By:
Prof. Uduma Oji Uduma FIIA, MNIM
Professor of Law and Logic,
National Open University of Nigeria, Abakaliki.
udumaojiuduma@yahoo.com and
Anacletus Ogbunkwu
Department of Philosophy,
Godfrey Okoye University, Enugu.
franacletus@gmail.com.
Abstract
This paper aims at explicating the right perspective towards understanding God. Minding the
inexplicable nature of God and the ambiguity of human language, this paper opines that God
is best described as “nothing” while nothing here does not mean non-existent but
indescribable. Using the method of hermeneutics, the paper studies the dynamism of religious
anthropomorphism in the quest towards understanding God. In the attempt to actualize the
already stated aim, the paper studies the tenets of anthropomorphism, concept of “nothing” in
philosophy and how the concept of “nothing” is a better choice than the anthropological
language definitions of God as prevalent especially during the scholastic era of philosophy.
Our finding reveals that the different anthropological definitions of God demeans the person
of God, creates ambiguity in religion and impoverishes human understanding of God which
in most cases is the cause of atheism. On appraisal, the paper philosophically assesses the
concept of “nothing” as the better definition in understanding God. Hence by “nothing” the
person of God is not demeaned, instead He is put in the right perspective as a divine being in
whose being cannot be anthropologically understood. Therefore, the implication of the study
shows that “nothing” is a better definition of God than all anthropological definitions which
are unable to integrate the fullness and perfection of/in God.
Understanding Anthropomorphism in Religion.
The word anthropomorphism has a Greek translation from the words, anthropos + morphe
which means man/human and form respectively. Hence anthropomorphism can be said to
mean the metaphorical attempt or assignment of human attribute to non-human beings either
on the spiritual level or physical realm such as God/gods and animals/ trees respectively. It is
obvious therefore that religious anthropomorphism is a figure of speech which defines
theological truths about God or gods in human language and tries to give super human
qualities to God/gods in the attempt to define God. It is the sublimation of human qualities in
a superlative degree in the attempt to qualify the supremacy of God. Anthropomorphism
2
provides by analogy a conceptual framework such that God who is beyond human
comprehension is made intelligible to man’s reason through human language.
Anthropomorphism has a close associate word, anthropopathism which translates as
anthropos + pathos. This translates as human and passion respectively. This means the
attribute to God of human physical form or psychological characteristics. Anthropopathism
refers to God as having emotions and feelings like human persons. Such emotions include;
jealous, hates, anger, love e.t.c1
.
Hence by traditional explanation, people anthropomorphize for different reasons among
which include the following;
Anthropomorphism obscures the truth and limits the mind’s search of real truth.
Moreover, people ascribe to this divine ruler their own characters and mental states,
conceiving God as angry or loving, merciful or vengeful. Hence Spinoza said; “…it has
happened that each person has thought up from his own temperament different ways of
worshiping God, so that God might love him above all others, and direct the whole of nature
10
according to the needs of his blind desire and insatiable greed”39. In his Dialogue Concerning
Natural Religion, David Hume concurred to Spinoza and gave a critique of religious
superstition, anthropomorphism and appeals to miracles as evidence of divine activity. Hume
claimed that Christian belief is silly and incoherent40. Nevertheless, these great philosophers
accepted that God exists but they queued into the long lasting argument of the nature of this
existence. To understand the nature of His existence leads to anthropomorphism. A survey of
the different theological proves as stated above shows that each anthropological definition of
God limits the person of God to ordinary human traits and characters.
Conclusion
The study has been an interventionist attempt on explicating the right perspective towards
understanding God while minding the inexplicable nature of God and the deficiency of
human language to this regard. Anthropomorphism has been an age long attempt towards
understanding God but this has been a failed project since anthropomorphism has made the
nature of God more difficult for human understanding, demeaned the person of God, created
ambiguity in religion, impoverished human understanding of God and led people to atheism.
Hence this paper opines that God is best described as “nothing” while nothing here does not
mean non-existent but indescribable. By “nothing” the person of God is not demeaned,
instead He is put in the right perspective as a perfect and divine being whose being cannot be
anthropologically understood.
