Why the Yhwh 'god'?

Faith & Science Conversation
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I’m not sure this God does have any influence outside of my brain, except that this ‘God’ (scare quotes to avoid any false equivalency to what you believe in) is probably less individuated than our conscious selves are so in a sense “It” is more wide spread than “I” am.

Here is a sneak preview:

Hello Eric. Wonderful post. I have been coming at the same questions from the other side for some time now. I agree with you that there can be something of value in understanding why God belief has been so strongly selected for in the origins of humankind, even for those of us who will never believe in anything supernatural. There is a baby in there which is worth saving even if we don’t want the bath water.

God belief arises in consideration of a number of questions including origins, mortality, morality and purpose. But I think the primary place it comes in is in explaining the phenomenology of our subjective experience and it is there where it has the benefits you extoll. Believing in and revering something within which knows things we don’t and which is or can be benevolently inclined toward our happiness is a psychological benefit.

My theory is that just as our bodies and minds still bear the marks of long evolution, so too might the forms that consciousness has taken over the course of our development. Our bodies/minds/consciousness give rise to our conscious minds and our sense of self and what we call our identity, but how do we know there aren’t other products of consciousness still active within us? It would explain a lot. Earlier products of consciousness may be primitive from our perspective as conscious/rational minds but they may well bear some of the wisdom of our organism so that our conscious minds can work unfettered to reason out solutions which have led to so much material wealth and power. The trouble is that rationality alone can never tell you what truly matters to you as a person and you can’t deduce the correct path to fulfillment by abstraction alone.

Believers have the advantage of faith in something more than reason and an openness toward receiving its gifts. But there is no reason we who do not believe in a creator, can’t still embrace the something more which may well be a co-product of the same consciousness which produces our conscious self.

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My apologies to this thread’s author for the tangent. I promise to come back later and respond more directly to your post, Jon. But we’re getting ready to go on a short trip and I need to get busy now. (Thanks a lot, Totti, for helping me avoid starting sooner.)

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I can’t agree with this:

But I do think this is a criticism worth considering for believers:

God belief was essentially selected for naturally by many cultures so it had survival value. I think it is worth our attention to look for the best account possible for why God belief not only won out but has also persevered even when it is getting harder and harder to find anywhere to place a God in the universe we know. To chalk it up as simple error owing to ignorance just seems glib. You can’t really expect anyone to give up core beliefs based on that sort of reason.

This is much better. But given this research, why expect anyone to give up their God belief just because God has gone by so many names in so many places. One reaction is to say so they must all be in error. Another would be to say all are names for the same thing. But don’t be surprised if believers in a particular God feel they have reasons why that one is the best or that the others were mistaken attempts at understanding the true God.

The question that I think we should consider is how can we who will never accept anything supernatural accommodate this part of who we are? Would there be value for us in doing so? I think there is, even though I don’t think God had any role in creation of the cosmos and can not offer any eternal personal afterlife.

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In trying to explain the universality of religion, Sigmund Freud asked why it is that people are so incurably religious. He claimed that we have invented God to deal with things in nature that we find frightening. He explained that by inventing God we personalize or sacralize nature. We feel deeply threatened by hurricanes, fires, tornadoes, pestilence, and armies, but we do not have the same terror concerning our personal relationships.

If someone is hostile toward us, there are many ways we can try to defuse that anger. We can try to appease the angry person with words or gifts or flattery. We learn how to get around human anger, but how do we negotiate with a hurricane? How do we mollify an earthquake?

How do we persuade cancer not to visit our house? Freud thought that we do it by personalizing nature, and we do that by inventing a god to put over the hurricane, the earthquake, and the disease, and then we talk to that god to try to appease him.

Obviously, Freud was not on the Sea of Galilee (Mark 4) when the storm arose and threatened to capsize the boat in which Jesus and his disciples were sitting. The disciples were afraid. Jesus was asleep, and so they went to him and shook him awake, and they said, ˜Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?’

Then He arose and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ˜Peace, be still!’ And the wind ceased and there was a great calm" (Mark 4:38-39). You would think the disciples’ gratitude would have led them to say, Thank you, Jesus, for removing the cause of our fear. Instead, they became very much afraid. Their fears were intensified, and they said to one another, Who can this be, that even the wind and the sea obey Him! (v. 41). They were dealing with something transcendent.

