The Historical-ethnological Argument

Archaeology, anthropology, history and other relative sciences give us multiple evidences that in very primary cultures to more developed civilizations were religious expressions. That is, objects and rites what were used as means or goals in it-selves to express veneration and adoration unto sacred or divini-ty. But this historical-etnologically argument can be refuted in this way: what wo/men have almost ever believed in gods that does not mean they have existed. It could be a mere symptom of an illusory view of reality.

Chapter Two: THE CRITIQUES OF RELIGION

The fool says in his heart: There is no God

Bible

Credo quia absurdum (I believe because is absurd)

Thertulian

One thing is what wo/men believe -rationally or not- about Divinity or the Supreme and other one -but related- their way of connecting to it, to adorate or give it cult and share with it of their wishes and feelings. That is the religious phenomenon. Religion, like any other activity of man that try to understand reality (being science, philosophy or art) and give him behavior patterns to manage it and to live in society, has its apologists, detractors and also there is whom it is indifferent. Like any other human phenomenon, religion can be studied by particular branches of science such as history, sociology and psychology of religion... By the other side, the philosophy of religion has is vinculated to it and not only theology. From the analysis of those sciences we can try of evaluating objectivily religious faiths and feel-ings.

Against God and Religion

We have some people who question not only the real existence of a superior being but that beginning of this view they criticize the religion's therapeutical function as for individual as society. Among these we have, for instance, to the German thinker Ludwig Feuerbach who affirmed -in his Essence of Christianism, 1841- "that the absolute being, the God of Man, is his own being". God did not create man, this one is who created that one to his own image and like but multiplied infinitely. In that way the notion of a being all-kind, all-mighty, all-wise and eternal would not be more than a projection of the human heart, force, intelligence and life. For Feuerbach, the poverty of religious' life will be evident the more he believes God: "the more empty life is, the more full, concrete God is. His compatriot Karl Marx is even more radical, he said -in Criticism of Hegel's Law, 1844- the following: "The grounds of the unreligious critique is man made religion, religion do not made man ... Religious misery is, by one side, an expression of the real misery. Religion is the exhausted creature's sigh, the state of animous of a heartless world, the spirit of spiritless situations. Religion is the people's opium". Then religious experience will be a refuge, a scape to heaven from the human hard reality on the earth. In the article "The absurd Christianism" (1847) Marx stated that "the social principles of Christianism justified the past slav-ery, glorified the medieval servitude and know to approve, if they need it, the opression of proletariat, although with an air rather contritus ... (Those principles) preach the necesity of a dominant class and of an opressed class, and according to the last one they are content to express mercifully a wish that the first one will be charitable ... they preach cowardice, the own scorn, diminishing, sumission, humility, in short, all the cualities from the lumpen ..." In a letter to Ruge (1842), Marx claimed that religion had no contents because it comes from earth and not from heaven: "I have insisted in a critique of religion from a political point of view and not politics from the religious point of view ..." Frederic Engels, the other founder of historical materialism, in relation to the affirmation of some French socialists said that Christendom is communism, stated -in an article for New Moral Order, 1843-4-: "what so those good people show, it is only, they are not the excellent christians who pretend be. If they were truthly it they would know that, beside to some favorable pas-sages to communism, the general spirit of the biblical doctrine is against to it, as by other side it is opposite to all ration-al thinking". Another German philosopher, Frederic Nietzsche wrote simmilarly: "men have created to God" (Postume writings of 80's), "a people projects its complacency in itself, its feeling of power in a being to whom in addition must give thanks" (Anti-Christ). But he glimpse as well the most great event of the last times -that "God is dead", that faith in the Christian god has lost all credibili-ty- begins to project its first shadows over Europe" (The Gay science, 1882). Though some time he said: "(Christianism) it is, in spite of, the best example of ideal life that I have known truthly ... ("Letter to Gast", 1881). For Nietzsche the belief in God -and the religious experience in general- is an ilussion, a symptom of weakness, threaten and paradoxically of men's force: "with God they declare the war to life, nature, the will of power. God is the formula to all calumany against this world and all lie respect to the beyond (Anti-Christ): "the feeling of power, when it invades to man soonly, in a dominating way ..., produce in him a doubt of his own person: man does not dare to think himself as a cause of these amazing feeling, and so he states a person more hard, a divinity in this case. In short, "the origins of religion is in the feelings of power, extreme feelings that surprise to man like something strange". Father of Psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud qualified -in Totem and Taboo, The future of an illusion- to religion like universal obsesive neurosis that by means of simple concealment of minor neurosis produced by life, give a illussory sensation of segurity and will being. Such a neurosis would be originated by threaten and resignation that child experiments before its father. God would not be more than a magnifed man". (E. Jones: Life and work of S. Freud). Also the religious experiences not are "hasty of experience or final results of thinking" but "the realizations of the most old, intense and urgent whishes of humanity, that of force is the intensisity of such wishes" (Autobiography, 1935). And in A view of world: "Of the three forces possibles of disputing the ground of science, only religion constitues a serius enemy" (It is not philosophy but religion the "tremendous force that disposes the most vigorous