Last week, I led a discussion on the existence of God. The consensus among the participants was that God, as traditionally conceived in Abrahamic religions, does not exist. This God is understood as a transcendent 'creator' who is all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing, and omnipresent. For an introduction to these concepts, refer to any standard text on religion or the philosophy of religion. Here is an example.
What intrigued me was that I agreed with the participants' views, reminding me why I had identified as an atheist for so long. The concept of a benevolent deity seemed incompatible with the world's suffering (see the 'problem of evil'). However, a few years ago, I shifted to a ‘confused agnostic’ because I could no longer assert with certainty that God does or does not exist. My uncertainty stemmed not from a disbelief in the 'bearded man in the sky' but from a deeper question about what 'God' means in various religious traditions.
During the discussion, we revisited the 'ontological argument.' This is a classic philosophical argument that all undergraduates studying metaphysics or the philosophy of religion encounter. I noticed an interesting conflict in this debate's history: our understanding of 'God' depends on the lens through which we view this question. Different perspectives can leave us confused about what the concept 'God' actually represents. For those unfamiliar with the argument, I suggest watching this Crash Course video.
St. Anselm's early 'ontological argument' posits that, by definition, God is a perfect being. It is 'more perfect' to exist than not to exist, so God must exist. In other words, if God were not perfect, He would not need to exist. God might be a mental construct (like unicorns or dragons), but because God is defined as perfect, their existence is necessary. This argument is typically presented as a logical, 'a priori' argument, meaning it claims to be true independently of experience. I would also argue that this argument is formed through a 'reductionistic lens'.
However, this argument is quickly countered by pointing out that perfection and existence are not synonymous. Just because one can conceive of something perfect does not mean it exists. I can imagine a perfect dragon or unicorn, but that doesn't make them real. Hence, Anselm’s argument fails. Anselm further argues that a 'perfect being' is more special than a 'perfect unicorn' (or 'perfect island' as you will see in the video), leading to centuries of debate on the relationship between God, their attributes, and their necessary existence.
A more recent version of the argument, known as the Parable of the Invisible Gardener, was put forward by John Wisdom. In this parable, two people observe a garden. One claims a gardener must have tended to the garden, while the other argues it could have ended up this way without intervention. They agree to wait for the gardener, but when he doesn't appear, the first person suggests the gardener might be undetectable. The second person questions the difference between an undetectable gardener and no gardener at all. Thus, positing God's existence at all seems unnecessary.
This neatly encapsulates the debate in Western philosophy. We cannot prove God exists, nor do we need to because everything is explainable without positing an all-powerful God. However, this only works through a 'reductionistic' perspective, which involves analyzing the world objectively and using rational thought to make sense of it. A reductionist breaks things down into smaller parts (e.g., atoms for physicists, cells for biologists) and rebuilds them to reflect reality. Anselm's argument can be seen as one such model, easily disputed by other reductionistic arguments.
If we try to understand the 'ontological argument' from another perspective, I argue Anselm's point makes more sense. Anselm, like many spiritually minded people, was perhaps not a true reductionist. His claims about God come from an 'embodied' perspective and were translated into a reductionistic argument. Thus, the reductionistic rebuttal about perfection misses the mark and overlooks an embodied understanding of what God is. I am not an Anselm scholar, but I see an ongoing tension between two ways of 'doing philosophy' (reductionistic vs. embodied).
To illustrate the 'embodied perspective,' I will share my own experience. I was an atheist and my worldview was held together by a reductionistic perspective. I leaned into the conclusions of the Parable of the Invisible Gardener and saw no need for a 'God.' Everything made sense: the world was created by an atomic accident, and the presence of evil was explained by the qurks of human nature. However, during my PhD, I faced immense pressure, and my reductionistic understanding of the world became unhelpful. It didn't reflect my reality at all. I was deeply stressed, depressed, and out of alignment with myself. One day, in a moment of anger and helplessness, I screamed, 'Why God? Why have you done this to me?' In that moment, I accepted something bigger than myself was in control and had made my life hell.
