Mode, Azim, Ramy, and Niya asked:

We are students from Maldives (where philosophical resources are scarcely available and
philosophical enthusiasm hardly found and philosophical expressions highly restricted). we would like
to know whether a god as held by major religions of the world exists and and to know whether what
the logical positivists say about the meaninglessness of such questions as the existence of a god is
really true?

Azim asked:

I would like to know with the incorporation of latest philosophical reasoning which position (theism,
agnosticism, atheism,etc) as regards a god is logically sound or which a rational mind will go for!

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Thank you for your interesting question.

I am sure you know that many people believe in some god, but I am not clear which religious
conception of God you have in mind. There are many major religions in the the world, and each of
them has a different conception of God. But at least some religions believe that there is a God who is,
among other things, the creator of the the universe, all-good, all-powerful, all just, and so on. As I am
sure you know, whether such a Being exists is a matter of disagreement. But I think that none of the
traditional arguments for such a Being succeeds in showing he does. The criticisms of those
arguments by the British 18th century philosopher, David Hume, and the 18th century German
philosopher, Immanuel Kant, seem to me decisive in that respect. Of course, the failure of those
proofs in no way shows there is no God, but, on the other hand, if for such a long time very intelligent
and industrious people have tried to prove there is a God and have so far failed, then that might be
taken as reason to believe that the existence of God is unlikely.

The Logical Positivists developed a theory of meaning knows as the verifiability theory of meaning.
According to this view, it is possible even to conceive of evidence that a sentence is true, that
sentence is "cognitively" meaningless (although the sentence may have emotional meaning for
people). If this theory is true, and if it is true that no evidence for the existence of God could even be
conceived of, then the sentence, "There is a God" is cognitively meaningless. A good way of
understanding the idea of cognitive meaninglessness is that a cognitively meaningless sentence is
neither true nor false.

The Logical Positivists did hold that the sentence "God exists" was cognitively meaningless (neither
true nor false) An interesting question is whether that meant that the Logical Positivists were atheists.
The Logical Positivists claimed that they were not atheists because atheists believed that the
sentence, "God exists" was false, but since the Logical Positivists did not believe that the sentence
was either true or false, they did not believe the sentence was false, and therefore they were not
atheists. Although the Logical Positivists did not believe in God, neither did they disbelieve in God.

I hope this is clarifying. I am very glad you are interested in philosophy.

Kenneth Stern

A logical positivist, as far as I know, would say something like: unless there is an operational
definition, i.e., something like: a definition resulting from a methodology for testing the existence
and/or characteristics of a god, then the question is at worst meaningless, at best not worth pursuing.

Let me give you my take on this issue. First of all, there are many philosophers who are and have
been theists. But they are in a minority today, as far as I know. The reasons for this are that
philosophers cannot help but (and should) ask questions such as the following: how could humans
possibly have knowledge of a being which cannot be investigated or experimented with? Why is faith
knowledge, when it is clear that people have faith in many contradictory things, many of which seem
absurd to most other people? What, more precisely, justifies faith, and more importantly, what justifies
any particular faith over any other? Getting more specific, why should one believe in any one
particular god, and when there are so many different possible choices, and when there seems to be
no reason to prefer one over another? Thus, humans have believed, through history, probably in
thousands of different gods. All of these are different: in appearance, in emotional characteristics, in
their goals, in the way they regard humanity, in their power(s), in their demands. What could possibly
bias someone who has notbeen trained since childhood to believe in a god, to believe in some
particularone or group of them from all those choices?

Let us take something we all will agree is ridiculous: there are little humanlike beings with wings,
called fairies, living at the end of my garden. I don't see them because most of the time they are
invisible, but they are there, and are responsible for things like bees going to certain of my flowers,
etc. Now this is absurd, right? But there have been and arepeople who believe in fairies, much like
the ones I describe here. Why shouldn't I? Just because I can't see them? Well... then I shouldn't
believe in Allah or Yahweh either, right? I can't see them either. Because I have other explanations
for why bees like my flowers? Well... there are other explanations for the existence of the world, for
the existence of animals, etc., etc., also. Need I go on? And I have just starteda list of possible gods
and reasons for gods to exist. There are, as I say, literally thousands I could go through: the Hindu
gods, the Norse gods, the Native American gods... and on and on and on. And on. It really gets
depressing to me, I'm afraid, to just contemplate the full extent of humanity's time and energy in
creating gods. God after god after god... all for what? Explanation? Comfort? A father figure? A
mother?

Why not ask this: suppose you were a (or "the") god? Where would you get your values from? A
god's god? Why? What justifies a god's actions and goals? What, more importantly, justifies a god's
actions and goals that wouldn't be just as valid a justification for us? Gods are smarter? Oh? Which
one(s), particularly? Gods are more compassionate, more "ethical"? Really? Need I list the atrocities
committed in the name of (and supposedly at the command of) virtually any god one can think of? If
you want the basis of a value system, why not create one yourself instead of picking the one of the
god you've been raised to believe in? Or you could just obey because you're afraid of punishment.
Now, what's the difference between that and animal training: reward the dog with food or a pat,
punish the dog with a slap or a shout, and you've got an "ethical" dog, right? Is there a difference
between rewarding people with promises of heaven and punishing them with threats of hell, and
training your dog or horse or whatever? I don't see one.

Perhaps we want to be assured of "life after death"? And what would that assurance consist of? Your
favorite religious book telling you so? And we believe that because... someone tells us that it's true,
who has been raised to believe that particular religious book is true... because...? They've had a
vision. Yes. Well, what of all the people who have had visions of othergods? They must be illusions,
because yourgod is the true one... because... the person who tells you so had a vision... and around
and around and around. Why don't people get tired of this? You know, the only theory I can come up
with is that we have an extremely powerful instinct to a) belong to a group, and b) to be dominated,
and if one needs to be in a dominance/submission hierarchy, but cannot stand to be dominated by a
real person, they invent a god.

But there are lots of theories. You might take a look at Eliade, M. (1959). The sacred and the profane:
the nature of religion.New York, NY: Harper & Row; and Frazer, J. G. (1951). The golden bough: a
study in magic and religion.New York, NY: The Macmillan Company, just for starters. Dawkins has
some nice stuff to say, also, and there are some recent studies on the neurobiology of religious
feelings, for example: Giovannoli's The Biology of Belief.

See also: Piattelli-Palmarini, M. (1994). Inevitable illusions: how mistakes of reason rule our minds.
New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Shermer, M. (1997). Why people believe weird things: pseudoscience, superstition, and other
confusions of our time.New York: W. H. Freeman and Co.

Radner, D., & Radner, M. (1982). Science and unreason.Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Inc.

Steven Ravett Brown