When not used as a narcotic, “God” is brought into an argument as though
it stood for a term which carried a well defined and well understood
meaning. In work after work dealing with theism one looks in vain for
some definition of “God.” All that one can do is to gather the author’s
meaning from the course of his argument, and that is not always an easy
task. The truth is, of course, that instead of the word carrying with it
a generally understood meaning there is no word that is more loosely
used or which carries a greater variety of meanings. Its connotations
are endless, and range from the aggressively man-like deity of the
primitive savage up–or down–to the abstract force of the mathematical
physicist and the shadowy “Absolute” of the theologising metaphysician.
The consequence of this is to find commonly that while it is one kind of
a god that is being set up in argument, it is really another god that is
being defended and even believed in. When we find people talking of
entering into communion with God, or praying to God, it is quite certain
they do not conceive him as a mere mathematical abstraction, or as a
mere symbol of an unknown force. It is impossible to conceive any sane
man or woman extracting comfort from praying or talking to a god who
could not think, or feel, or hear. And if he possesses qualities that
the religious attitude implies, we endow him with all the attributes of
personality, and, be it noted, of human personality. Either one God is
believed in in fact while another is established in theory, or an
elaborate argument is presented which serves no other purpose than a
disguise for the fact that there is no genuine belief left.
An example of the misleading way in which words are used is supplied by
Sir Oliver Lodge, who for a man of science shows an amazing capacity for
making use of unscientific language. In his “Man and the Universe,”
discussing the attributes of deity, he says, “Let no worthy attribute be
denied to the deity. In anthropomorphism there are many errors, but
there is one truth. Whatever worthy attributes belong to man, be it
personality or any other, its existence in the universe is thereby
admitted; it belongs to the all.” Putting on one side the fallacy
involved in speaking of attributes as though they were good or bad in
themselves, one wonders why Sir Oliver limits this inference to the
“worthy” attributes? Unworthy attributes are as real as worthy ones. If
honesty exists so does dishonesty. Kindness is as real as cruelty. And
if we must credit the deity with possessing all the good attributes, to
whom must we credit the bad ones? A little later Sir Oliver does admit
that we must credit the deity with the bad attributes also, but adds
that they are dying out. But as they are _part_ of the deity, their
decay must mean that the deity is also undergoing a process of change,
of education, and is as much subject to the law of growth as we are.
Surely that is not what people mean when they speak about God. A god who
is only a part of the cosmic process ceases to be a god in any
reasonable sense of the term.