Existence and Nature of God

It was Ian Chambers to whom I first sent my “List of Nine Things in which I Believe”. He was suitably encouraging, but observed amongst other things, that (i) there were actually only eight items on the list and (ii) there was nothing on the nature or existence of God. He assumed that this was because I took the statement for granted.

He was correct, but I also agreed that it needed to be on the list, as it was “kind of important”. (This in itself is a “kind of “English understatement.)

I am told that the statement “I believe that God exists”, requires me to say what I mean by God. I am not very good at this intellectual or philosophical stuff. As a result, there will be a huge amount of plagiarism in this and a large number of statements which will be challengeable by people more articulate than me and accusations of “Shout loudly; Argument weak”, all of which, most likely, will be correct.

But this is my blog, so who cares. Grumpy and his brother have never been famous for rigour, just uninformed prejudice, together with 98% of the rest of the population.

So I will start with a quote from Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion”, where God is said to be ‘a superhuman intelligence, who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us”. Actually I must confess I have not read the book. Furthermore I have lifted it from a quote from someone else’s article. However, the point is that this starting point does OK for me, as I am a man of very little intellectual rigour.

Next step is to expand on this, and to give God (and I will refer to him as “him”, in the masculine, out of intellectual laziness) a number of characteristics. I cannot prove any of them, but I am sure that they cannot be disproved either by endless arguments in smoke-filled college rooms.

He is the only God. There are no others. To put it another way, there is only one of him.

He is eternal and outside space and time. He has always existed and always will.

He created time, the universe and all that is in it. He sustains, guides and controls it. He created the Universe out of nothing. He creates order out of chaos.

He is a hidden God, who reveals himself as he chooses.

He is good. He is a moral God (included in the first of the Church of England’s “39 Articles”, which come highly recommended).

He cares and loves those who turn to Him and trust in Him.

There are many other characteristics that are ascribed to Him. Please do not be annoyed or angry with me, but I am not always sure that I can remember them or know what these all mean. I leave it to you to add to this list, and improve on this.