The God of the Philosophers - Part 1

First, something about philosophy.

Most people regard philosophy as a very difficult subject. They think philosophers are a select band of crazy guys sitting in some dark room, thinking about abstract concepts like God and soul, and speculating about issues like life after death, right and wrong etc. What frustrates the common man is that these philosophers hardly agree on anything. According to William James, “There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.”

Here are a few interesting quotes about philosophy:

“The First Law of Philosophy: For every philosopher, there exists an equal and opposite philosopher. The Second Law of Philosophy: They're both wrong.” (Anonymous)

Philosophers are adults who persist in asking childish questions.” (Isaiah Berlin)

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity. (Ludwig Wittgenstein)

“Between theology and science there is a No Man’s Land, exposed to attack from both sides; this No Man’s Land is philosophy.” (Bertrand Russell)

The word ‘philosophy’ is a combination of two Greek words, ‘philos’ meaning ‘love’ and ‘sophos’ meaning ‘wisdom’ or ‘knowledge’. Anyone who loves knowledge is a philosopher. 

We can have ‘philosophy of….’ any topic. When dealing with issues of education, e.g. theories of teaching and learning, it is called the philosophy of education. In the same way, we have ‘philosophy of religion’, ‘philosophy of humor’, ‘philosophy of life’ etc. 

To define philosophy is difficult; rather, let us see what philosophers do. They study some of the more fundamental questions in our lives:

·         What is real?

·         What is the ultimate reality?

·         What is to know something?

·         How should we live our lives?

·         What is right? What is wrong?

Philosophers try to answer such questions in a rigorous, rational, and systematic way.

There are 3 basic areas of philosophy: metaphysics (the study of reality - what is beyond the physical world), epistemology (the study of knowledge) and ethics (the study of morality).

Metaphysics deals with topics like creation, God, soul, life after death etc. 

One may be tempted to ask: is theology not dealing with such questions? Metaphysics differs from theology in the following manner: theology gives an account of reality which is determined by a commitment in faith to some god or gods; metaphysics answers questions of reality not in the light of any faith, but critically and rationally. 

For example:  To Christians, the existence of God is a given and there is only one God and he created everything. On the contrary, there are philosophers who deny the existence of God. For some, he is one; for others, there are many gods; to some, everything is created by God, while others believe in the process of evolution.

God: Existence and Nature

‘God’ is an important point of discussion in metaphysics. All religions, except for Buddhism, 

believe in God. Buddhism is generally considered to be a religion, but it contains no belief in God such as is found in the Abrahamic religions – Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. 

Belief in God is different to different people. One can 

believe in many gods (polytheism – poly means many and theos means god) or one (monotheism). One can believe in a God who created the world and left it to run on its own (deism) or one who continues to influence its course (theism). One can believe that there is no God at all (atheism) or that everything is God (pantheism). Then there are the agnostics (I – don’t – know – ism) who say they are not sure whether God exists or not, based on available evidence.

Regarding God’s nature, the Judeo-Christian 
tradition considers Him to be omniscient (all-knowing), omnipotent (all-powerful), and benevolent (good). In ancient times, God was conceived of as having a physical body: He walks with Adam in evenings, appears to Moses on Mt. Sinai and so on. But now, Christians think of him as incorporeal (without a physical body), who sees everything, hears everything, and knows everything.