Philosophers argue that religion is man-made and God is human creation. 41 It is a scientific
fact following the measurement of the current speed and distances to the galaxies and the
oldest star clusters that our universe is about fourteen billion years old42. Also, the first protohuman consciousness came into being about six million years ago and homo-sapiens arrived
about two hundred thousand years ago. This background is very important towards
understanding Harry’s question when he asked; ‘how come the oldest monotheistic religions
(Judaism, Christianity and Islam) only emerged about four thousand years43 ago whereas the
human race has lasted for about two hundred thousand years ago’? 44. Even Hindu religion
which is the oldest known religion on earth emerged about five thousand years ago45. One
sees why anthropomorphism becomes a religious answer to these historical gaps even when
anthropomorphism is unfit as an answer to the awesomeness of God.
11
Nevertheless, religion as a belief in a supernatural being has exercised strong claims of
originality, logicality and authenticity. Hence to substantiate their belief in the Supreme
Being, different world religions apply the method of anthropomorphism which implies the
definition of theological truth about God in human language and making God intelligible by
human description. This attempt was the primary project of the scholastic philosophers such
as Aquinas in his quinque viae (five ways) 46, Augustine, Origen, the deductive and
ontological argument of St. Anselm and Rene Descartes, to mention but a few. These
anthropological attempts have been a means of sublimating human characteristics to the
superlative degree to qualify God whose Being they claim, supersedes every human
characteristics. We make bold to question if this Supreme Being is so perfect and beyond
human characteristics, why the lure of anthropomorphism?
The inability of anthropomorphism to address the above question makes this study most
relevant towards searching for an alternative definition to the person of God since
anthropomorphism obscures the truth and limits the mind’s search of real truth. Of high
importance is to note that even though one could endlessly rebut the evidence for the
existence of God as insufficient, these rebuttals do not demonstrate that God is a fiction. The
absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It is therefore the concern of this study to
mitigate the current epistemological block towards understanding God as warranted by
anthropomorphism. Hence this study finds it most convenient to define God as “nothing”. By
nothing, this study seeks to address the inefficiency of anthropomorphism. It refers to the
impossibility of perfect definition of God in human language and unrescuable elusiveness of
available anthropological definitions of God. Hence just as Dasein saves the understanding of
being from the block of human representational thinking so does nothing save the
understanding of God from the banalization of anthropomorphism. Therefore, God as nothing
as an alternative definition as culled for use here implies God as nothing phenomenologically
describable, ontologically definable or imaginatively conceivable.
12
End Notes
1
God as Jealous; (Exodus 20.5), God as one who hates; (Amos 5.21), God as being
angry; (Jer. 7.20), God as one who loves; (Exodus 20.6), God as one who is pleased; (Deu.
28.63).
2
Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great: The Case Against Religion. (Oxford:
Atlantic Books, 2007), 10.
3
Ibid., 71
4
Gale Group, “Anthropomorphism” in Encyclopaedia Judaica,
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/anthropomorphism accessed: 01/05/2018
5
John 1.18
6
Num. 23: 19; 1Sam 15: 29
7
Exodus 19:5-6.
8
Gen. 16:7; 18:1-19:1
9
“Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology-Anthropomorphism”
https://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/anthropomorphism/ accessed on 03/06/2018.
10 E. W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech Used in the Bible. (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1995), 67
11 Davies, Brian. The Thought of Thomas Aquinas. (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1992), 26.
12 Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica 1274. Part 1, Question 2, Article 3.
13Ibid.,
14 Ibid.,
15 Ibid.,
16 Hinman, Joseph. The Trace of God: A Rational Warrant for Belief (GrandViaduct:
University Press, 2014), 1
17Ibid.,
18 Ibid., 104-105.
13
19 Nolan, Lawrence. “Descartes’ Ontological Argument” (Standford: University
Press, 1995), 12 .
20 Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, (Marburg: University Press, 1923), 32.