What we see in the disciples is xenophobia, fear of the stranger. The holiness of Christ was made manifest in that boat, and suddenly the disciples’ fear escalated. This is where Freud missed the point. If people are going to invent religion to protect them from the fear of nature, why would they invent a god who is more terrifying than nature itself? Why would they invent a holy god? Fallen creatures, when they make idols, do not make holy idols. We prefer the unholy, the profane, a god we can control.

The book of Romans helps us …“Because men refused to glorify God as God, they became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened” (v. 21). Some of the most brilliant people come to very different conclusions about the nature of reality. Who was more brilliant than Thomas Aquinas or Aurelius Augustine? They were fiercely convinced of the reality of God, and their lives were driven by that conviction, which lay at the foundation of every-thing else they believed. Others of gifted intellect, such as Jean-Paul Sartre, John Stuart Mill, and Albert Camus, wound up on the other end of the spectrum, embracing nihilism la Nietzsche, saying that there is no meaning or significance in human experience. How can such brilliant people end up so far away?

When Paul speaks of hearts that are dark, he uses the word foolish. Yet God has plainly and clearly shown himself to everyone. “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen” (Romans 1: 20). The Latin word means conspicuous; God has made his self-revelation conspicuous to everyone since the creation of the world. general revelation and because of sin it is interpreted as per your examples.

Every moment since the dawn of creation God has been manifesting himself through the things that are made (Romans 1:20). God is manifesting himself through the things that are made so that his testimony to his nature is plainly evident. We ignore it - we call it mother nature - but our sin and darkened thinking confuses it - until we read the Bible (special revelation). Every human being knows of God and clearly perceives God but rejects that knowledge.

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I think that this article by David Bentley Hart addressed some of the OP’s questions.

I might add that there is a difference between Zeus, Woden, Mithras, and all the other pagan gods (the lower case is important) and God, as represented by classical theist traditions such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and (someone correct me if I’m wrong) some brands of Hinduism. All the pagan gods are contingent, whereas the God of classical theism is not. This means that God is necessary, or could not fail to exist. There are other differences, but that should suffice for now. I’m not sure if you’re genuinely curious, or willfully ignorant (it’s hard to tell over the internet). If the former, I hope you reply and we can start a dialogue.

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What makes any god contingent or not? Whether or not their story discusses if the god ‘began to exist’ at any time or not? Following along Greek Mythology, Chaos was the first thing to exist (or it just ‘was’ and thus perhaps not contingent?) and several primordial gods came out of that. How do you then judge any non-contingent gods among themselves as they all claim the same argument as their own? Does the Dennett article get in to that some more? (I haven’t gotten a chance to look at it yet)

I’m trying to unpack your argument and thinking here, but it generally follows the classic Cosmological Argument. Is that correct? For various reasons I at least reject the Kalam portion (which I see as a god of the gaps argument) but my general stance is I am left with a ‘necessary fact’ that I choose to believe by faith.

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Well, the greek gods don’t answer the question “why is there something rather than nothing” or explain why the universe is the way it is and not other. At best they explain some natural phenomena like lightning. The God of christianity and the other mentioned religions, or even a deist God is an adequate answer to that question. Of course, that answer might be wrong, but it is still a valid distinction between the types of gods, they could both not exist and still be very different imaginary concepts. I also don’t buy the Kalam part, but I think the unmoved mover is pretty solid for instance. But I think it ultimately boils down to “why is it even possible for the universe to be the way it is?”, no amount of fine tuning would make the (literally) impossible possible, just make the very unlikely likely, that is why I think that argument is way more powerful than fine tunig, although we can always go with “it is just the way things are, accept it as a brute fact and move on”.

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Thank you all for replying to this topic.

I think the discussion has departed from the original question - how is the Hebrew Yhwh/Christian God any different?

This is a really difficult question for most ‘believers’ but for unbelievers /atheists the ‘invented god’ is standard ammunition and we need to have a ready answer - “In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one” Ephesians 6.16

My own answer is fairly simple – so simple that its probably flawed in some way. The Hebrew Yhwh has to be different simply because the Israelites of the Old Testament rejected Him from the very beginning starting in Genesis 3. Why would anyone invent a ‘god’ which they didn’t want? Then the following 2000 years of history of the ‘Children of Israel’ as we now read it in the OT confirms this rejection culminating in the rejection of Yashua/Jesus. So basically speaking, and no racial prejudice implied, the Jews made the same mistake twice, the first perhaps being a prophecy of the second; but to their credit they readily admit it as the entire Bible was written by ‘Jewish’ people. No other section of society has ever been so frank, honest and open about their own failings which makes it even more remarkable that the Bible ever made it into writing. Perhaps the Divine hand is at work after all.

