Catholica Commentary by Fr Peter Dresser: God is Big .... Real BIG! (Chapter 3: Who or What is God? Part 2)

"God is Big ..... Real BIG!" by Fr Peter Dresser (Chapter Three - Part 2)

Here's a commentary to test your mettle. In the second part of his chapter addressing the BIG question: "Who or What is God?" Peter Dresser takes you on a wonderful journey exploring this history of human concepts of God as well as many of the competing pictures different people present of this Mystery we try to condense into the name "God". His central argument though is that we all need to expand our minds when it comes to thinking about this Mystery. God is Big ..... Real BIG!

Chapter Three (Part 2): Who or What is God?

In a sense we are all agnostics...

Einstein: the only source of knowledge is experience!

It remains fairly clear that we cannot know that God exists. In that sense we are all agnostics. Many of us believe but none of us knows. A reasonable stance that might be acceptable to the majority of people is that most of us are agnostics, some of us tending towards theism; others towards atheism. It may be that although we cannot know that God exists, we can perhaps surmise that He exists because of experiential evidence — our own experience of this Being within our own lives and loves and within the world and universe we live in — and because of the collective conscious reflection and experience of millions of others. I think it was Albert Einstein who said that the only source of knowledge is experience. In this regard it is interesting to look at Carl Jung's vision. He saw our interdependence with each other not merely interpersonal but also planetary and cosmic, even in minute details. From this vision, Jung coined his notion of the collective unconscious. He called it a Grenzbegriff, a concept used to describe something that feels very real but somehow defies analysis or even description. And Kant interestingly enough used the same term to designate the concept of God.[10]

It remains clear that we cannot prove in any scientific way the existence of God. It must somehow remain an experience. The learned and the clever might find it difficult even to experience this God but the child might be able to. A Taoist thought is that their own learning frequently restricts scholarly people. Wise people are able to go beyond such restrictions. According to Lao-Tse: to attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day. So the child within us is probably wiser than the intelligent when it comes to an appropriation, appreciation and an experience of God. Anthony de Mello adds his own ounce of wisdom to the matter at hand:

"The Master was exceedingly gracious to University dons who visited him, but he would never reply to their questions or be drawn into their theological speculations. To his disciples who marvelled at this, he said: Can one talk about the ocean to a frog in a well – or about the divine to people who are restricted by their concepts?"[11]

Carl Sagan: prophet of Scientism

Scientism and Pantheism...

There is also the religion of Scientism. Carl Sagan would appear to be some kind of prophet of this way of thinking. Scientism is the belief that the assumptions, methods and even the speculations of science are equally appropriate, if not essential, for the proper understanding of all knowledge including religion. Scientism explicitly denies both the special revelation of truth and the existence of a sovereign, supernatural and eternal being. In the religion of Scientism, the Cosmos is believed to be eternal and the only ultimate reality. Scientism teaches that all things have their being and origin in the intrinsic properties of nature. If there is a God, therefore, it too would only be a part and product of nature. This way of thinking is related to the understanding of Pantheism that states that everything is God and God is everything. Sagan would insist that all our human traits such as loves and hates, passions and despairs, tenderness and aesthetic appreciation and so on are simply the result of "minor accidents in our immensely long evolutionary history."[12] He would also state that men and women have evolved to such an extent that they can now take over and control their own evolution.[13] So, in a sense, man becomes his own creator and thus God. Sagan would also favour worship of nature because after all mother earth has been our progenitor. "The ocean calls. Some part of our being knows this is from where we come. We long to return. These aspirations are not, I think, irreverent, although they may trouble whatever gods may be."[14]

Actually there would appear to be much sense in that. If we accept Darwinism, then obviously we are part of an interconnected chain of events. In any case, why do many of us seem to desire a holiday by the sea? Is this not a primordial atavistic urge to go back to our mother earth? Or is it simply because I am a Piscean? But I think there is something here. After all, we have an extraordinarily close relationship with our universe. We are its children. In a sense we are reflective beings able to think about ourselves as evolved. We are in fact the universe thinking about itself! This is a most profound and awe-inspiring concept.

Our human experience of God...

Human Experience of God by Denis Edwards

Denis Edwards: "Experience is best seen as an encounter with some thing or person which has become available to consciousness through reflective awareness."