21Ibid.,
22Jeff Landauer and Joseph Rowlands, “Importance of Philosophy”, in
http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/Metaphysics_Nothing.html accessed: 01/06/18.
23 Russell, B., History of Western Philosophy, (Routledge: University Press, 1995),
66–70.
24 Aristotle, On Generation and Corruption, I:8, 350 BC,
25G. W. Hegel, Science of Logic, (Cambridge: University Press, 1832), 701–704.
26 Tim Golger, “Nothingness of Space Could Illumine the Theory of Everything”, in
Science for the Curious Discover Journal, July, 2008.
27 Karl Popper, The World of Parmenides: Essays on the Pre-Socratic Enlightenment,
(Routledge: University, 2013), 172.
28Gary Mar, “Gödel’s ontological dream”, in Shyam Wuppuluri, Giancarlo Ghirardi
(eds), Space, Time and the Limits of Human Understanding, (Chicago: Springer Pub., 2016),
469.
29 Lawrence Krauss, A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than
Nothing, (Arizona: University, 2012), 56.
30 Fraser Cain, What is Nothing? (Florida: Harcourt Brace, 2014), 14
31 Fraser Cain, What is Nothing? 15.
32 Cyril Bailey, The Greek Atomists and Epicurus: A Study, pp. 75–76, The
Clarendon Press, 1928.
33 Heidegger, M., The Ground of Metaphysics,
http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/7b.htm. accessed 23/04/18
34 Heidegger, “Letter on ‘Humanism’,” in Pathmarks (Cambridge & New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1998), 250–251.
35 Robert C. Solomon, From Hegel to Existentialism, (Oxford: University Press,
1989), 286-287.
14
36 Karl Popper, The World of Parmenides: Essays on the Pre-Socratic Enlightenment,
172,
37Karl Popper, The World of Parmenides: Essays on the Pre-Socratic Enlightenment,
172,
38Samuel J. Preus, “ Anthropomorphism and Spinoza’s Innovations” Religion,
Volume 25, 1995, Pages 1-8.
39 David Hume, Dialogue Concerning Natural Religion, (Oxford: University Press,
1777), 67
40Ibid.,
41Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great: The Case Against Religion. (Oxford:
Atlantic Books, 2007), 10.
42 http://hubblesite.org/reference_desk/faq/all.php.cat=cosmology. Accessed on
01/06/18
43 Richard Dawkins Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science (Canada: Bantam
Press, 2015), 269.
44 Harry Foundalis, “Why is There Religion” in
http://www.foundalis.com/rlg/WhenceReligion.htm. accessed: 30/04/18
45G. Diane, “What is the Oldest Religion that is Currently Practiced Today” in
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-oldest-religion-that-is-currently-practiced-today.
accessed: 01/06/18
46 Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica. 1274, Part 1, Question 2, Article 3.
According to David Hume, people anthropomorphize for intellectual reason. Hence
anthropomorphism offers explanations to unfamiliar and mysterious world or realities
by using the model of human language that is much more familiar. Nevertheless, this
account fails to explain why human beings anthropomorphize familiar objects, such as
pets and other physical objects.
According to Sigmud Freud, people anthropomorphize for emotional reasons. In this
case anthropomorphism can be referred as anthropopathism by giving emotional
interpretation to make a hostile or indifferent world seem more familiar and therefore
less threatening.
Some philosophers claim that religion is man-made and God is human creation. Hitchens
argued that even the men who made it (religion) cannot agree on what their prophets or
redeemers or gurus actually said or did.2
Every religion has claims of originality, logicality
and authenticity. Also, every religion is always a belief in a supernatural being that
immanently influenced the world and existence. Nevertheless, these claims by believers lack
soundness of logical prove beyond belief. Perhaps even the believers may not know the
precise nature of god/God or the first cause or necessary being as claimed3
hence leading
believers to anthropomorphism in order to substantiate their belief in the Supreme Being.
