You might as well ask what it means to speak of any other basic reality. What does it mean to speak of time, space, number, particularity, universality, good, evil, or other minds? We use such concepts, and accept and comment on the things they denote, but explanations of exactly what they are never completely satisfy.
Still, one might ask why we need to speak of God. Some people say they do without Him, just as some people say they do without good, evil, universals, time, space, matter, and other minds. Some say there is nothing but the One, others nothing but Spirit, others nothing but Atoms and the Void. What do people miss who cut out whole categories of being?
In the case of those who cut out God, I think they’re missing out on the possibility of a world that’s coherent and makes sense overall—in other words, a world we can discuss without talking nonsense. If we are able to talk about the world, and understand it to some degree, then our categories of thought must be somehow in line with the categories of being. The world, in fact, must be a rational structure. How can that be, though, if the structure of things is not thinkable? But if the structure of things is thinkable, doesn’t that mean it has some sort of essential connection to thought?
The traditional proofs for the existence of God add to that perspective. Many of them are based on the thought that an explanation with infinitely many terms is no explanation at all. We understand things by putting them in a setting, but if we need an infinite number of settings then we won’t understand them at all. If that’s right, then the world is rationally comprehensible only if there is some ultimate explanation that explains itself and all other things. Reflecting on what such an ultimate explanation would be like gives you many of the traditional attributes of God—one, all-powerful, self-caused, pure act and so on.
In addition, denying God makes it harder to have an ethical theory that makes sense. “Good” means whatever it is that makes something a rational goal of action. If there’s no good then no action is more rational than any other. That’s not what we believe, though. Further, reason—which necessarily includes an understanding of the good—isn’t something we invent. If it were it couldn’t serve as a standard for thought and action. So the good can’t be something we invent either. It’s somehow implicit in the nature of things. But how can that be unless subjectivity and purpose are implicit in the nature of things? A tree might fall in the woods without anyone to hear it, but it’s harder to imagine how goods could exist without a subjectivity and will for which they are goods.
All of which will seem like nonsense to those who do not already partly accept such views. That’s the nature of basic points: you don’t derive them from other considerations. They’re more a matter of Newman’s illative sense or Pascal’s intuitive mind, of what comes into focus on consideration of experience, than the latter’s mathematical mind. Still, you can’t avoid them in dealing with life. So the standard for accepting them, it seems, is what you and others generally find necessary in understanding and otherwise dealing with the world. In questions like the existence of God, consensus gentium really does seem to be an argument.
It means you are deluded
“n the case of those who cut out God, I think they’re missing out on the possibility of a world that’s coherent and makes sense overall—in other words, a world we can discuss without talking nonsense.”
This really is laughable. Laughable because it is rational scientific inquiry and rational scientific inquiry only that makes any sort of sense of the world and in particular any sort of sense that can be communicated universally to others. The absurd stories propounded by various religions, while they may have some charming elements of both poetry and folk wisdom about them, ultimately result in justifications for warfare and mass murder, which are the ultimate nonsense.
“If we are able to talk about the world, and understand it to some degree, then our categories of thought must be somehow in line with the categories of being.”
“Categories of being?” That statement is meaningless gibberish.
“But if the structure of things is thinkable, doesn’t that mean it has some sort of essential connection to thought?”
Of course it does. As I have pointed out to you before, thoughts themselves are but the neurological states taken on by a functioning brain. There is no need for the concept of “God” in order to understand this.
“The traditional proofs for the existence of God add to that perspective. Many of them are based on the thought that an explanation with infinitely many terms is no explanation at all.”
What evidence do you have that the universe is necessarily infinite? And those proofs of the existence of “God” are usually logical fallacies based on proving the negative.
“Further, reason—which necessarily includes an understanding of the good—isn’t something we invent. It’s somehow implicit in the nature of things.”
Of course it is. It is a function of our brains that came about through our natural selection as social animals.
“But how can that be unless subjectivity and purpose are implicit in the nature of things?”
Both “subjectivity” and “purpose” are obviously part of the nature of things. I don’t see any reason to invent the concept of “God” in order to understand this.
“A tree might fall in the woods without anyone to hear it, but it’s harder to imagine how goods could exist without a subjectivity and will for which they are goods.”
Well that is what neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists spend their time doing. If you are having a difficult time imagining how they do it perhaps you should read up on the subjects.
“All of which will seem like nonsense to those who do not already partly accept such views. That’s the nature of basic points: you don’t derive them from other considerations.”
Well you can thank God the next time your computer fires up when you flip the switch but in fact it will be thanks to the consensus gentium of the scientific industrial world. I like to refer to it as enlightenment.
I agree with Forrest
At least with respect to another comment he made just now, in substance that our differences were pretty thoroughly ventilated in the thread on amateur phil of sci. Anybody interested can look there. One point I may not have raised there explicitly but note here is that it does not explain what something is to say it came into existence through random variation and natural selection. “Electric eels became electric through natural selection” does not explain electricity. Ditto for human reason. To tell a story about how it came about or its physical correlates is not to say what it is.
Fundamental physical forces
“Electric eels became electric through natural selection” does not explain electricity.
Like everyone else, as demonstrated by their actions if not in their philosophical argumentations, I take for granted the existence of objective reality evident through our senses and physical responses. That electricity exists is not in itself a demonstration of the existence of God.
There is simply no reason to posit a “mind of God” which holds within it physical reality when the fact of physical reality, no matter that it is incompletely understood, will itself do. It is by my faculty of reason that I have come to realize that there is no actual evidence whatsoever that would lead one to conclude that there is a God. To believe in God is thoroughly unreasonable.
God is nature
I believe Russell had this correct: metaphysically, God can be assumed as an ontological entity, but never taken for granted.
Personally I like the Romanticist interpretation of God: God is our world and manifests itself in nature. It is the brutal, natural world we live in. It makes more sense than to place God in an external world that operates in a different way than ours.
Are atoms and the void enough?
Your first paragraph is quite obscure. The second seems odd and also obscure. I suppose one issue is what the “natural world” includes. Does it include mathematics and reason, for example? Meaning and reference? Universals? Good and evil, truth and falsity, right and wrong?