God

• 1. Introduction

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  God is, for billions of people, the supreme being who created and sustains the universe and serves as the principal foundation of faith. The earliest written form of the Germanic word for God survives in the 6th-century Codex Argenteus, a Gothic translation of the Bible. Belief that at least one deity exists and may interact with the world has a name: theism. Yet behind that single English word lies a startling range. Some call God incorporeal and independent of all matter. Some insist God is the universe itself. Some say God is unknowable, and some say God does not exist at all. How did one word come to carry so many conflicting visions? Why do philosophers build elaborate arguments both for and against this being's existence? And why, across languages and cultures, does humanity keep reaching for a name to call?

• 2. Many Names One Word

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  El is the Hebrew word for god, and as a proper noun it named the chief deity of ancient Semitic religions. The Hebrew Bible also gives God a personal name, Yahweh, possibly in origin the name of an Edomite or Midianite deity adopted into ancient Israelite religion. Many English translations render Yahweh as the LORD, written in all capitals. The interjection Hallelujah means praise Jah, using an abbreviation of Yahweh to give God glory. Allah is the Arabic term with no plural, used by Muslims and by Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews to mean the God. The general word for a deity in Arabic is instead ilah, which does take a plural. In Hinduism, Brahman is often treated as a monistic concept of God, while monotheistic currents that stress God's personal nature offer proper names such as Krishna-Vasudeva, Vishnu, or Hari. Ahura Mazda is the name used in Zoroastrianism, where Mazda traces to a root meaning intelligence or wisdom, and where 101 other names are also in use. Waheguru means Wonderful Teacher in Punjabi, the term most often used in Sikhism, sometimes described as an experience of ecstasy beyond all description. Baha, the greatest name in the Baha'i Faith, is Arabic for All-Glorious. Other names reach across the world, including Aten in ancient Egyptian Atenism, Chukwu in Igbo, and Hayyi Rabbi in Mandaeism.

• 3. Arguments For And Against

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  Ontological arguments reason for God's existence from a priori thought alone, and notable versions were formulated by Anselm and Rene Descartes. Cosmological arguments instead start from the origin of the universe. The teleological argument, also called the argument from design, points to the complexity of the universe as proof of a designer. Critics answer with the anthropic principle: humans can only observe the small part of the universe that allowed observers to exist, so the fine tuning may be illusory. Non-theists also warn of the god of the gaps, where complex processes that simply lack a natural explanation yet get assigned to the supernatural. John Henry Newman, who accepted theistic evolution, argued that it limits God to make him intervene only in special instances. The argument from beauty claims the universe holds special beauty that aesthetic neutrality would not predict. It is countered by the existence of ugliness, and by the claim that beauty has no objective reality. The argument from morality assumes that morals objectively exist. The atheist J. L. Mackie agreed the argument was valid but rejected its premises, David Hume denied any basis for objective moral truths, and biologist E. O. Wilson treated moral feelings as a by-product of natural selection. Richard Dawkins held that a universe with a god would be a scientifically different universe. Carl Sagan argued the only conceivable disproof of a Creator would be discovering the universe is infinitely old. Stephen Jay Gould proposed non-overlapping magisteria, dividing empirical questions for science from questions of ultimate meaning for theology. In their 2010 book The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow argued that answering God only deflects the question to who created God.

• 4. One Or Many

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  Monotheism is the belief that there is only one deity, written God with an uppercase g, and comparing any other entity to God counts as idolatry. Judaism is one of the oldest monotheistic traditions in the world. Islam's most fundamental concept is tawhid, meaning oneness or uniqueness, and its first pillar is the oath that there is no deity except God. The ancient Greek philosopher Xenophanes pointed to One god greatest among gods and men. In Christianity, the doctrine of the Trinity describes one God in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, summarized in the Latin formula Sancta Trinitas, Unus Deus, Holy Trinity, Unique God. Most Hindus hold faith in a supreme reality, Brahman, manifested in numerous chosen deities, which leads some to characterize the religion as Polymorphic Monotheism. Henotheism worships a single god at a time while accepting the validity of worshipping others. Monolatry holds that one deity alone is worthy of worship while still accepting that other deities exist.