My world came to a stop. God might not exist, but I believed it did. This conflict over the nature of truth forced me to reexamine my beliefs. 'Truth' had been whatever science said, but my anger at God was a truth I felt deeply. Rational arguments couldn't change this feeling. So, even if God didn't exist in reality, It was a significant part of my understanding and relationship with the world. What?
This conflict between the objective 'God does not exist' and my subjective 'God does exist' hit me hard while writing my PhD on the evolution of human language. I was studying the human mind's development, trying to understand it from an objective perspective. However, I was one of those humans with a mind. Which 'truth' was more 'true'? The objective perspective I was developing through research or my subjective experience as a human with a mind? I found leaned toward the latter.
Thus, my personal truths and feelings about God's existence (an embodied and subjective perspective) were probably more true and certain than the complex truths I was discovering about the human mind's evolution (a reductive and objective perspective). Further, it was only when I took my subjective experiences as seriously as logical truths like 2+2=4 that my life started to shift and become more aligned and satisfying. This was hard work because my internal system often produced 'truths' about myself that appeared logically conflicting. I could love someone deeply while also wanting to rip their head off.
Returning to Anselm, what if he was coming from the same embodied space I was, but his relationship with God was better? His God inspired perfection, whereas mine inspired frustration. Here I like to try and think about what 'perfection' can feel like to someone spiritual or religious. Personally, I think of something being 'sacred.' Something that invokes a feeling of awe or completeness, making us feel something is precious and deserves utmost care and respect.
Parents often feel this for their children, lovers for each other, and some for art or nature. Philosophies associated with belief systems or religions focus on a central sacred thing this may also be the 'divine'). This sacred thing can be an experience (like 'Buddha nature' in Buddhism or 'the Tao' in Taoism) or attributed to deities (like in Hinduism). The philosophy asks us to access an experience rather than objectifying and analyzing it amd attempting to break it down into its fundamental parts. The experience of the sacred or divine is the most fundamental part.
If Anselm's argument about God's existence has to do with the feeling of sacredness, we can reinterpret it: By definition, God is sacred. It is 'more sacred' to be real than not to be real. Therefore, God must exist. If God were not sacred, they wouldn't need to exist. God might be a mental construct, but because God is sacred, their existence is necessary.
The line 'it is more sacred to be real than not to be real' highlights the misalignment between the embodied and reductionistic lenses. Under the reductionistic lens, we need a reason to say why 'perfection' or sacredness implies existence because we can think of perfect things that do not exist. Under the embodied lens, 'perfection' or sacredness implies existence because its meaning depends on an existing sensation or feeling. I argue the trouble starts when an embodied understanding is thrown into a reductionistic lens.
To give the embodied perspective more weight, consider the perfect or sacred unicorn. Unlike islands, which can exist, unicorns cannot; they are wholly imaginary. Imagine a unicorn, then a perfect unicorn, and finally a sacred unicorn. Does the image change? Does one invoke more feeling? For me, the perfect unicorn is a strong white stallion with a long white horn, typical of children's fairy tales. When I think of a sacred unicorn, the image is similar but in motion and surrounded by beautiful nature, invoking a thrill at the possibility of standing before such a creature. Neither unicorn exists, but the sacred one feels more tangible or real because of the reaction it invokes. Consider this from the embodied perspective, and the sacred unicorn is more real than the unicorn that is not sacred.
Apply this to the concept of God (God vs Perfect god vs sacred God). There you have it, Anselm’s (sacred) God, and one that cannot be easily dismissed by reductionistic arguments. You might feel, "Okay, I can appreciate and understand the idea of a sacred God, and I see how this could make others feel that a god exists. However, this doesn't bring me to a place where I want to say God exists." We may be merely exploring the concept and feelings around sacredness. Sacredness may entail existence and be a part of the human experience, but it doesn’t necessarily entail God. From this perspective, one can lean into the embodied perspective but recognize that their feelings, although real, don’t reflect the actuality of the world. Sacred unicorns feel sacred, and that feeling is real, but the sacred unicorn isn’t an aspect of reality.