Several writers have spoken about our human experience of God. Denis Edwards defines an experience as an encounter with a person or thing. "Experience is best seen as an encounter with some thing or person which has become available to consciousness through reflective awareness."[15] He refers to the Transcendent breaking into our lives, a sense of Mystery breaking into our daily encounters and he interprets these as experiences of God. He arbitrarily selects five such experiences (interpersonal love, childbirth, creativity, forgiveness and beauty of the world) which he sees as moments when we may be overtaken by a sense of excessive richness, of superabundance, and the awareness that all is given and that what is given cannot be attributed to ourselves.[16] They are experiences of being overwhelmed in some way. There are also situations that are primarily negative such as experiences of vulnerability, of death, of failure of loneliness and of alienation. According to Edwards, when we confront these so-called limit situations we are taken beyond ourselves into the mystery of grace.[17] The great religious traditions have always acknowledged that confrontation with death is intimately connected with experience of God. Apropos of this, no person is really complete until he or she dies. And, as we shall see, no person is more fully at one with God than after death.

Edwards has to be a little careful here. For too long well intentioned people have posited God as some type of placebo or some kind of explanation for what is unable to be explained scientifically. So God became synonymous with, say, mystery or fuzzy warm feelings or out of our depths feelings and so on. To what extent can we say that our experience with an awe-inspiring encounter entails or even equates with an experience of God? One needs to tread a little warily.

I recall many years ago a group of us were camping at a deserted beach south of Sydney, Burning Palms. Early one morning I saw this young fellow sitting next to his surfboard on the beach looking at the sun rising over the ocean on a particularly beautiful day. Was he having an experience of God in the beauty of nature, was he reflecting on the awesomeness of the situation or was he thinking about the next wave or perhaps what he was going to have for breakfast? I never asked him. I rather think it would have been a little disconcerting for him had I gone to him and asked: "Are you having an experience of God?" I had just read Edward's book so I assumed he was having a pre-conceptual experience of God! Must ask him one day. It is possible to gee yourself up so much that just about anything can become an experience of God. In this regard I remain a Raymo sceptic.

I used to be a daily swimmer at Bronte pool during the time I was studying at Kensington. I went there very early in the morning as the sun was rising and the rays of the sun were reflecting on and infiltrating the water. It always seemed to me that the transcendent God had become immanent in that water. That is to say that the God out there had become the God with me in the pool. God and I had become one. Thus a poetic reflection on the existence of God — a very Pantheistic one — but one I could identify with. Of course I assumed or presumed there was a God. I was after all studying theology!

God-of-the-gaps...

Paul Davies: warns against a God-of-the-gaps.

In a similar way Paul Davies and others, contemporary scientists many of whom are seeking a meaningful theology for the modern age, warn about appealing to a God to fill the gaps left by scientific explanation. In an excellent article published in The Sydney Morning Herald some time back, Davies speaks about professional theologians' distaste for a so-called God-of-the-gaps because it treats God as a sort of cosmic magician, who creates a flawed universe and then prods it fitfully to fix it up. In this demeaned role, God is reduced to merely another force at work in nature, moving atoms about whimsically in competition with 'normal' forces.[18] In the same article Davies goes on to state that there is also a tactical reason why the God-of-the-gaps is rejected by theologians:

"As science has advanced over the years, so the gaps have shrunk, giving the impression that religion is always retreating in the face of science. It is certainly unwise to place God in any particular gap in our knowledge, lest the next scientific discovery fills it. Nevertheless, people still fall into that trap…"[19]

There are also atheists who make strong efforts to deride God's existence. Richard Dawkins even devised a new word meme to describe a form of cultural replication. Just as genes are at the basis of physical evolution, so memes are the replicators of cultural transmission. He asks us to consider the idea of God and he writes:

Richard Dawkins: devised a new word 'meme' to describe a form of cultural replication.