This concept of anthropomorphism runs through the different world religions manifest in
different religious mythologies and works of art. Hence this claim to anthropomorphism is
manifest in Jewish Tanakh4
, Christian Bible, Islamic Quran, Hindus’ Vedas, Buddhists’
Sutras, Jainists’Agamas e.t.c. Different world religions employ different human
3
characteristics but sublimated to a superlative degree in their attempt to understand and
describe God, who for these religions, supersedes every human person and human
characteristics. Unfortunately, in their claim that God supersedes every human
characteristics, they exclude language as a human characteristic such that if this Supreme
Being is so perfect and beyond human characteristics, why the lure of anthropomorphism.
Christian philosophers and experts in different world religions have done a great work
towards Christian religious anthropomorphism. This was championed by Scholastic
philosophers and Theologians. They employed several arguments to prove God’s existence.
The oldest work in Christian mythology is the Biblical anthropomorphism. Biblical
anthropomorphisms are used primarily in reference to God, who is neither visible5
nor
human6
. It shows God as entering a covenant with human beings7
. Also, it makes reference to
angels8
, Satan9
e.t.c. In the New Testament, anthropomorphism took a radical dimension as
manifest in the mystery of the incarnation of Christ10
.
In the first part of his Summa Theologica, Aquinas developed his quinque viae (five ways) of
proving the existence of God. Aquinas’ argument to this effected included; unmoved mover,
first cause, necessary being/contingency, argument from degree or teleological argument11
.
Aquinas’ argument can be said to be a recipe of Aristotelian ontology12
.
The argument from an unmoved mover asserts that, from human experience and
physics of motion or transition from potentiality to actuality, there must be an initial
mover. This argument of an initial mover shows that there ought to be an initial mover
which causes every other thing into motion. Aquinas argued that whatever is in
motion must be put in motion by another thing, so there must be an unmoved mover.13
Aquinas assumed this unmoved mover of everything to be God.
Aquinas’ second argument is “first cause” or “uncaused cause”. Here Aquinas
assumed that it is impossible for a being to cause itself. If a being must exist to cause
another being into existence, there must be a first cause. This is because it is
impossible for there to be an infinite chain of causes, which would result in infinite
regress. Therefore, there must be an uncaused cause or a first cause.14 Aquinas
identified this first cause to be God.
In his third argument, Aquinas asserts that all beings are contingent. This means that
all beings have possibilities of existence and non-existence. Aquinas argued that if
everything can possibly not exist, there must have been a time when nothing existed;
4
as things exist now, there must exist a being with necessary existence. This being
must exist necessarily such that the being can be said to be responsible for its own
existence. The being capable of necessary existence is according to Aquinas, God.15
Aquinas fourth argument is anchored on the degree of goodness. This is one of the
influences of Aristotelian categories on Aquinas. According to Aquinas, things which
are called good, must be called good in relation to a standard of goodness. This
standard of goodness bears the maximum possible goodness. Hence there ought to be
a maximum goodness which causes all goodness and from whom the concept of
goodness comes and whose goodness, good things on earth imperfectly mirror. This
highest goodness in Aquinas definition is God.
The last argument is the teleological argument. Here Aquinas asserts that things
without intelligence are ordered towards an end or a purpose. This cannot be possible
in the absence of an intelligent and capable being to direct the purpose or end of
creatures or unintelligent beings. Hence there must be an intelligent being to cause
objects to their end or purposes.
In his book, The Trace of God: A Rational Warrant for Belief16 Joseph Hinman applied
Toulmin’s warrant in his argument for the existence of God. Stephen Tolumin is notable for
his rational warrant in argument which shows ideas that feature the rational warrant for a
conclusion. For Hinman, the only possible prove to the existence of God is to demonstrate the
rationally-warranted nature of God’s existence”.17 For Hinman, the belief in God is rationally
warranted18. Hence the trace of God is manifest in religious experiences which give a rational
warrant to the existence of God.
