Arguing about God

I noted last time that there is a widespread tendency to set up a model or description of God, push it to and beyond the limits of its applicability, and then declare that as the model fails, the concept of God is false. As noted, we could also do the same thing with, say, the concept of an atom, but somehow we manage to keep atomic models within their rules of applicability, while we sometimes fail with models of God.

There are a number of reasons for this, and responses. Firstly, models about God tend to be verbal rather than mathematical. Thus I can say that my atomic model applies ‘if x is very much greater than y’. This is fine, of course, and widely done in physics. For special relativity, for example, it is usually stated that normal Newtonian laws apply ‘v is much less than c’ where v is the velocity of the particle of interest and c is the speed of light. For practical purposes this is usually set to being around ten percent. It is worth noting, however, that the phrase ‘very much less than’ and its cognates are not as precise as many non-scientific people might expect.

In language even this sort of ‘precise vagueness’ is unavailable to us. We can say, for example, ‘God is love’, but then someone will ask about suffering. We can say ‘God is just’ but then someone will ask about how this, with the concept of Hell and eternal damnation, are compatible with the first expression. And so on. The limits of these models of God are even more imprecise than the limits of models in physics.

Models in theology can, of course, be incompatible, or at least apparently so. God can be said to be impassible, that is, He does not change. There is evidence from this from the Bible. On the other hand, God can be said to be passible, that is that He does change, for example, He changed his mind over the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Not unnaturally, this leads to a great deal of theological head-scratching and causes some a-theologians some glee.

Again, there are incompatible models in physics, but that does not cause us to reject them. For example, there are two incompatible models of the atomic nucleus, the liquid drop model and the particle model. Both are used for different purposes within nuclear physics, and, within the limits of the models, both give useful answers. We might ask ‘which one is right?’ but the answer would come back as something like ‘both and neither’. In physics, the model you use depends on the context of the question you are asking. Getting a ‘correct’ answer, that is, one that is useful for designing a reactor, or interpreting an experiment, depends on you choosing a model in the correct range of applicability.

Perhaps theologians are less humble in doing this than some scientists. Even if a few scientists claim that we are on the brink of a theory of everything, most, in their day to day lives as physicists, do not think they understand atomic processes. They can simply interpret them, within the set of models developed for the context. Sometimes it seems that theologians, by which I mean anyone who thinks about God and related matters think that we can get definitive answers about Him. Given that the most successful intellectual endeavors of the past few centuries are in the physical sciences, and that the models in those sciences are not as clear, definitive, and applicable as we might like to think, the theologian seems to be batting on a rather sticky wicket.

Given these limitations, we are not going to solve the ‘problem of God’ any time soon, just as we are not going to solve the universe. The first step along the lines of arguments about God is surely to bring into view clear ideas about the models we use to talk about God and their limitations and incompatibilities. There is a bit of reluctance, it seems, to do this, just in case, I suppose, it turns out that our beliefs in God are false. Intellectual honesty, however, should compel us to admit the limitations as well as the potential of our ideas about God.

The universe is complex and mostly we do not understand it. What ‘really’ goes on in an atom when it emits a photon is opaque to us. We have models of electrons jumping from one state to another. They are not descriptions of how an electron moves within the atom to create a photon, but a description of the initial and outcome states. We might understand these models, but that is not exactly the same as understanding what is going on in the atom. The model is at one remove, a filter through which we observe the processes, initial states, and outcomes.

Given the unity of the human intellect in doing thinking about things, similar restrictions must apply to our ideas about God. If scientific method is the epitome of human thought and rationality, and it generates models with limited ranges of applicability, then thought in other areas of experience, such as theology (or history, or sociology, or whatever) must be similarly constricted. We have models of God, not direct access to the Godhead to be able to observe what is ‘really’ going on. We have models of atoms, not direct access to atomic processes. We have models of history, of what was going on, but not direct access to people in the past and their knowledge and decision make processes. Everything is filtered through our language and models.

This might be imagined to throw the baby out with the bathwater. But denying that we have direct knowledge of God, or atoms, or whatever, we seem to deny too much. Atomic models are useful and, in general, accurate. We can predict things using them. Historical and sociological models do help us understand the past and present. But these models are not the things modeled. Human experience is much more complex, and the world is much more complex than the models imply.

God, more or less by definition, is beyond direct human understanding. We have a load of models of God developed down the centuries, none of which, I suggest, tell us about God directly, but perhaps say more about the human experience of God. This does not mean that God simply dissolves into a mass of incompatible models, any more than the range of models of the atom implies that atoms do not exist. It simply means that human experiences of God are complicated, and that should not, really, be a surprise to us.