• 5. Beyond And Within

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  Transcendence is the aspect of God's nature wholly independent of the material universe and its physical laws. Anselm thought God did not truly feel anger or love, but only appeared to through our imperfect understanding. Negative theology approached God through what he is not: one should not say God is wise, but that God is not ignorant. Alister McGrath writes that a personal God must be read as an analogy, affirming the divine willingness to relate to others without implying God is human. Pantheism, by contrast, holds that God is the universe and denies any transcendence at all. Baruch Spinoza saw the whole natural universe as one substance, God or Nature, and Arthur Schopenhauer dismissed pantheism as only a euphemism for atheism. Pandeism holds that God was a separate entity who then became the universe, while panentheism holds that God contains the universe without being identical to it. God is also often viewed as the cause of all that exists. For the Pythagoreans, the Monad meant divinity or an indivisible origin, and the philosophy of Plato and Plotinus refers to The One beyond being. Aristotle theorized a first uncaused cause for all motion, perfectly beautiful, immaterial, and unchanging. Avicenna argued there must be a necessarily existent being whose essence cannot not exist, which humans identify as God. Occasionalism holds that the universe would not continue from one instant to the next without God as sustainer.

• 6. The Great Attributes

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  Deism holds that God exists but does not intervene beyond creation, sometimes attributed to God having no interest in or awareness of humanity. Among theists who believe God does take an interest, most hold that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. That combination raises the problem of evil, and dystheism responds by holding that God is either not wholly good or fully malevolent. The omnipotence paradox is usually framed by asking whether God could create a stone so heavy that even he could not lift it. A common answer is that omnipotence applies only as far as is noble enough to befit God, so God cannot lie or do the contradictory. Omniscience, knowing all, raises a parallel puzzle about free will: if God knows how free agents will choose, their freedom may be illusory. Open Theism limits omniscience by arguing that the nature of time prevents God from predicting the future. Process theology denies God's immutability, holding that God is affected by his creation. Theistic personalism, the view of Descartes, Isaac Newton, Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, William Lane Craig, and most modern evangelicals, casts God as the ground of all being, both immanent in and transcendent over reality. The attributes of being incorporeal, personal, and the greatest conceivable existent were supported by Maimonides, Augustine of Hippo, and Al-Ghazali.

• 7. Where God Comes From

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  Jainism rejects creationism, holding that soul substances, the Jiva, are uncreated and that time is beginningless. Some traditions of Buddhism can be conceived as non-theistic, and the Buddha criticizes creationism in the early Buddhist texts. Major Indian Buddhist philosophers, including Nagarjuna, Vasubandhu, Dharmakirti, and Buddhaghosa, consistently critiqued the Creator God views of Hindu thinkers, yet Buddhism leaves a supreme deity ambiguous, with believers and deniers alike. Pascal Boyer argues that supernatural beings tend to behave much like people, citing Greek mythology as more like a modern soap opera than other religious systems. Stewart Guthrie contends that humans project human features onto the world to make it more familiar, and Sigmund Freud suggested god concepts are projections of one's father. Emile Durkheim saw gods as an extension of human social life, and psychologist Matt Rossano argues that ever-watchful gods let larger human groups enforce morality that gossip and reputation alone could not. Johns Hopkins researchers studying the molecule DMT found that a majority of respondents reported contact with a conscious, intelligent, benevolent, and sacred entity, and more than half of former atheists later described belief in a higher power. About a quarter of those with temporal lobe seizures report a religious experience, which V. S. Ramachandran links to the temporal lobe's closeness to the limbic system. Psychologists found that participants feeling awe at natural wonders became more likely to see events as the result of design, even when given randomly generated numbers.

• 8. Living With God

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  Mahatma Gandhi held that God does not need supplication, saying Prayer is not an asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is a daily admission of one's weakness. Many traditions teach that God does not benefit from worship, but that worship is for the worshipper. A hadith says God would replace a sinless people with one who sinned and then asked repentance, and God is often believed to be forgiving. Sacrifice for God's sake includes fasting and almsgiving, and remembrance includes interjections of thanks and chants of adoration. Transtheistic traditions, found in strands of Buddhism, Jainism, and Stoicism, may believe deities exist while denying them spiritual significance. Among religions that do attach spirituality to God, exclusivists believe they alone hold absolute truth, while religious pluralism allows partial truth in other faiths. The view that all theists worship the same god is especially emphasized in the Baha'i Faith, Hinduism, and Sikhism. The Baha'i Faith counts Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, Zoroaster, Muhammad, and Baha'u'llah among divine manifestations in a scheme of progressive revelation. Fideism holds that faith outranks reason in theology, and Blaise Pascal captured it: The heart has its reasons that reason does not know. Islam calls innate intuition about God fitra, and a hadith quotes God as I am what my slave thinks of me. Across the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, God's titles include Elohim, El Shaddai meaning God Almighty, El Elyon meaning The High God, and I Am that I Am. In the Quran and hadith the most common names are Al-Rahman, Most Compassionate, and Al-Rahim, Most Merciful, names that Muslims render not in pictures but in religious calligraphy, since they hold that God resembles none of his creations in any way.