Also, there are traces of God’s existence manifest in the deductive and ontological argument
of philosophers regarding the existence of God. These deductive and ontological arguments
were championed by St. Anselm and Rene Descartes. Thus they claimed that God’s existence
is self-evident. Hence they stated as follows:
whatever is contained in a clear and distinct idea of a thing must be
predicated of that thing; but a clear and distinct idea of an absolutely
perfect Being contains the idea of actual existence; therefore since we
have the idea of an absolutely perfect Being such a Being must really
exist.19
5
It was the 20th century German Theologian, Rudolf Otto who attempted describing the basic
transcendence of God. For him, a better description of the “Holy” or what he described as the
‘numinous’ is manifested in a double form such as; mysterium tremendum (mystery that
repels) and the mysterium fascinosum (mystery that attracts or fascinates). According to Otto,
mysterium tremendum is the manifestation of God as dauntful, awful, dreadful, fearful,
overwhelming, e.t.c while by mysterum fascinosum he implied the mystery by which humans
beings are fascinated and irresistibly drawn to the glory, beauty, power of transcendence,
e.t.c. 20 These two dimensions explain the uncanny wrath and judgement of God and His
fascinating grace, mercy and divine love. This was Otto’s expression of man’s approach to
God.21These approaches are manifest in human language definition of the person of God or
anthropomorphism.
The Problem of “Nothing in Philosophy”
Generally, nothing is a concept designating a presumed absence of something or nonexistence. Also, it denotes the lack in importance, value, interest, significance e.t.c. The word
nothing is associated with nothingness which means a state of nothing. Nevertheless, it ought
to be noted that non-existence here gains meaning only when in comparison to existence such
that nothing is a denial of the existence of something or particular entity. Hence both
“nothing and non- existence are denials of existence which in itself ought to be accepted so as
to give meaning to “nothing” and “non-existence”22
.
Like other problems in philosophy, the problem of “nothing’ is yet to receive a final
acceptance or solution among philosophers regarding its possibility. Parmenides was one of
the earliest Western philosophers to consider the concept of “nothing”. Minding the
possibility of change as proposed by Heraclitus, Parmenides denied “nothing” as a reality
proceeding from change. For him, to speak of a thing, one has to speak of a thing that exists.
Since we can speak of a thing in the past, it (the thing) must still exist though in some sense
now and from this he concludes that there is no such thing as change. As a corollary, there
can be no such things as coming-into-being, passing-out-of-being, or not-being.
23
Nevertheless, to this view, Aristotle denied Parmenides saying, “although these opinions
seem to follow logically in a dialectical discussion, yet to believe them seems next door to
madness when one considers the facts”.24
6
G. W. Hegel is said to have brought the dialectical method to a new pinnacle of development.
Hegel applied this method in his philosophy of religion. In Hegel’s work on the Science of
Logic, he explained the dialectical method of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. For Hegel, no
proposition taken on its own can be true except through the whole granted by dialectical
synthesis. The whole is the spiritual and is also referred by Hegel as the absolute. Thus Hegel
sees nothing as the antithesis of pure Being while Becoming is the synthesis25. Hence for
Hegel, nothing is something even though Hegel’s nothing is a debased form of nothing as
used in this study.
Philosophers and physicists argue a great deal that “nothing” does not really imply nothing
and is not the same as nothing as ordinarily conceived. For the scientists, the idea of nothing
is impossible such that even a vacuum cannot be said to be nothing in content because a
vacuum still has the capacity of radiation, expansion and contraction, to warp and bend, e.t.c.
Even if all particles including energy and electromagnetic fields are removed from a vacuum,
it would contain at least gravity since gravity itself cannot be removed or cancelled in space.
This is an experiment even a non scientist can provide the proofs by throwing an object up
even in a vacuum. The force of gravity acts on the object even when the vacuum is said to
contain nothing.
In his article on “Nothingness of Space Could Illumine the Theory of Everything”, Tim
Folger opined that;
In a discipline where the stretching of time and the warping of space
are routine working assumptions, the vacuum remains a sort of cosmic
koan. And as in the rest of physics, its nature has turned out to be
mind-bendingly weird: Empty space is not really empty because
nothing contains something, seething with energy and particles that
flit into and out of existence26
.
