Can human beings philosophise about a transcendent God? Or, How to help a desperate postgraduate
Hmm, well, I’m glad you asked that question…
I have three essays at the moment and that’s the title for one of them (er, without the desperate student bit, obviously). I was sitting here stressing about the fact that I have essays and site updates to do. Then I thought, ‘Maybe I can combine the two!’
I can’t, because my ideas are too unclear at this stage. (Yes, even at this late stage).
However, I can open the discussion.
The first thing to make clear about Philosophy of Religion and God-talk is this: When trying to make the concept of God clear, questions about whether or not God actually exists are irrelevant.
If you want to respond with ‘But God doesn’t exist!’ that’s fine; but first you need to tell me what this ‘God’ being/person/whatever is that you’re saying doesn’t exist. If I say that unicorns or phaetons don’t exist it’s incumbent upon me to say what unicorns or phaetons are.
So, with that out of the way…
Is God knowable? Or is He/She/it beyond human comprehension?
There are no wrong answers. Discuss in the comments. Thanks!
One response, Comment or Ping
IanW
I have tried to relate this question to my specialist field of computing.
To a computer, is a Human knowable? Is he/she/it beyond computer comprehension?
It seems to me that there are two aspects that must be considered to answer:
1) Since Humans created computers, Humans would have to know their own nature well enough to describe it to computers. i.e. if Humans aren’t knowable to themselves, what chance do their creations have?
2) Do Humans endow computers with the required abilities in order to understand Humans? i.e. if computers do not have the ability to know about ‘living creatures’ then they can not know Humans.
These seem to be easily translateable and still relevant to the questions about God and humans.
If we assume that we are talking about an omniscient God, then we have to conclude that point 1 is achievable. Similarly, if we talk about an omnipotent God, then we conclude that point 2 is also achievable.
So it seems to me that it would be possible to know God *if and only if* God wished it, and created humans with the required abilities.
This question seems to me to be about trying to deduce the will of God, rather than asking if it is possible. To me, I cannot help but think that God would have known that humans would philosophise and would debate God’s nature, and that this ability is what we need in order to know God.
To allow humans to debate, philosophise and think about God’s nature only to have us conclude (when? in a year? a thousand? a million years?) that actually there was no point to this because we can’t know God seems cruel and harsh, and I cannot accept that a God that is supposed (admittedly, by us) to be loving and more perfect than us would allow that to happen.
Clearly, I’m being very arrogant here in a) answering and b) giving a definite answer — you know I’m no philosophy student — but I hope I’ve at least given you a topic you can dismiss and so make some kind of progress in your essay…
Nov 24th, 2006
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