Sartre has the most interesting take on the God question. Though considered by most to be the ultimate intransigent atheist, he is actually something quite different for which there exists no ready made name. Sartre is a Uselessist, for lack of a better name. His point is that once human freedom is given, which it is by Christianity (and which it is not by Mechanists, whether Early Modern or Contemporary), God becomes irrelevant, even if he exists.
The most God can do for us on moral principles or issues, once human freedom is assumed, is order or advise us. But since we still have to choose, even after his no doubt excellent advice, he really does not help us very much. We all have the ability to do what Satan did, which was, when you get right down to it, nothing more than say, "Thanks, but no thanks -- I think I'd really rather go my own way." Of course, Christian theology made enormous efforts to make Satan's choice something more than a mere exercise of autonomy, something rather, in essense, inherently evil; but the more that using our freedom to go contrary to God's suggestions is made evil, the more it ceases to be freedom at all. Since God is infinitely more powerful than man, he can always punish us terribly when we go counter to his will, but this is really nothing he can be proud of. If anyone can be proud in this nasty confrontation, it is the weaker one who persists in the face of overwhelming force.
Thus, arguments over whether God exists or not are juvenile and beside the point, silly exercises in dialectic for precocious teenagers or emotionally arrested adults. The question is really not whether God exists or not, it is only whether you're going to decide to do what he tells you.
I don't see how God necessarily becomes irrelevant with choice. In fact, I would argue that what distinguishes "God" from the modern secular gods from Lenin to Obama is that under the former you DO have free will, i.e. - you can't very well tell socialist masters to screw off, you have to live your life according to their whims; but with God, you can ignore his pleadings your entire life and live as you choose (and only be judged at the very end if at all).
ReplyDeleteIf you accept God, you may also very well accept that there is something metaphysical called the Good/Moral, and also that while God and the Good are separate, God is very much in touch with the Good. As you say, he can advise us, and he can punish us for not making the correct choice. I think that's pretty good already!
Also, if you believe in God's omnipotence, it follows that if God wished, He could take away our free will, but He would rather watch us stumble around making choices for ourselves. He may very well even have foreknowledge of all the choices we are going to make and may have designed an elaborate plan in which we make choice after choice in an infinite number of permutations and combinations, eventually arriving at some ultimate Good (much the same as many believe that He guides biological evolution).
I believe that an entity that can guide billions of years of biological evolution is far more impressive than one who can snap his fingers and create a world. Similarly, I believe that an entity who can sit back confidently and securely as we wander aimlessly is more impressive than an entity who needs to control our every move and thought so that his plan can be achieved. Thus, I would argue that it is because he has given us free will that he deserves our infinite gratitude.
Dear Anonymous: Sartre's point is that God was never intended to be your expert on living matters, the way your accountant advises you on financial matters. His only function ever was to take the burden of personal responsibility from your shoulders (perhaps the way that Nazis claimed that orders from above absolved them of responsibility). Once he acknowledged our personal freedom, he by that token became incapable of doing what Christ actually said he was doing, namely taking the sins of the world upon his shoulders.
ReplyDeleteIf God is God by virtue of his power or of his knowledge, then he becomes a natural force of some kind. Only primitives worship natural forces (or objects). We actually demand that God be non-natural simply in order to be worshiped. If God appeared in the sky above us and ordered us to do this or that, we would call out the air force (if Canada had any threatening fighter jets)to blow the alien being out of the sky. Why? Because a natural thing cannot be God.
Thus, when God gave us free will, he made himself redundant in the human work place.