The God of Intellectuals

Most of us have met our fair share of strange people, but each of us treats with these encounters differently. It is fortunate, then, that I have also met my share and I happen to be a collector of anomalous stories.

Let's call my friend Jim. Jim was not a very sociable person, but strangely enough, he was extremely likable. He would be invited to parties, limes, to play on the best football teams for the lunch time 'sweat', all without muttering more than a few inconsequential phrases and bad jokes. Once, during our weekly 'in -depth' classroom discussions, Jim shared what was his own religious philosophy. Jim believed that God was energy, and he referred to the Newtonian law of energy being un-created and indelible, but transformable. If I had the mind that I have now, then, I would have asked him if this energy desires our worship.

Now that you've met Jim, meet Suzy, whose story is more interesting. At the age of 16, around the time when the pouis trees were blooming or, more poignantly, CSEC was around the corner, she started having paranormal experiences. While folding her clothes one evening, her grandmother outside on the porch, she felt a 'thing' coiling around her left hand. This 'thing' was invisible. It slowly moved up her arm and eventually, the entire left side of her body. She rushed outside to tell her grandmother what was happening to her, and that's as far as she could remember.

Fortunately for my story, a memory was constructed for her by her grandmother. Her grandmother said that she, Suzy, fainted and began foaming at the mouth and trashing about on the floor. A doctor said, after all the checks and balances, that they could not find anything really wrong with her. Doctor after doctor said essentially the same until one finally diagnosed her with epilepsy. She got medication and returned to her 'normal' life.


Not satisfied with the doctor's deduction, the family took her to an obeah man who advised her that her spiritual life had been tampered with by a neighbour who was envious of her grandmother's house (that was built on top of a cemetery, village legend says). Apparently, this neighbour threw something in the yard that was meant for the grandmother to step on to be cursed. How fortunate that the intended target chose to walk on the walk-path and not in the grass; how unfortunate for Suzy at play. The 'spiritual doctor' gave her a 'guard' to wear around her neck and inscribed a prayer on a paper to be stuck on a wall in the home.

All was well until she took it off to bathe and forgot to put it back on afterward. While sleeping that night, Suzy's sister came into her room. Suzy woke up, but immobile. She screamed for her sister from the bottom of her lungs, but her sister nonchalantly carried about her business. Suzy screamed even louder, but her sister could not hear her and left room.

Suzy is alive, so she obviously got out of that predicament. But here is another strange phenomena. She was returning from the palour just before dark one evening and was stopped in her tracks by a truly unusual sight. Before her stood a 'huge' (She stood up and raised her hands to chin height. She is about 5, 9) white, fluffy dog, glaring at her, motionless. Just listening to the story got me petrified, not for fear, but sheer incredulity. Suzy herself became petrified and was only able to mutter "Please! Just go way from here nah. Please!" Slowly, the dog turned and walked away. Suzy blinked, and the dog was no more.

I'm probably spoon-feeding you in saying that Suzy came to her own conclusions about the divine realm as a result of these experiences. She is now a firm believer in the 'supernatural' (her use of the word is confined to the evil side of the supernatural) and is visibly scared of it. She no longer attends church, though, because she is not sure where she should invest her time. Her brother infected her mind with enough fundamentalist Catholic-hate to last a life time and her fear of evil spirits creates a wide berth between her and Spiritual Baptists. She says she's a Christian, but I presume that she has not read the Bible, because in another conversation she told me that real Christians are not supposed to eat pork.

Here we have two human beings with different beliefs about the divine, not the same, but not opposed either because they are so different. Apart from the terms 'energy' and 'Jesus', these particular beliefs are indistinguishable from religions now condescendingly called myth, paganism, or primitive. Their lack of information, life experiences, and myopic perspective make them come to these conclusions that are perfectly logical in their minds. Logic, after all, depends on information. Limited information can lead to faulty logic. More sophisticated Christians will agree with me that these thoughts about God are indeed erroneous.

What is interesting, however, is that more cerebral believers do not see that the constant preaching to these pagans every Sunday is ineffectual. These people believe that God killed thousands of people in Haiti because they practiced voodoo. Pat Robertson believed, and preached, that the tragedy of 9/11 was divine retribution for America's acceptance of homosexuality. The Pope probably face palms himself every time he hears Pat spew such drivel.

I, on the other hand, face palm myself at religious intellectuals who fail to see that the God they defend through their 'arguments for God' is not the God that the majority of believers believe in. A large number of Catholics in Trinidad and Tobago hold very Protestant theologies, but they were still counted in the Catholic Church's census. They are only nominally Catholic. It is not Pat's fault that he's an idiot or Suzy's fault that the entire Bible is too long and too boring to read and even harder to understand 'correctly'. We can't blame her for not knowing about sleep paralysis or being recalcitrant toward a diagnosis of epilepsy (after reading about demonic possession cases, the theme is always the same. The possessed never accept medical diagnoses. Perhaps, blaming the devil is easier than accepting something is inherently wrong with you.).  It certainly isn't Jim's fault that he heard Newton's laws but never read Thomas Aquinas.