emotions of men" (and it has created a conception of the world of an incomparably coherence and armony what even today, though shake, go on to rise. Religion offers to human beings proteccion and happiness before the hard problems of life, apart of give them a cosmovision and a series of precepts to their performing that defends with all its authority. For Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) Superman does not exist in reality: all that existed in man is creation of the history of humanity. To fight for following something -unreacheable appar-ently- is being to look for the continuos unsatisfaction. It must be eliminated from religions illussions, deliriums and autosugestions. They are to transformated in mere morally insti-tutions, the humanization of persons is made through their so-cialization. Behold a type of secular trascendence likely to Koening's, A. Comte's and E. Fromm's. Sir Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) was against all type of religion because it is based finally, in threaten to reality. Threaten produces intolerance and cruelty. All the religions are false and implicitly content a intolerant authoritarism when each one of them states that is the truthly faith because only it has sense being follower of a determinaded creed if all of them are not considered equally. Religions have given humanity the most grand miseries with its supersticious practices and absurd beliefs like in witchcraft and exorcism of possesed by demons in the great moments of faith. Neither to say of colective stories that ocassionated massacres in a name of God. By other side, Russell attacks to Christendom the elevation to virtue the blind accept-ance of doctrines that "ask for a lot of ethical pervertion to be accepted. World, they saiy to us, was created by a God who is good and allmughty at the same time. Before of creating world, he foresee all pain and misery what went to happen, so he is re-sponsable of them...If I had to beget a child knowing he will be a maniatic homicide, I would be responsible. If God knew before-hand on the crimes man will made, he was clarely responsanble of all consecuence of those sins when he decided to crete man. The Christian usual argument is that the suffereing of world is a purification of sin, so a good thing. This argument is, of course, only a rationalization od sadism; but in any case is a poor argument. Other Christian negative doctrine, according to Russell is that of free will what mades to people do not think about the real causes of the neighbor behaviour: "When a man performs in a way what molest to us, we want to think he is bad, and we to affront the fact that his conduct is a result of former causes that, if they are followed sufficently bringing to some body beyond the born of such individual, and so to things of which he is not responsable in any way. No man tries his car as foolishly as he tries to another human being. When car do not work, he does not say "you are a bad car and I shall not give you nafta until you go." He tries to inquiry what is happen to solve." Russell confesed he could not prove the unexistence of God: "Equally I can not prove Satan is a fiction. Christian god can exist, equally can exist the gods of Olympus, of the ancient Egypt, or Babylon. But any of these hyphoteses is more probable than the another one: they are out of the probable knowledge, and so, there is no reason to considerate any of them." Finally Russell says to us that in each advance of freedom, and science, religion and fear (to nature and to other men) lost ground. For the empirist-analitic Rudolph Carnap (1891-1970) believers are in the same level that men who claim that there are things what are babics "but there is no way to show empirical signs of babicity; for it or for the poor and finite intelligence of man is an internal mysterious knowing which things are babics and which not." (The Superation of Methaphysics by the Logical Analysis of Language, 1932). If good to Carnap the sound "God" denotes fellings and represen-tations differents to "babic" both words are not more than "gossips without contents." About the extraordinary experiences he says to us that if mystic confess that object of its vision is some thing undescriptible then he has to admit he says nonsenses, to try to describe it (The Logical Construction of World, 1928). And if he tried, by means of language, to describe his personally experiences, his listeners would not understand him because they are distint experiences to the lived ones by them: When mystic describes his vision, he does comunicate nothing absolutly on world, only he made us a indirect speech about his own spiritual constitution." For Ludwig Wittgenstein (1887-1951) "what is mystic does not belong to facts what can be pronounced but it scapes to the vision of world ... like a all limited under the perspective of eternity; here there is only a place to feeling" (Logical-philosophically Treatise)..."the unspeechable exists. This is showed in the mystical...Of that what some one can not speak the best thing is keeping silence." For the logical-positivists or linguistics-analitics, as to the British philosopher Sir Alfred J. Ayer (1910-1991) the question is not if God exists or not. They are interested in whether the 'God exists' enunciate has sense or not, that is, if it has a (scientifically) meaning about our world -like the enunciates plainly theoretical or empirical- or not: "saying that 'God exists' is pronouncing a metaphysical phrase what can not be truth nor false" (Language, Truth and Logic, 1936). It would be merely absurd. French existencialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre believes -like Camus, Feuerbach and Nietzsche- that "God is dead". It does not matter, in spite of that man has to be saved to his freedom and responsability. He says (in Existencialism is a Humanism, 1946): "Although there were a god, that would change any thing, this is are view of point. It is not we think God exists but we think the problem is not that his existence, man has to come back to reencounter and convey himself what nothing can save him of himself, though that represents a good proof of the existence of God". And in other side affirms: "God's problem is a human prob-lem what affects to relations of men among themselfes; a problem what is important to all of us and to which each one only can give an answer with its own life; and the answer that he gives is a reflex of the attitude adopted before to himself and the rest.

