Is God dead? Or is God neither/something else entirely?
The Abrahamic religious tradition talks about God as a “Living God.”
For sake of this argument, we need not assume that God does exist or does not exist. So, let’s assume that God exists.
By strong induction, we can say that all living beings start to live at some discreet point in time.
We can point to no living being and show that it did not first start to live.
Life, as I refer to here, is biological life. Some other kind of life is not logically impossible, but any other type of life is merely speculative (even if this or that holy book tells you otherwise).
Let’s ignore death for this argument.
I think it is both common and fair to define God as eternal, including having no starting point in time (either existed before time, or time and God always existed prior to our spacetime — pick your poison).
Does our strong induction that any given living being started to live at some discreet time t therefore lead to the conclusion that God is not a living being?
I think it does.
This particular argument does not lead to anything like “God is not a being.” God, if she exists, is most certainly a being, whether living or not.
However, by this simple analysis, I claim that God cannot be a “Living God,” unless living has a radically different meaning for us than it does for God. I am willing to consider that it may, given our difficulty in understanding what life is in the first place. See, for example, the literature on whether or not viruses are biological life, and whether artificial intelligences are or could be living beings. But, even there, note that regardless of whether viruses are alive or AI constitutes some type of living being, each of those types of potential-life have beginnings in time. So, while they open the door to different kinds of life, they still do not free God from the notion of life as having a discreet starting point.
Death, I think, would further complicate the issue.
Another point that may seemingly further complicate the issue is the claim that Jesus was the incarnation (born and died) of the Christian God. However, this is not a complication, because the Christian God presumably existed prior to the incarnation of God as Jesus, so while the Jesus God may have been a living being for a few decades a couple of thousand of years ago, this does not solve the problem of the Living God before and after that time.
God is not dead, but God is not alive—not a living being. If God exists, then the type of being that God is, is not the same type of living that we understand.
Tags: god, life, living being, living god
I’ve been carrying the same train of thought lately, considering the argument for the existence of God from a finely-tuned Universe.
The argument begins with the premise that our Universe has some constants that make it possible for it, and consequently life to exist. These require a ‘fine tuner’ who must exist the influence of these constants. The initial premise does not logically follow if God is considered to be ‘alive’.
That’s an interesting idea. If fine-tuning holds as a requirement for life to exist in the universe, then the fine-tuner cannot be considered ‘alive’ in the same sense that we use the word, because the alive-fine-tuner would precede the finely-tuned conditions.
Now, I can see that there may be some loopholes, such as, fine-tuning is only required for our type of life, and that God is alive but is a different type of life. But if this is true, then that leaves open the possibility that there are other types of life that do not require the same finely-tuned conditions that we require.
I think the more accurate way to think of the monotheistic God would have to be as not a living being, if he is to be an eternal and immutable being. You could throw more wrinkles into the story by saying that God perhaps is not eternal and not immutable. Maybe God did start to “live” at some point, and maybe God could “die” at some point, which would seem to be the requirements for calling God a living god. I don’t think that most monotheists are willing to consider this sort of handicapping the Supreme Being though.
Anyway, thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I’m looking forward to getting more information about this topic, don’t worry about negative opinions.
That’s an interesting idea. If fine-tuning holds as a requirement for life to exist in the universe, then the fine-tuner cannot be considered ‘alive’ in the same sense that we use the word, because the alive-fine-tuner would precede the finely-tuned conditions.
Now, I can see that there may be some loopholes, such as, fine-tuning is only required for our type of life, and that God is alive but is a different type of life. But if this is true, then that leaves open the possibility that there are other types of life that do not require the same finely-tuned conditions that we require.
I think the more accurate way to think of the monotheistic God would have to be as not a living being, if he is to be an eternal and immutable being. You could throw more wrinkles into the story by saying that God perhaps is not eternal and not immutable. Maybe God did start to “live” at some point, and maybe God could “die” at some point, which would seem to be the requirements for calling God a living god. I don’t think that most monotheists are willing to consider this sort of handicapping the Supreme Being though.
Anyway, thanks for sharing your thoughts.