"We do not know how it arose in the meme pool. Probably it originated many times by independent 'mutation'. In any case, it is very old indeed. How does it replicate itself? By the spoken and written word, aided by great music and great art. Why does it have such high survival value? Remember that 'survival value' here does not mean value for a gene in a gene pool, but value for a meme in a meme pool. The question really means: What is it about the idea of a god that gives it its stability and penetrance in the cultural environment? The survival value of the god meme in the meme pool results from its great psychological appeal. It provides a superficially plausible answer to deep and troubling questions about existence. It suggests that injustices in this world may be rectified in the next. The 'everlasting arms' hold out a cushion against our own inadequacies which, like a doctor's placebo, is none the less effective for being imaginary. These are some of the reasons why the idea of God is copied so readily by successive generations of individual brains."[20]

Despite his inventiveness, Dawkins does make some sense particularly with respect to the god-of-the-gaps mentality that no contemporary theologian worth his or her salt would espouse. He makes sense later on as well when he says that religion and faith have frequently been encouraged either by fear of hell, or promises of rewards. Whilst all this might be true even to some extent, it is very sad that religion and faith have frequently been nurtured by sanctions. It really reduces our God to the "Good Old Uncle George" caricature that Gerard Hughes writes about. Uncle George is spoken about lovingly by the children's parents but on a visit to him the children are scared and frightened by their uncle who threatens to throw them into a blazing furnace if they don't come to visit him. Religious schizophrenia has set in![21]

This small excursion of ours looking at the question of God's existence seems like taking up most of the chapter but we will stay with it for a little while longer — until I can convince you or myself that his existence is somewhat more than an assumption. I rather feel, anyway, that theists have the onus of responsibility of showing or expressing some good argument for God's existence. After all, they make the claim! In any case the matter of this existence seems a very real issue in our modern scientific world. If you tire of this discussion, please skip a couple of pages. But then, if you do this, you might miss something important!

The development of concepts of God through history...

YHWH: the name that couldn't be voiced.

I should imagine that in earlier times the existence of God was not a disputed question. Primitive peoples, unable to explain in any scientific way the occurrences of thunder and lightning and other cosmic disturbances found it easy to postulate the existence of some Being to explain these phenomena — an ancient example of the god-of-the-gaps mentality. Indeed there grew up a plethora of gods in the different early civilisations. The Sun god, the god of Thunder and so on. Then there developed a collective conscious awareness of some Being that in some way aided and abetted its followers. This was undoubtedly the experience of the Jewish people as they reflected on their history and what was happening around them and to them. It was their collective reflective understanding that their God, Yahweh, was a God that controlled the world and aided and assisted them in their times of need. It was also a God that could be prayed to for help when needed. It was also a God that punished wrongdoing. The Scriptures attest to the Jewish people's respect and worship of Yahweh. Although originally polytheists, the Jewish people came to accept Yahweh as their one and only God, the only true God and one that was better than anyone else's gods! This idea of my god is better than your god throughout the history of the world has given rise to wars and bloodshed and has caused a great deal of grief and anguish. Religious wars developed and continue to rage to the present day. The existence of God became the prevailing religious mindset of the Middle Ages and, as we saw above, the mindset of the majority of people today.

People's understanding of God was of a Being that co-existed with the prevailing cosmological understanding of the day. The primitive Jewish story of creation in the Book of Genesis shows this God creating the Universe in seven days and was a God somewhat anthropomorphic in nature — at least in behaviour. Notice his anger with Adam and Eve when he discovers that they were disobedient, perhaps the greatest tantrum ever thrown [Genesis 3:14ff]. The sad point to all of this is that latest figures would seem to suggest that over one half of people today still accept the cosmology of ancient and medieval times which suggests that the world is about 10,000 years old. And they remain quite comfortable with this. God is perceived to be "up there in his heaven looking kindly down on us, the apple of his eye". Yet the overwhelming scientific facts are that the Universe, which consists of something like 400 billion galaxies, has been evolving for about 16 billion years and that our planet has been evolving for about 4.5 billion years. And even more, evolution tells us that we human beings are contingent throw-offs of organic evolution, we are nothing but star dust, and that there is nothing central or special about who, what, or where we are in the universe of galaxies. More to the point we, like flowers and other animals, are here principally to make copies of our genes, to spread our D.N.A. and thereby ensure the continuance of our species. Flowers are coloured and pretty to attract bees and thus spread their DNA. Perhaps only in a very secondary sense should they be seen as God's big garden and they reflect the grandeur of God in the same way as the entire universe reflects the grandeur of God. God did not somehow create pretty flowers to make our lives more aesthetically pleasing! Our idea of God and our religious experience must come to grips with a true scientifically proven cosmology and evolution otherwise our religion and our God are dead! I make mention of this now because it does touch a little on the existence of God. We have made our world and therefore our God far too small. Our God, if there is one, is big. Real big! Perhaps the sad point in all of this is that many of those who accept the undeniable scientific evidence for evolution and an incredibly old and vast cosmos will still revert to a guardian angel God, some kind of Fatherly Figure in heaven when it comes to moments of grief and chaos in their lives. If they find this consoling, then so be it. Somebody once said that if there weren't a personal God, then we would have to make up one! But it is sad that the religious beliefs and faith of so many people have failed to grow apace with the signs of the times and with our present glorious and awesome understanding of the cosmos. They make God too small!