The great scientist, Einstein in the modern time adopted a position similar to Parmenides.27
On the death of his friend Michele Besso, Einstein consoled his friend’s wife with the words;
“now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That signifies nothing. For
those of us that believe in physics, the distinction between past, present and future is only a
stubbornly persistent illusion.” 28 However, Einstein’s definition of nothing here denotes; not
just emptiness of spaces or vacuum rather a state of meaninglessness. Meaninglessness here
is born out of man’s impenetrability to the world beyond. Hence the fear of the strange world
beyond leads the mind to think it as nothingness.
7
In his book; A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing, the
great cosmologist and physicist, Lawrence Krauss attempted to answer the mind boggling
question, “why is there something rather than nothing” in his explanation of the beginning of
the universe. He asserted that there was in fact something to begin with, namely gravity and
the quantum vacuum from which the universe was born. Here Krauss aligned his idea with
the Big Band theory of creation. Hence if it is possible that the universe did come from
nothing, then “nothing” is everything we see around us, and “everything” is nothing. Here
Krauss attempted answering the puzzle of nothing from everything and defined nothing out
of existence29
.
Nothing, as a thing to be perceived becomes something, therefore not nothing as ordinarily
thought. Hence nothing has a conscious existence in human mind though it may lack
calculation or measurement. It is with regard to this lack of measurement and calculation that
anthropomorphism failed in the definition of God. Anthropomorphism attempts what it does
not have the criteria to measure and cannot even in the subjunctive mood calculate
accurately. Therefore, an attempt to understand or any form of thought about nothing gives
nothing an existence, and existence is something not nothing30. Little wonder Fraser asked
the following questions31;
Is there any place in the universe where there is truly nothing?
What are the properties of nothing?
Metaphysics of God as “Nothing” against Anthropomorphism
Having explicated the difficulty of anthropomorphism in bringing humanity to the real truth
of God’s existence, this paper proposes an alternative to anthropomorphism. This alternative
is the definition of God as nothing. It is obvious that an attempt to picture nothing is an
impossible task for the human mind because even that we refer as nothing has a reality
attached to it in human consciousness32
. Hence even the Buddhist monks’ claim to clear their
mind during meditations does not really imply that their mind is blank of nothing because
even a blank slate is something. Nevertheless, there is great need to put the term “nothing” in
the right perspective as the need of this paper demands. Thus by nothing, this work refers to
the impossibility of perfect definition of God and elusiveness of available anthropological
definitions of God. Hence for us, God as nothing as culled for use here implies God as
8
nothing phenomenologically describable, ontologically definable or imaginatively
conceivable.
In his fundamental questions of metaphysics, Heidegger described the problem of nothing as
that which human contemplation reveals the importance and vitality of our moods. For
Heidegger nothing is what produces the feeling of dread which he referred as the Angst. This
deep feeling is only the clue to the nature and reality of nothing for Heidegger. For
Heidegger, nothing is seen to be concomitant rather than opposite of Being as claimed by
Hegel. It is obvious that the distorted human representational thinking blocks every effort
towards profound understanding of being. Hence Heidegger introduced the idea of Dasein
which implies self-awareness or consciousness as means of authenticity of life created out of
nothing or existence33. Thus Dasein becomes a spectrum through which a profound
understanding of being and existence can be made.
For the reasons of the limited and distorted nature of human representational thinking as
already explained by Heidegger, we claim therefore, that it becomes obvious that
anthropomorphism cannot be a good alternative towards defining God. Human
representational thinking as an anthropological attempt in the definition of God places an
ontological, operational and geographical limitations to what God is. The awesomeness of
God and His perfection is not really captured by mere human representational thinking.
Hence to save human representational thinking from this form of banalization and limitation,
it becomes most convenient to address God as nothing. Hence just as Dasein saves the
understanding of being from the block of human representational thinking so does nothing
save the understanding of God from the banalization of anthropomorphism.