So I think its very unlikely that the Jewish people spent 2 to 3 thousand years of their life/culture/civilisation trying to avoid something that wasn’t there – the basic story of the OT being that the Israelites fell away, lost faith, followed foreign idols or in their own words ‘just wanted to be like everyone else’ . . . . .“Nevertheless, the people refused to listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We must have a king over us Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles”.1 Samuel 8.19-20

All of which seems to imply that the Hebrew Yhwh must actually exist. ‘Evidence’ of a sort.

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Hello pevaquark,

I believe that another poster touched on your question concerning contingency, but I’ll add some information. You’re going to have to help me understand something first: I’m admittedly poor with Greek mythology, and consequently their conception of Chaos. I don’t enjoy the idea of using Wikipedia as my source, but according to their article “Chaos” it would seem refers to different things. Either it’s a void (or free space), or the first of the primordial deities. If the translation of Hesiod’s Theogeny is correct, he tells us that Chaos was the first god to be. Should this be correct, then Chaos would differ from God, who is uncreated. Even if Chaos was uncreated, there’s no problem, as many pagan cultures seem to have the concept of God, the transcendent source of all being, who created the gods. This David Bentley Hart article addresses more of what you’re wondering about.

God, Gods, and Fairies by David Bentley Hart | Articles | First Things

As for the Cosmological bit, you’re correct in assuming that that was in the back of my mind. The reason for it should be obvious: if there is a deductive demonstration of the existence of God, then scientists can talk all they want about a “god space”, but the existence of God would be no mere fantasy concocted by a fragile human mind. Essentially (and I feel like this has been pointed out before), the conclusion that humans are naturally “religious” (and the people who make this claim often lump many different things into this broad category) can be taken two ways: a reductionist would say that the only reason religion developed was because it was advantageous, but we now know it to be false, or a theist would say humans are naturally religious because of our ability to reason, God’s desire to develop a personal relationship, and the desire of the soul for transcendence. Science cannot adjudicate between these two without over stepping it’s self imposed limits.

I feel like I’ve derailed this thread enough, so I apologize to the OP. If you want to continue the discussion I’d suggest starting a new thread.

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To some degree, though all Cosmogony stories from different cultures sought to answer questions they thought were important. In an eternal universe framework you don’t need to answer that question as the universe would not be contingent in that case. But they did address many other questions of origins as did every other creation story.

I think that this touches upon a very interesting topic though which is whenever we have certain questions that we want answered or are trying to find answers- we look in ancient texts that were not written to answer the questions that we are trying to find answers to. I’m not saying that you were doing this as I’m the one who brought it up – but it does remind me of how we even demand that Genesis give us answers to certain questions that it certainly was not originally written to address. But yet, sometimes we have this amazing ability to find answers in places where they’re not.

I’m not sure how one does go from here as it seems there are an infinite number of possible answers to that question which to me means that none of them or any real answers at all.

Don’t sweat any details, they’re not actually important for what I’m thinking. I just believe that it sounds silly to me to be scouring through ancient cosmogony stories and if any of them happened to admit that their god came out of something then that god became contingent and us we can reject them using this argument. But what if there were some writers who thought that chaos just always existed and is the thing out of which everything else emerges. Then then chaos would be not contingent and thus a possible candidate for the god of the cosmological argument. Or, I write a book outlining my revelation of the flying spaghetti monster - is he now a candidate for the god of the cosmological argument?

At the end of the day, I’m still not sure how this cosmological argument can be used to reject any plurality of gods. Or maybe it’s main point is simply to try to demonstrate that any non-contingent gods are different from contingent gods - but at the same time can say or do nothing about distinguishing between any non-contingent gods. Is that right?

Good points- I agree completely concerning evolutionary psychology. I probably would say the only thing evolutionary psychology really stands against or challenges is probably the believe of the special creation of all people. At least at BioLogos, many are certainly fine with God using evolutionary processes and it really wouldn’t be that surprising if he use them to bring us closer to him over time.