Daniel Dennett wrote in reference to the Kalam argument that "unless you have a taste for mathematics and theoretical physics on the one hand, or the niceties of scholastic logic on the other, you are not apt to find any of this compelling, or even fathomable." William Lane Craig sarcastically responded "How strange that Dennett, who fancies himself, unlike the Christian dullards, to be among the 'brights', should indict an argument because it appeals only to the inquisitive and the intelligent." Craig's sarcasm is also directed at me because I make the same point.

None of these arguments make any sense to the person not versed in philosophy and cosmology or, at least, with a penchant for rigorous logical reasoning. It's all mumbo-jumbo. Craig is right in that this point does not defeat the argument itself. I will not attempt to engage the argument itself for now, because every attempt made thus far has been an apparent failure (I have been accused of misrepresenting Craig's arguments and not understanding his points. I was, unfortunately, never corrected, so I am left in my ignorance). I still maintain that the arguments themselves are faulty. However, granted that the arguments are true, it is interesting that the Kalam argument has Jewish, Islamic and Christian roots, but more directly linked to Islam's Kalam tradition. Jews think Christians are wrong to call Christ the Messiah, and worse, God. Muslims believe both their counterparts are wrong for having strayed from the original message. Yet, they all use the same argument and after coming to the conclusion that God exists, they quickly insert "my" as the qualifier and anoint themselves as his spokseparsons. How quickly the jump from deism to their own flavour of theism. "Who am I to adjudicate in such a dispute?" says Christopher Hitchens.

All of these religions cannot be true, and they all acknowledge that. While Craig is right in saying that the complexity of the arguments does not refute the arguments themselves, it does undermine their credibility when these arguments are attached to specific theistic beliefs. Why? Because the Bible said that the Lord is not satisfied with people only calling his name. He wants 'true' worship and he wants people to live their lives correctly. The inability of the majority of believers to understand the Bible, not to mention the Kalam Cosmological Argument for God, makes all the Gods who desire true worship incredible. Surely, the real God does not like being wrongly blamed for floods that wipe out nations. He only accepts it when it's true, like that time with Noah.

When I made this point to some friends, I was told that it is possible for some people to know more about God than others, but that does not mean they know a different God. This is definitely true for a scenario where a Christian believes that Jesus Christ is the source of grace but does not know what the word grace means; or, a Christian believes that Jesus Christ's death and resurrection was the source of their salvation, but does not understand the theology of the Paschal Lamb. However, the differences I am talking about are not a matter of degrees of understanding, but stark contrast in understanding and utter disagreements. Unless grace is directly granted by the real God himself to correct any false beliefs, it is argumentation that is needed to bring conversion to the wrong-believers - much of the argumentation fails because it is too complicated coupled with the fact that childhood indoctrination is a hard mold to break. I used to think that true belief was necessary for salvation, but I was corrected and told that God can save whoever he wishes. This just makes the whole evangelisation business and 'mission of the Church' even more confusing. If God can save whoever he wishes, why doesn't he 'wish' to save us all? If telling me the truth makes the judgement I receive upon death a harsher one, please, leave me in my ignorance. I can only make sense of this by imagining God eating popcorn as he laughs over our confusion on earth.

Let me say this in no uncertain terms so that my point is clear and can be easily falsified. If the 'arguments for God' are true, the majority of 'Christians' worship the wrong God. Intellectual Christians, if they think their conclusions are correct, should start praying, not for me, but for all their 'brethren' that are not really part of the fold; who attach God's holy name to their pagan beliefs. And when they are done interceding, they should ask God to reveal why he stands aloft of all our confusion, when a booming voice over the earth is surely within the reach of omnipotence.

"Let us give over thinking religion can be useful to man; once good laws are decreed unto us, we will be able to dispense with religion (see Nordic States). But, they assure us, the people stand in need of one; it amuses them, they are soothed by it. Fine! Then if that be the case, give us a religion proper to free men; give us the gods of paganism. We shall willingly worship Jupiter, Hercules, Pallas; but we have no use for a dimensionless god who nevertheless fills everything with his immensity, an omnipotent god who never achieves what he wills, a supremely good being who creates malcontents only, a friend of order in whose government everything is in turmoil. No, we want no more of a god who is at loggerheads with Nature, who is the father of confusion, who moves man at the moment man abandons himself to horrors; such a god makes us quiver with indignation, and we consign him to forever to the oblivion whence the infamous Robespierre wished to call him forth." Marquis de Sade.

Post Script - I am not all too concerned about intellectual believers because they tend to be level headed, open to debate and science, and less prone to war.