Just one final comment on this whole question of God's existence before we move on — and we have to move on. It is an observation made by Swami Prabhavananda:

by Swami Prabhavananda "During the course of the world's history many great illumined teachers have told us: God exists—I know because I have seen him! The only question that remains for us is: do we believe them? If after watching their lives and learning all that can be known about them we feel that these men are trustworthy, then conviction will begin to grow in our own hearts also. And, when once we have the beginning of that conviction, it will be our own fault if we do not try to find certainty by starting along the road which those men have travelled in order that we, like them, may reach the hilltop and see the infinite ocean of bliss for ourselves."[22]

Both Christianity and Vedanta teach that to be in heaven is to realise God in our own consciousness. In any case, it is my understanding that the Spirit of God fills the Cosmos, infiltrates the entire universe, and finds its home within us as well! But then, I'm a believer. Not a True Believer – but a Sceptic who listens to the Voice deep within. Like Pooh.

We might leave this specific analysis of God and His existence at this stage — but only to return to it. God, after all, is the subject of this book and we still really haven't come to any great conclusions about Him. So we await another chapter. But it might be of some help to take a look now at the man Jesus and his experiential encounter with this God.

NEXT WEEK: Chapter Four: "God and Jesus"

“It is sad that the religious beliefs and faith of so many people have failed to grow apace with the signs of the times and with our present glorious and awesome understanding of the cosmos. They make God too small!” ...Peter Dresser

FOOTNOTES:
[10] Diarmuid O'Murchu., Quantum Theology, Crossroad Publishing Company, New York, 1997, p138.
[11] Anthony de Mello., One Minute Wisdom, Gujarat Sahitya Prakash, Anand, 1985, p119.
[12] Carl Sagan, Cosmos, Random House, New York, l980, p282.
[13] Ibid p320.
[14] Ibid p5.
[15] Denis Edwards, Human Experience of God, Paulist Press, New York l983, p7.
[16] Ibid p29 et seq.
[17] Ibid p33-38.
[18] Paul Davies, "The Future of God" in The Sydney Morning Herald, December 21, 1996.
[19] Ibid
[20] Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, Oxford University Press, 1989, p192-193.
[21] Gerard Hughes, God of Surprises, Darton, Longman and Todd, London, 1985, p34.
[22] Swami Prabhavananda, The Sermon on the Mount according to Vedanta, Mentor, 1972, p87.

IMAGE CREDITS:
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Peter Dresser grew up in Orange NSW. On completing his Leaving Certificate he studied for some years at Springwood and Manly Seminaries. His life journey has led him down diverse paths and he enjoyed the experience of many and varied employments including postman, public servant and factory worker. He has appreciated his exposure to different life styles and religions and his involvement with music and sport, particularly Rugby League. He eventually turned to teaching where he found an easy rapport with and respect for young people. Peter decided to continue with his studies for Priesthood and entered St. Paul’s Seminary. He was ordained in 1990. Peter's love for his Catholic religion dates from his very early years. His involvement with Science is only a recent phenomenon. His fascination with nature has always been predominant. His continuing pastoral concern is that the Good News proclaimed by Jesus be preached and mediated meaningfully in all its richness and fullness to the contemporary world. Peter holds degrees in Arts and Theology and a Diploma in Education. He produced this document in 2004 whilst Parish Priest of Kandos in Central West NSW. He now lives privately in retirement at Kandos where he spent six memorable years.

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[Index of Commentaries by Fr Peter Dresser]

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