Is God’s existance even relevant?
May 23, 2009
I’ll start with some Descartes, if no one minds. Descartes starts with the questin “What can I know?” and examines certain phenomenons. He examines, for example, the fact that he can see thing, so that can be something he knows. Then he remembers than he can also see things in his dreams that can seem real, so he rules out that option. Afterwards, Descartes turns to his thought. He asks, “Can the things that I am thinking about be known and true?” and reaches another negative answer – people can think about things that can be wrong.
The only thing that Descartes succeeds in proving, then, is the existence of a “thinker” that is doubting the existence of any sort of reality. This conclusion is represented by his famous “Cogito” – I think therefore I am.
If we examine this famous argument, we see that a simple conclusion follows: We cannot, without any pre-assumptions, prove anything other than the existence of “a thinker”. You can call this “thinker” (or Mind) God, because it creates your experience of reality. For example, when you dream – your mind creates a representation of reality where it controls everything. You could also call “everything” God and look at existence as one being.
Looking at existence as a consequence of the actions of a sentient being that acts and speaks, while giving every nation different directions and leading to countless deaths? Maybe not so much.
To conclude, when faced with the question “Is there a God?” you have to remember – the person who is asking this is probably thinking about a very certain, personal represention of God, as described in some text/oral narrative.
Answering the question “Can we know that a certain text is the truth?” is a much easier task. Just use our old friend Descartes.
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