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Hello pevaquark,

I’m not sure how to be polite about this, but I think you’re terribly confused about what “contingent” means, and also what cosmological arguments set out to demonstrate. Contingency refers to something that could have been otherwise, whereas necessity implies that something must be the case. I believe in your post you said something to the effect that if the universe was eternal, then it wouldn’t be contingent. This is false, as everything in the universe would still be contingent (note, this does not commit the fallacy of composition), and you could run a cosmological argument. Only the Kalam cosmological argument uses the idea that the universe had a beginning. Thomistic, Neoplatonic, and Leibnizan CAs do not assume the universe had a beginning. You’re correct in saying that a successful CA would not rule out the existence of contingent gods like Zeus. In fact, theistic defenders of a CA might even believe in “gods”, which would be closer to angels than how pagans conceived of their pantheon. Also, the nature of cosmological arguments would rule out “gods” as being candidates for the being (analogically speaking) that they deduce. For example if you eventually get to the stage where you say the First Cause must be all-knowing, that would rule out Zeus. If you protest and say that you believe Zeus to be all knowing, all powerful, simple, etc, then it becomes a mere tautology- you’re really saying you believe in the God of classical theism, and his name is Zeus. Finally, note that this is dealing almost entirely with natural theology. I hope this clears up some of the confusion, if not (or if I made it worse), let me know

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Consider that many of these Gods are related in history of civilization. As civilization developed in the Fertile Crescent and Anatolia we see the birth of organized religions. Mesopotamia, Egypt, Iran and India seem to originate much of the worlds religions and Gods. These religions may have a common source such as the Mesopotamians Apkallu and the Sons of God of the Bible. These religions have some related concepts such as the afterlife in some form. You can geographically track the expansion of these influences of their concepts. Greece and Rome were influenced by the Mesopotamians , Egypt and Zoroaster. Indian Hinduism and eventually Buddhism are influenced by the Aryan Vedic beliefs. The Druids of Europe are likely influenced by Central Asia migrants with their Aryan derived Gods and beliefs.

Jesus Christ was sent to bring people back to their God. So my question then is not why Yahweh is God? The question is Yahweh your God?

Matthew 22:14. For many are invited, but few are chosen.

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You make some good points. The Hebrew God is different because although we all reject God in some way, God is in search of man more than man is in search of God. For instance, God first approaches Abraham to reveal himself and initiate a covenant witn him and his descendants. Furthermore, there is a sense that God actively pursues people, even those who want nothing to do with him. e.g. Adam hides from God but God calls out to him; Jonah flees from God but God sics a fish on him, and so on. In the end, God always gets his man.

St. Augustine mentioned that our hearts are restless for God until we find rest in Him. See also the poem The Hound of Heaven by Francis Thompson.

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Well, it has been two days since the author of the post last shown here, so I don’t know if he will actually come back to discuss my points, but here is a quick summary:

  • I believe that the existence of God is more likely than not for philosophical arguments, mainly the cosmological ones that @pevaquark already discussed (although I reject Kalam’s since it is dependent on the A theory of time, and I favor the B theory), but that only puts me in a deistic position.

  • The deistic position however, is often associated with a distant God that does not care about his creation, a cosmic clockwork tinkerer. I reject that hypothesis because I think a God which only wanted to see “atoms combining in interesting ways” could just have made a universe without consciousness, with all living beings being philosophical zombies (see the hard problem of consciousness by David Chalmers for that). But we do have the possibility of consciousness as one of the contingent properties of our universe, followed by the possibilities of morality, love, wonder, and all sorts of things (even if they happen to be completely molded an atributable to evolution, they are still possible within our universe, and they needed not to be). That makes me think that this “deistic God”, if he exists, is personal, like the God of christianity (and some other religions as well).

  • If that God exists and cares about us, he would have made us in some way in which we would be able to notice and go after him (which could have been a tendency molded by evolution, of course). Justin Barret has already been mentioned by some people in that thread, you can look at his talks for some more in depth discussion about that. That is basically what makes me think that the human aprehension of God and special revelations are reliable to some degree, and not purely imaginary. Maybe it is that same tendency, followed by a incomplete understanding of God that has made people to have that tendency to see agency in nature and come up with gods like the greek gods, although I do think that they are very different in nature to the christian God, since they are contingent beings like @EvanFlick discussed. Of course, maybe we still have the incomplete picture and christianity is not the “final form” of that pursuit of the understanding of God’s nature, but I think is the best we have so far.