In Favour of Religion and God

American pragmatist William James (1842-1910) stated -in his Varieties of Religious Experiences- finality of religion consists in helping us to live a happy life and to die a happy death. The Danish psychiatrist H. L. Shou (in his Religion and Morbid Mental States, 1926) affirms that religion constitues a resguard against the mental insanity, reconforts in adversity and contrar-ests the depressive states and angst...ever that it has a rigor-ous, thruthly and firm faith. German philosopher and psychiatrist Karl Jaspers (1883-1969) says in his Psychology of the Conceptions of World, 1919, that individual esencially need a support, something in what it can deposite absolute trust and estimate of a infinite value. While he lives, man evalue and, since values are objectivations of his intrinsecal powers, he creates a multiplicity of them, many antagonists. So when he organizes his life, he experiments the imperiously necessity of stablishing a jerarchy of value that, by only itself, gives a personal definited characteristic. Human evaluation come to its minimum level with skepticism and nihil-ism; authoritarism, liberalism, patriotism, by its side, given the finite support that they offer, conform values capable of giving to man a satisfaction relatively stable although contingent. A support in the infinitum is the supreme value though stated only by the power of faith: with a such support, mind feels infinit and free. But Jaspers himself believes that faith of believer limits what is trascendent and so his own (rational) faith is different of that of it. For Carl C. Jung (in Moderm man in search of Absolute) when they try to impose a traditional religion and morality a neurotical conflict is producing. Religion will be sane whether is a product of the own experience. Instead of adopting a strange "pre-made" religion subject has to stay in freedom to find its own way unto salvation.