To push this final point home, I need to provide arguments as to why the sacred God is different from the sacred unicorn and not merely a projection of a feeling onto an imaginary target. To do this, I feel it’s worth returning to my own experience of God. Just because I feel there is a God, a super lame and evil God out to ruin my life, doesn’t mean that there is a God. My God didn’t give me the sensation of sacredness. In fact, I could have easily seen it as a projection of my anger onto something, anything, so I didn’t need to directly face the actual thing that I was angry about. I can imagine myself doing the same to a super-lame unicorn that was ruining life...but no, there is something significant about 'God'.
When I delved into my anger at ‘God,’ I found that I was projecting anger, but the chosen ‘target’ wasn’t just any old thing. It was something that I felt should have been treated as sacred but wasn’t. When I started to bring a little more consciousness to it and treated ‘God’ as sacred (something precious that deserved nurture, protection, and respect), my life started to improve.
If I had to describe what this ‘God’ thing was, I would say it is the entity that contained and was ultimately responsible for my life and the way I experienced the world. God was my life, and related to it were the rules, principles, and conditions I (or God?) used to guide and govern my experience in the world. God was also related to the instinct or innate feeling that said, "This is sacred, and therefore should be treated as such." It was my denial of this innate feeling that I should be treatining my life as more sacred, that was causing by deep anger.
Other terms related to this thing are ‘nature,’ ‘life,’ or ‘being.’ So I could have equally shouted, "Why, nature/life/being, have you done this to me?" and meant the same thing. But it is interesting that I chose the word ‘God.’ However, the relationship between these terms, the embodied perspective, and the typical understanding of God as the ‘all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-seeing Creator’ is something I may have to explore in another article, alongside the problem of evil and the typical belief that God is an external being that influences our lives, as opposed to an internal influence that I seem to be describing here.
Returning to Anselm’s sacred God once more, I hope I have shown that the sacred God is not just playing with the idea of sacredness; it’s attaching itself to something far more important than a sacred unicorn. It’s the most sacred thing in the world: nature, our very own lives, our own existence even! Like ‘sacredness,’ ‘God/life/nature/being’ is something that we cannot deny through a reductionistic argument because it is something that ‘is so’ because it ‘is so.’ Under this embodied perspective, God isn’t the invisible gardener; God is the Garden. God isn’t the man in the sky; God is the very real and necessary truth that we are alive and existing.
Although many religions in the world appear to be worshipping an external force in the sky, I argue that this is the true and underlying drive of religions and spirituality. Many religions no longer feel 'sacred', in fact we experience the countering feelings of tragedy and trauma from them. Why this is would require another article. For now, read the ontological argument again and see if it starts to ‘feel’ more sense. And allow yourself to see it from a place when religion feels it is doing the 'sacred thing' and helping us lead good lives.
Where I would like to end this inquiry is not around the question of if God exists, but the question about what we should do with it. Which truth should truth-seekers seek? In this article, I don’t mean to show that if we look at God through the embodied lens, God exists. I mean to say if we start to look through the embodied lens in our ‘quest for truth,’ does something change for you like it did for me? And likewise, the other way, to look through the ‘reductionistic lens’ if you are already more ‘embodied-oriented.’** Is philosophy about finding out what the world is really like, or what our world is really like? Is it about knowing and understanding the universe as it is, or understanding and being with our existence within it? Is it about what it’s all ‘about’ or how to live in a way that feels like our life is worth living? Or is it both? If it is both, is it possible to balance the reductionistic and embodied lens? Whilst one tells us God doesn’t exist, and the other one tells us God does.
**If you are someone who sees the world from the embodied perspective and the debates around God’s existence do not bother you because, as far as you’re concerned, you feel God. You may walk through this world always treading on sacred ground, always in alignment with your being. I ask you to remember the Copernican Revolution, an incredibly important shift caused by people who used the reductionist lens. Before the 1500s, all humans could lean into their subjective experience that the sun and moon turned around us and allowed whatever sacredness and divinity to arise from it. During the 1600s and beyond, we started to learn, beyond doubt, that we turned around the sun. Do you think that changed something in people’s understanding of sacredness and God? Does it mean that before the 1500s, the subjective experience was ‘wrong’? And as the reductionistic lens continues to tell us more about reality, what changes in our understanding might have to affect your embodied truths? And should it?
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