In his book, Being and Nothingness (L’etre et le neant), the most outstanding existentialist
philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre being heavily influenced by Heidegger’s Being and Time,
defined two types of being34. The first is the brute existence of being (etre-en-soi) such as
trees, animals, e.t.c. while the second is consciousness (etre-pour-soi). This second kind of
Being is what Sartre referred as nothing. This is because for him, consciousness cannot be
said to be an object of consciousness itself35. It is obvious therefore that the authenticity of
the human person is indescribable but lies in the self awareness or consciousness of the
Dasein following Heidegger’s philosophy. Thus it can be said that though humanity is
conscious of God’s existence, the quintessence of God is indescribable. Little wonder
9
Einstein claimed that; “the most comprehensible thing about God is that He is
incomprehensible”36
.
For Karl Popper, the traditional religious affirmations are not analogical truths but rather
sheer nonsense.37 These traditional religious affirmations are the works of religious
anthromorphism. Little wonder God is said to be the creation of man. Since God by definition
extends beyond the frame of materiality, nothing in the material universe can most
appropriately prove God’s existence. It is to be noted at this point that anthropomorphism has
brought different forms of atheism such as; implicit and positive, weak and strong, practical
and theoretical, e.t.c. These forms of atheism are warranted by insufficient explanation or
definition of God in human language. The incongruence between the Being of God and the
limitation brought by anthropomorphism dissatisfied some philosophers making them unable
to come to terms with the existence of God.
In the first of his five books on Ethics, Spinoza wanted to liberate readers from the dangers of
ascribing human traits to God through a critical reconsideration of anthropomorphism. Hence
Spinoza sought an idiosyncratic and philosophical argument on the existence and nature of
God. He had a primary reason of rejecting anthropomorphism in the sense of attributing
human characteristics to something non human such as plants, animals, sky or God.
Spinoza’s denial of anthropomorphism has the following implications:
That God is an impersonal power who cannot respond to human beings’ request as
defined in anthropomorphism. For Spinoza, such God neither rewards nor punishes
thereby disproving the religious belief on fear and moralism as God inspired.
It attacked the teleological proves on the existence of God. Teleological prove on the
existence of God assumes that God acts according to reasons and purposes. This was
the anchor of Aristotle’s account of nature which was borrowed by medieval
theologians in the prove of God’s existence. This is most apt to the Christian Biblical
narrative on creation of a God who made the world according to a plan comparable to
a craftsman.38
Anthropomorphism obscures the truth and limits the mind’s search of real truth.
Moreover, people ascribe to this divine ruler their own characters and mental states,
conceiving God as angry or loving, merciful or vengeful. Hence Spinoza said; “…it has
happened that each person has thought up from his own temperament different ways of
worshiping God, so that God might love him above all others, and direct the whole of nature
10
according to the needs of his blind desire and insatiable greed”39. In his Dialogue Concerning
Natural Religion, David Hume concurred to Spinoza and gave a critique of religious
superstition, anthropomorphism and appeals to miracles as evidence of divine activity. Hume
claimed that Christian belief is silly and incoherent40. Nevertheless, these great philosophers
accepted that God exists but they queued into the long lasting argument of the nature of this
existence. To understand the nature of His existence leads to anthropomorphism. A survey of
the different theological proves as stated above shows that each anthropological definition of
God limits the person of God to ordinary human traits and characters.
Conclusion
The study has been an interventionist attempt on explicating the right perspective towards
understanding God while minding the inexplicable nature of God and the deficiency of
human language to this regard. Anthropomorphism has been an age long attempt towards
understanding God but this has been a failed project since anthropomorphism has made the
nature of God more difficult for human understanding, demeaned the person of God, created
ambiguity in religion, impoverished human understanding of God and led people to atheism.
Hence this paper opines that God is best described as “nothing” while nothing here does not
mean non-existent but indescribable. By “nothing” the person of God is not demeaned,
instead He is put in the right perspective as a perfect and divine being whose being cannot be
anthropologically understood.
Philosophers argue that religion is man-made and God is human creation. 41 It is a scientific
fact following the measurement of the current speed and distances to the galaxies and the
oldest star clusters that our universe is about fourteen billion years old42. Also, the first protohuman consciousness came into being about six million years ago and homo-sapiens arrived
about two hundred thousand years ago. This background is very important towards
understanding Harry’s question when he asked; ‘how come the oldest monotheistic religions
(Judaism, Christianity and Islam) only emerged about four thousand years43 ago whereas the
human race has lasted for about two hundred thousand years ago’? 44. Even Hindu religion
which is the oldest known religion on earth emerged about five thousand years ago45. One
sees why anthropomorphism becomes a religious answer to these historical gaps even when
anthropomorphism is unfit as an answer to the awesomeness of God.