  • The teachings of Jesus seem to contain very deep moral/spiritual truths which never ceases to amaze me (just compare that to the teachings of modern self-help gurus and see the abismal difference). I’m a moral realist (which is also a faith-based belief), so I believe in moral truths, and the fact that Jesus seems to have gotten so much of them right makes me believe that there is something more about christianity. The evidences for his resurrection (check N.T. Wright for that, although obviously none of them are conclusive), alongside everything else I discussed also puzzle me. I’m agnostic about that point of the divine nature of Jesus, but I don’t dismiss it as well.

Taking that all together, that is why I ultimately believe in the judeo-christian God and not in the other gods, and also why I think it is more rational to do so than to believe in Zeus or Odin. All that being said, it is ultimately a matter of faith, although a rationally justified one rather than just “I want to believe in that even if it is complete nonsense!” like some atheists try to paint, I like to describe my faith as a “informed opinion”, but I don’t claim by any means that it is “proven by science”, science does not conclude anything about metaphysics after all. Sure, maybe I’m wrong and the explanation to all these things is just “that is just the way things are, there are no deeper reasons or meaning behind that”, but I’m more inclined to the God hypothesis, even though I recognize that I don’t have the absolute truth and I could totally be wrong. @jonnobody

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Since it is obvious and common sense that the earth is flat, you should be very careful in arriving at absolute flat statement on the basis of common sense on ANYTHING. One does not or should not reject something because of common sense and not for reason.

If you knew that other gods such as Jupiter were rejected for good reason, and not because of common sense, then you could answer your own question. YHWH is the God of Judaism. YHWH is accepted as God by many because they build their lives around the Mosaic covenant, which has little to do with science and much to do with ethics. Do you build your ethics on science?

The God of Christianity is the Trinity, God, the Father, God, the Son, and God, the Spirit. YHWH can be understood as God or God the Father. Christianity met the Greeks who invented philosophy, rejected their native gods because Christianity has the morality of Judaism and the rationality of philosophy. It also set the stage for science

Science does determine how the universe works, although science does not understand the meaning and purpose of the universe and humans. Since the universe4 does not think it does not have meaning or purpose of its own, therefore it must have the meaning and purpose of its Creator or none at all.

It the universe has no meaning and purpose, then life is irrational because we have no actual or real reason and meaning for living. A life without purpose is a irrational life. A life with has no meaning is not a worthwile life.

It is not irrational to say that God created the universe as a suitable home for humanity and created evolution to create us as thinking aware beings in God’s Image to live in this meaningful, purposeful good world unless you have decided the question is advance. God is the rational God of the Facts, not the no God of the gaps in the facts.

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Maybe that is the case. It is not what I believe, but I can’t prove otherwise. I get the feeling you are mixing the “rational” in the sense of “it is a good idea to do so” with the rational in the sense of “it follows the principles of logic”, it would still be rational to believe 2 + 2 = 4 or that pigs can’t fly in a meaningless universe, even if might not be “rational” to say that living is better than not living (or that is rational to live) or anything that has to do with purpose. “Life would suck without God” doesn’t even come close to make any argument for its existence, and that is basically what your argument seems to boil down too from my perspective.

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Perhaps if I came at it from an anti-suckist approach I could fit inside the Christianity tent, but I doubt it. :wink:

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That kinda reminds me of the “Pascal’s wager”. Which I think is by far the worst apolegetics argument ever.

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Thank you for your response. I am afraid that you misunderstand my point.

The point is that one needs to be able to think to make decisions. Other animals co not make decisions like we do. They can react to a given situation, but are unable to act according to a plan. Humans can shape and reshape their lives by making all sorts of decisions, by moving, changing friends, jobs, etc. This is very much a part of the rational life.

The situation however is that if like has no purpose or meaning, there is no way to make moral and value decisions because that requires making a rational choice concerning coming closer to an ideal that does not exist. Yes, it would still be rational to believe that 2 + 2 = 4, but if 4 and 2 have no meaning then what difference does it make.

What happens when one stops caring? Why should anyone care? Life is not good when it has no meaning and we cannot act rationally when we cannot make rational choices. Who is to say that love is better than hate? Who is to say that that truth is important even if we never find it?

All that is “objective” is basically meaningless. Science is a means to an end, not an end. All that is “subjective” is meaningful. Faith is not a means, but a way to relate to and help others and ourselves.

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Yeah, but that only proves at best that it is a good idea to believe in God, not that God actually exists, that is my point. It is rational in the sense of “being a good choice”, not of being formal logic.