"I believe in God"

[rhu]

"I believe in God"

So what does it mean for me to believe in God? Once again, this will be a post mainly about terms, since "God" isn't really that well-defined a word.

Some basic definitions

To me, God is a sentient entity who created the universe (and therefore must exist outside our conception of space and time). God fashioned the world and chose the physical laws and constants that govern our lives.

I deduce that it is reasonable that God, being outside our concepts of space and time, is omniscient.

It also seems reasonable that God, having chosen the laws of the universe, is capable of omnipotence but chooses to use that sparingly, if at all. I respond to Einstein's repugnance at quantum indeterminism ("The Old One does not play dice") with the suggestion that God has established a set of physical laws that allow ongoing manipulation of the universe without violating causality, by guiding wavefunction collapse.

I do not hold truck with the idea that God is omnibenevolent. "I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I am [NAME], that does all these things." (Is. 45:7) Clearly there is evil in this world; if I believe that God alone is God ("[NAME] is our God, [NAME] is singular", Deut. 6:4) then it must follow that evil is, for some reason, part of God's design.

God, sex, and gender

God being abiological, it is incorrect to ascribe sex to God, although traditionally we describe God as possessing both masculine and feminine gender roles. (I try to avoid using a pronoun to refer to God, in order to avoid subconscious mental programming of God as a "He".)

The creation myth in Genesis is unusual among creation myths in not treating the deity as sexually creative. The generative acts are verbal: God says "Let there be X" and X comes into being. (There is a hint of what may be a remnant from a fertility cult in Gen 6:2, but it's ambiguous and generally read by the rabbis as not referring literally to "the sons of God".) God transcends sex, just as God transcends the other manifestations of corporeal existence. (From this I deduce that God would not take on human form, which is one of the many reasons that I disagree with those who ascribe divinity to Jesus.)

God's will

I believe that God had a purpose in creating the world, and in creating it in the way that God did. We don't know, we can't know, God's reasons. However, I do believe that God has expectations of us, and that these expectations can be learned by the application of our intelligence and by the received tradition.

A good friend once said "I believe that God wants me to keep Shabbat in the same way that I believe Hamlet wants to avenge his father's death." My interpretation of that insight is that I have a certain mental schema of who God is, just as I have a certain mental schema of who Hamlet is --- and, for that matter, just as I have a mental schema of flesh-and-blood people (those I know, those I know by reputation, those who have died). I can use those schemata to make assertions about how entities such as Hamlet, God, my wife, Stephen Colbert, or George Washington would react to certain situations. Some of those assertions are testable --- my wife expresses joy when I successfully apply my schema in selecting a birthday present. Others are not. But the key point is that it is meaningful to discuss the will of God.

(I'll refer the reader to my first essay for my discussion of the limits to which I think any human being has the right to apply his or her understanding of God's will to other people.)

God and Torah

I believe that the Torah text that we have today is essentially the Torah text that God "wants" us to have. I don't know if the myth of the theophany is absolute truth; certainly the biblical story of the rediscovery of the Torah text (II Kings 22:8ff) casts doubt on whether the text we have truly represents an unbroken chain of literal copies from the time of Sinai.

But the historical transmission of the text doesn't concern me. Just as I believe that God "proctored" evolution to create humanity according to God's plan but within the workings of natural law, I believe that God nudged the social development of peoples along so that the various myths and texts of the pre-Semites would result in our possession of a particular Torah text and oral traditions regarding its interpretation that are the manifestations of the divine will.

Just as I can accept quantum indeterminacy, I can accept "higher biblical criticism" (since they don't call it the documentary hypothesis anymore :-).

Do I really believe?

It is reasonable at this point for you to read all my "weasel words" about "believe" meaning "act as though" and ask me point-blank: But do you believe in God?

Honestly?

Usually.

Most of the time, I do hold in my heart that these things are true. When I recite my tefillot, I usually have in mind that I am addressing an actual divine entity exterior to this world, one who is pleased by my performing the acts that the halacha prescribes.

But there are times when I look at all this and say "Now really, there is (by definition) no rational basis for believing this stuff." And it is at those times that I fall back on the "weasel word" definition of "belief." Because even if it's not "true" in the absolute sense of the word, the life that I have is enriched by my accepting these postulates.

So even when I don't "believe" with all my heart and with all my soul, I "believe" with all my actions. (Cf. Deut 6:5)