The Word "God"
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The
word God - The most important concept that
most (if not all) religions must deal with is how its practitioners understand the term God.
The following definitions are from the indicated dictionaries. I have outlined in red the
what they all have in common and what most people who use the term God seem to
understand it as.
AskOxford - noun
1 (in Christianity and other monotheistic religions) the
creator and supreme ruler of the universe. 2 (god) a superhuman being
or spirit worshipped as having power over nature and human fortunes. 3 (god)
a greatly admired or influential person. 4 (the gods) informal the gallery in a theatre.
Dictionary.com
= 1 the one Supreme Being, the creator and ruler of the
universe. 2 the Supreme Being considered with reference to a particular
attribute: the God of Islam 3 (lowercase
) one of several deities, esp. a male deity, presiding over some portion
of worldly affairs. 4 (often
lowercase) a supreme being according to some particular conception: the god of mercy. 5 Christian Science.
the Supreme Being, understood as Life, Truth, Love, Mind, Soul, Spirit, Principle.6
(lowercase) an image of a deity; an idol. 7 lowercase) any deified person or object.8 (often lowercase) Gods, Theater. (a) the upper balcony in a theatre (b) the spectators
in this part of the balcony 9 (lowercase) to regard or treat as a god; deify; idolize. 10
(used to express disappointment, disbelief, weariness, frustration, annoyance, or the
like): God, do we have to listen to this nonsense?
Merriam-Webster
Online - 1 capitalized : the supreme or ultimate reality: as a
: the Being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness who is
worshipped as creator and ruler of the universe b Christian Science :
the incorporeal divine Principle ruling over all as eternal Spirit : infinite Mind 2
: a being or object believed to have more than natural attributes and powers and to
require human worship; specifically : one controlling a particular aspect or
part of reality 3 : a person or thing of supreme value 4 : a
powerful ruler
From these definitions we can gather from the
commonalities among these definitions is that any definition of God must include Creator
of the Universe. The phrases in red in the above definitions highlight this part of
the definition of God.
While its nice to have dictionary definitions of
this term we have to consider whether this is what most people think of when they think of
God. It seems that most people have this at least in common. The differences among
opinions comes in when one starts to ask about the attributes of God. For example:
Some people believe that God is benevolent while others believe that if
God exists then he must be either malevolent or just plain disinterested in
us. It would be truly strange if they were both true, even if our mortal minds could never
understand this sort of union of attributes. Once a person has a clear idea of what he
accepts as a definition of God then the next logical step is to seek out God's plan for
us. People tend to skip this step and go on to assume that God must be malevolent due to
the amount of pain, suffering and evil that exists in the world today. Ask yourself
this question: How can someone form such an opinion without first thinking about the
various possibilities that our mortal minds can conceive of for a purpose for all this? If
such a plan exists how do we know that our mortal minds even understand such a plan? Given
all this can we really make any assertions about the benevolence/malevolence of God?
Perhaps if we knew and understood God's plan then we might accept the benevolence of God.
But to reject the existence of God because we can't accept the existence of a a supreme
being who is malevolent is a step that can only be taken without recourse to logic.
If God had decided to communicate his purpose
then it seems to me that we wouldn't understand it and perhaps that is why we have never
heard from God on this point. After all we would be mortals communicating with the supreme
being. So we'd be right back where we started. Here some people will jump onto the atheist
band wagon with the belief that I can't accept the existence of God since such a being
must be malevolent as evidenced in the pain, suffering and evil that exists in the world.
A malevolent/non-caring God cannot exist. as illogical as it may seem this does appear
to be the reason many people don't believe in God. Other people take in what they can of
scripture and the results of their human reasoning lead them to jump onto the religious
band wagon. As far as atheists are concerned I believe H. Schilling expresses the
situation quite well when he wrote
Suffice it to remark then, first that many
so-called or self-styled atheists are no more than rebels against the traditional concepts
of God, or against institutionalized religion, or particularly conventional formulated
beliefs of the Church, not against the "God beyond the gods," or the genuine community
of faith. [1]
Let us assume that God is that intelligent being which both designed
and created the universe. The question which obviously arises is, Can a mortal do
to same thing? Can a mortal being create a universe? That is to say, is it possible,
either now or in the future, that there exist or will exist some super technologically
advanced civilization who could create another universe, referred to in the physics
literature as a child universe, from what materials there are in this world and not
destroy this universe in the process. Alan Guth and Edward Farhi from MIT believe it may
be possible. Using advanced methods of physics they published a paper called An obstacle to creating a universe in the laboratory, by Alan H. Guth, Edward Farhi, Physics
Letters B, Volume 183, Issue 2, p. 149-155. In order to create a universe one needs
about 25 grams of false vacuum matter, which is equal to roughly one ounce of
matter! The physics is rather detailed (what I usually referred to as High Guru Physics)
but what happens is demonstrated in the diagram below (Taken from the book The
Inflationary Universe, by Alan H. Guth, page 262)
Can it be said that the scientist from our
universe is the god (lower case is used to respect the God of my religion) of the child
universe he created? This question is asked so as to stimulate the mind as to what it
really means when we use the term God. Do we mean the intelligent designer/creator
of this universe or to we mean an omnipotent omniscient being who created the
universe. An interesting question to ask of science now is if it is actually possible for
an advanced race to obtain the minimal requirements to do the job. Perhaps God will not
allow this to happen so perhaps He made it impossible. There's the fun of physics and
religion. We can ask these cool questions. We don't really need an answer because it is
usually the question that leads us to new and interesting things.
References
[1] Science & Religion: An Interpretation
of Two Communities, by Harold K. Schilling, Charles Scribner's Sons, page 63.
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