Plus et contra

Auguste Comte (1798-1857), father of modern sociology, thought he has founded the supreme science that could discover the laws of the social reality and in that way to help reorganize society. He enunciates his law of three levels -in his Course of Positive Philosophy, (1830-42)- by which the human evolution has passed. We have, firstly, a theological etape what of the absolute or trascendental knowledge. In the second level, the methaphysical one, an abstract entity must correspond to each natural phenome-non. Finally in the positive level it is recognized an impossi-bilty of knowing the absolutness and the ultimate goals of the phenomena are abandoned. Here reason must be used and the empiri-cal reasons. In that manner possitivism look for satisfying all the human one through the relativ one and not the absolute one, that means, God. Atheism according to Comte is an unsatisfaying theology. Chris-tian atheism is personalist and selfish: love to the neighbord is based in the own salvation. But the same human evolution drive us to a religion where man is the supreme being and has as a goal a definitive order for this world. Neopsychoanalyst Erich Fromm (1900-1980), in a different way of Freud, sees some sane elements and also necessary to man. Religion, thought in a broadly way, would be man's answer to his existential necessity of a reference's mark and devotion to understand and perform in world and to contact to other men. Thought in that manner religion could be one of two kinds: progressive (or humanist) and regressive (or authoritarian). Pro-gressive religion favoures to human being, develops its potentialities (productives or actives like reason or love). We find prototypes of that type of religion in the great religions founders's and prophets' teachings -like Isaiah, Jesus, Budah, Lao-Tze, etc.-, like as well in that of the Occidental humanists thinkers in which the notion of God represents the ideal of maximum development of man's capacity. Regressive religion, in spite, is based in fear and imposition of authoritie's force, what dictates to the follower what must do. It is against th human madurity and tends to destoy life. We can find it, e.g., in the ancient cults that look for to the anula-tion of awareness and tribute sacrificies to the ancestors or to the animal relatives in a mystical or political proselitism where leader is the sole source of truth and power. In reality, as authoritarism as humanism are present in evolution of reli-gions and ideologies. Also, humanism has ever emerged as an alert when men have been in danger. Then we see to Fromm religion can be not only a traditional faith or a secular philosophy but also it is a way of feeeling and performing. To him a society will tend to be hurmanist or author-itarian according to the social character impering among its members. More even Fromm believed that in future religions would become united and secular but ever having the trascendental element. That means, he believed and was in favour of a mystical atheism (or humanist inegoism). One of the most important philosopher of this century, the German-British critical-rationalist Sir Karl Popper either denies absulutely religion or faith in general, although he attacks determinaded attitudes -attack not necessarily epistemologically- like intolerance and impossition derivaded of the institutional traditionally religious and political power. Also, he objects to "historicism in religion" like and "element of idolatry and superstition" (The Open Society and its Enemies, 1973) because wanting to find in the history of humanity a prestablished goal or a predestination of the divine providence, to which we all go, and for that, we have to surrender to it, would be a likely notion to the historical materialism's. Though he accepts idea of Christian god like the father of all men has helped to foment fraternity among them, at the same time, he does not believe who disvalue reason helping to reach that ideal. By the other side, Popper admitts that "we must numerous objectives and ideals of our Occidental culture, like freedom and equality, to Christianism's influence". As also he agrees with the Christian belief of man's moral and historical responsability and that "only our awareness and not mundane success can be our judge". As well he agrees with the Christians ethical goals: "I do not know whether Christianity is from other world, but something is sure: Christianity teach that the sole manner with what we can show our faith is that of being capable of apporting a practice and mundane help to necesity. And indeed it is possible to arrange a extreme and reserved attitude and until of scorn of mundane success, in the sense of power, fame and riches, with a intent of doing in this world the better and fomenting with a clearly propose those objectives by whose acceptation we have decided to come to do it, not for success itself, neither because history shall justify us, but for those objectives themselves. (Ib., 1973). But also there is a revaluation of faith in Popper's epistemology: Indeed we admit that we we do not know but conjecture. And our that conjeture has as a guide a unscientifically, metaphysically faith (though biologically explained) of that exist more laws and norms than we can uncover and discover" (The Logics of Scientific Research, 1966). "Then, it is still clear in no way the rationalist focus can be stated on arguments or experiences, and an universal rationalism is unsustainable, that means a man who acepts the rationalist focus, performs in that way because he has accepted, without a rational reflection, a proposal, a resolution, a faith or a way of behaviour, that for what to him it refers it would have to name irrational. In any way, we can qualify it like an irrational faith in reason" (Ib., 1973). Then Popper's rationalism apparently and paradoxically "lies in an irrational resolution or on faith in reason". For that Popper adds "I do not feel any ill will against a religious mysticism (solely against an antirrationalist militant intellectualism), and would be one of the first oppossite to be tempted of reproving it. I am not someone who makes a speech for religious intolerance...But I demand for faith in reason, rationalism or humanitarian feeling, the same right to contribute to a betterment of the human conditions...Like any other confession of faith" (Op. cit., 1973). Finally Popper, in a different way of his more celebrated followers, looks like one guided by a security that "thruth is over any human authority" (Op.cit., 1963) what is a presumption said by coincidence also by religious revelations.

NOTE

(1) When we talk of perfect -so like good or correct- we are doing arbitrily because values can be -and they have been through history- catalogued of distint ways. After we shall talk of the absolute and relative of values.

Chapter Three: "DOES GOD ANSWER PRAYERS?"

(It is a reflexion on the practical life of the believers and non-believers)

What does it matter if God exist or not, whether famines, epidemies, wars and the rest of atrocities go on? What does it matter that if many thousands of people still suffering or dying unjustly? No prayer can change that. Believers can say: "It is the uncomprehensible and mysterious God's will?" Big and small unjustices, destruction and evil continue appearing each moment in every place like their contraries: justice, goodness, mercy, creativity...

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