THE USES AND ABUSES OF 'GOD"


March 12th 1998


The next issue, Number 22, will appear on April 15th 1998.





By 'God' is meant, herein, not a supreme being whose existence is asserted by some people and discounted by others but the very notion of god - the 'god-idea'. Whether there is, or is not, a real god, the god-idea is long up and still running and, just like many others, that idea has its uses and its abuses.

At the very least, the idea is the basis of many a truth-telling metaphor; in a previous Atheist Thought, it was suggested that Lovelock's Gaia, earth-goddess, model has its uses in expressing environmental concern - "Metaphorically but only metaphorically, it is as though 'what Gaia thinks about it' is more important than what we think about it and so we have to 'read the mind of Gaia' and act on what we read therein."

This is not far removed from the old tag - 'Man proposes; God disposes' - a very neat way of expressing the simple truth that what is actually possible has priority over what we may wish or intend to do. An equally pithy secular way of encapsulating the same truth is quite hard to construct.

The same might be said of the practical good to be achieved by self-reliance - 'God helps those who help themselves'. At the level of political action, the need for the rule of law and the greater countervailing need to rebel against corrupt tyrannical law-makers is hard to express briefly any better than in the remark attributed to Jesus - "Render unto Caesar .... render unto God ...". Perhaps the wisest of the metaphorical truths containing the god-idea - and one of the hardest to express economically in secular terms is - 'There, but for the grace of God, go I'.

It is no wonder that even atheists' discourse is so full of reference to the god-metaphor; it is so useful and so widely understood at any level of belief or disbelief.

What are the abuses of the god-idea? Three can be identified and a discussion of these is the main part of this AT 21.



We can identify three main abuses of, traps concealed in, the god-idea; they are 1) the illusion of certainty; 2) the posturing of authority and, 3) the seductive morass of unfalsifiability. These are all endemic in religion and, in so far as religion is one of the main inputs to cultural evolution, they infect our thinking generally.

1) Certainty.

Daily life is evidently uncertain and often dangerous and frightening; wishful thinking impels many people to 'believe in God' who protects us, in the long term especially, if we act in accordance with His Will. This comforting formula is useless UNLESS we know for certain what the divine will actually requires of us. Wishfully to think that, ultimately, there is no danger entails feelings of certainty as to God's existence and certainty as to our perception of His Will. Of course it does not follow that if our thinking is wishful then it is false but, nonetheless it does not follow that it is true either.

Once in in our heads, the notion of comforting certainty spreads throughout our thinking - often with disastrous results. The certainty that someone who is instantly attractive to oneself will certainly be a good life-long spouse can the be the root of endless family misery. The certainty that one's religion is right while that of one's neighbour is wrong is often the root of endless public and private misery.

A little cool reflection reveals that there are very few things of which we can unreservedly be certain. It is true that my telephone number is certainly what it is - it has to be; it is a contrived certainty, contrived to make it possible for people to call me. It is certain that, where I live, we had a sunny day yesterday while today is cloudy but that is an unimportant and an inconsequential certainty.

The thought remains that alleged truths that are neither contrived nor inconsequential are at best only probabilities as to truth. We have to treat very many probabilities as though they were certainties - that is a practical need - but the need to feel certain in no way guarantees that the needed certainty is a real certainty. The straw you feel compelled to clutch at does not save you from drowning.

A major abuse of the god-idea is that it infects our thoughts with the 'virus' of wishful certainty when, in truth, we cannot be absolutely certain of anything very much of basic importance. We have to live with uncertainty and the god-idea persuades us that this is, ultimately, not really the case; but it is really the case.

2) Authority.

It is scarcely feasible for individual believers in any god to work out for themselves the supposed certainties of their god's supposed will. Inevitably some members of the given faith-community will be set up as experts on the will of the shared god; inevitably there will be writings about the god that are held to be sacred. Both the god-experts and the Holy Writ soon assume privileged status; they may not be questioned as to fundamentals; they may only be questioned as to detailed interpretation. Perceptions of certainty (that must be accepted) lead inexorably to perceptions of authority (that must be obeyed). Certainty is the template for tyranny and authority is its embodiment. Tyrants are certainties made flesh.

It will be argued that we need authority to keep order - and indeed we do; you cannot have a safe highway without an accepted Highway Code but that is very far from looking to authoritative experts for the certainties that people crave. Mature people claim the right, indeed acknowledge the duty, to question anything and everything; for mature people there are no privileged beliefs, no privileged theories and no privileged data; everything is up for critical scrutiny. The god-idea is dangerous in that it undermines that proper scepticism.

3) Unfalsifiability

An unfalsifiable notion is one that, by its very nature, cannot be exposed as false by reference to observation or experiment. The opinion (that it happens I do not hold) that my son is intent on poisoning me, that he is playing a long game and that he is actor enough to pose convincingly as a normally affectionate son .... is an unfalsifiable opinion. There is no way of proving it to be unfounded.

His failure, so far, to poison me is consistent with the above opinion but it is equally consistent with the opinion (that I do hold) that he has no thought of poisoning me and will likely never entertain such a thought. But the poisoner-son theory cannot be proved false for, even if I die by other means, it can always be claimed that he had the intention to poison me but, somehow never got around to doing it.

Unfalsifiable theories are simply self-propelled fantasies; they owe everything to the imagination and they owe nothing to the data (although as we have seen above, they can be consistent with the data and therefore can be seductive). But they are used as means of getting out of a tight corner. The god-idea breeds unfalsifiable theories. Creation and the Problem of Evil are good examples of how unfalsifiability supports piety.

The notion that the universe owes its existence to a prior Creator can never be disproved; there is no conceivable item of evidence that can disprove it; whatever we may discover about the past history of the universe ... people can always claim that the Creator willed it so and made it so. It is rather like the man who believed in invisible, inaudible, intangible canaries; your not seeing them, hearing them, feeling them, is not because they don't exist but because they do exist and are invisible, inaudible and intangible. Nobody can prove that such wondrous birds do not exist.

Again, the Problem of Evil, is a trigger of unfalsifiability. The difficulty that undeserved evil exists in world governed by an all-knowing all-good all-powerful god is 'solved' unfalsifiably by saying that the evil is simply part of His Plan for Good that we do not understand. If good things happen that is because God is undeniably good; if bad things happen that is because God is undeniably good and undeniably mysterious in His goodness.

Unfalsifiability is the device whereby god-experts and god-authorities cover their tracks when, as a matter of common observation, they are seen to have got things wrong. Unfalsifiability is the doctrine of 'heads, I win; tails, you lose'.

The resort to unfalsifiability is one of the banes of clear honest and disciplined thought and the god-idea fosters it.



To sum up: 'god' is admittedly a useful metaphor but is, more importantly, a fountain of error - spurious certainty, presumed authority and sterile unfalsifiability. If thought is to be as effectual as it can be then, to be on the safe side, it needs to be a-theistic.





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