God the Target

Spring! On this beautiful Saturday afternoon I was more than glad to meet Max Angst for a walk along the shores of Lake Highpoint.
“You don’t go to church do you Art?” my friend asked as we walked along the lakeshore.
“No, Max, I just don’t feel comfortable with traditional religion. There may be a God out there somewhere, but I don’t feel any connection with him.”
“That’s something I’ve been thinking about. What does the word “God” mean?”
“What did you come up with, Max?”
“For traditional religions he’s a person: a person who created the universe, a person who runs our universe, a person who judges us, a person who provides a road to salvation, a person who embodies perfection. I have no direct experience of such a person, but does the world allow us to reason to his existence?”
“The existence of the Universe does seem to need some explanation, Max. Things don’t just pop up out of no where.”
“ I see you’re not into quantum mechanics, Art. The physicists claim that matter is regularly popping up from no where. Then, there’s the Big Bang; modern cosmogonists claim the Universe popped up out of no where.”
“Well maybe God runs matter in that matter and maybe God caused the Big bang. But I can’t say I really know that.”
“So we’re going to have to be agnostic on God the creator, Art? We don’t know how the Universe came into existence. Would you say that’s true for the running the Universe, too?”
“I don’t know how the Universe is run and I don’t believe the scientists do either, But, how about the religions and their revelations. They’re really the foundation of most religions, the Bible, the Qur’an, the Rig-Veda.”
“Do you know that those revelations occurred and gave the message that is claimed for them, Art? David Hume pointed out that you can never know the veracity of another person’s claim to have received a revelation. So that leaves us agnostic on the Judge and Savior claims, too.”
“Then, Max, I guess we’re completely agnostic because we have no direct proofs of the perfect being either.”
“Art, I’m afraid that not true. We have negative proofs of that claim. All the suffering in our world proves beyond a doubt that there is no omniscient, omnipotent completely benevolent God existing. If God were perfect he would not have created a world with sickness, rape, murder, war and starvation. Since these things do exist, we know no perfect being exists. Also, because we know that no perfect being exists, we have strong evidence that God as a person existing now somewhere outside the Universe isn’t the case.”
“ Max, I just remembered the argument that God doesn’t solve these problems because he doesn’t want to rob humanity of its freedom by interfering in our world.”
“Yes Art, but the people who give such arguments believe God answers prayers, that God sent his son as a savior, that their Churches are God acting in the world, that God has sent many revelations, that God judges them. Most important If God does not act in the world, as this argument claims, there is no proof of his existence there would be no revelation, he would not have been the creator and he isn’t running the Universe
So, Max, we’ve proved conclusively that there is no God.
“Only if we talking about that supreme person. But, I ran into another idea about God’s nature that I feel offers more hope, God the ultimate goal.
“You’ll have to explain that one, Max.”
“ When I was twenty-six I read Teilhard De Chardin’s Phenomena of Man. It speaks of a Universe that is evolving towards and Omega point which is pretty much the same as the God we spoke about earlier, one that is all powerful, all knowing a perfectly good and beneficent. Suppose, Art, we view our world as a place where we are challenged to build ultimate knowledge, efficacy and benevolence. Wouldn’t that be interesting? Wouldn’t that be the basis for an ethics, a religion. I know I could accept such an idea as the guiding principle of my life. What do you think?”
“I want to think about it, but it does seem promising.”