11
Nevertheless, religion as a belief in a supernatural being has exercised strong claims of
originality, logicality and authenticity. Hence to substantiate their belief in the Supreme
Being, different world religions apply the method of anthropomorphism which implies the
definition of theological truth about God in human language and making God intelligible by
human description. This attempt was the primary project of the scholastic philosophers such
as Aquinas in his quinque viae (five ways) 46, Augustine, Origen, the deductive and
ontological argument of St. Anselm and Rene Descartes, to mention but a few. These
anthropological attempts have been a means of sublimating human characteristics to the
superlative degree to qualify God whose Being they claim, supersedes every human
characteristics. We make bold to question if this Supreme Being is so perfect and beyond
human characteristics, why the lure of anthropomorphism?
The inability of anthropomorphism to address the above question makes this study most
relevant towards searching for an alternative definition to the person of God since
anthropomorphism obscures the truth and limits the mind’s search of real truth. Of high
importance is to note that even though one could endlessly rebut the evidence for the
existence of God as insufficient, these rebuttals do not demonstrate that God is a fiction. The
absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It is therefore the concern of this study to
mitigate the current epistemological block towards understanding God as warranted by
anthropomorphism. Hence this study finds it most convenient to define God as “nothing”. By
nothing, this study seeks to address the inefficiency of anthropomorphism. It refers to the
impossibility of perfect definition of God in human language and unrescuable elusiveness of
available anthropological definitions of God. Hence just as Dasein saves the understanding of
being from the block of human representational thinking so does nothing save the
understanding of God from the banalization of anthropomorphism. Therefore, God as nothing
as an alternative definition as culled for use here implies God as nothing phenomenologically
describable, ontologically definable or imaginatively conceivable.
12
End Notes
1
God as Jealous; (Exodus 20.5), God as one who hates; (Amos 5.21), God as being
angry; (Jer. 7.20), God as one who loves; (Exodus 20.6), God as one who is pleased; (Deu.
28.63).
2
Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great: The Case Against Religion. (Oxford:
Atlantic Books, 2007), 10.
3
Ibid., 71
4
Gale Group, “Anthropomorphism” in Encyclopaedia Judaica,
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/anthropomorphism accessed: 01/05/2018
5
John 1.18
6
Num. 23: 19; 1Sam 15: 29
7
Exodus 19:5-6.
8
Gen. 16:7; 18:1-19:1
9
“Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology-Anthropomorphism”
https://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/anthropomorphism/ accessed on 03/06/2018.
10 E. W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech Used in the Bible. (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1995), 67
11 Davies, Brian. The Thought of Thomas Aquinas. (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1992), 26.
12 Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica 1274. Part 1, Question 2, Article 3.
13Ibid.,
14 Ibid.,
15 Ibid.,
16 Hinman, Joseph. The Trace of God: A Rational Warrant for Belief (GrandViaduct:
University Press, 2014), 1
17Ibid.,
18 Ibid., 104-105.
13
19 Nolan, Lawrence. “Descartes’ Ontological Argument” (Standford: University
Press, 1995), 12 .
20 Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, (Marburg: University Press, 1923), 32.
21Ibid.,
22Jeff Landauer and Joseph Rowlands, “Importance of Philosophy”, in
http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/Metaphysics_Nothing.html accessed: 01/06/18.
23 Russell, B., History of Western Philosophy, (Routledge: University Press, 1995),
66–70.
24 Aristotle, On Generation and Corruption, I:8, 350 BC,
25G. W. Hegel, Science of Logic, (Cambridge: University Press, 1832), 701–704.
26 Tim Golger, “Nothingness of Space Could Illumine the Theory of Everything”, in
Science for the Curious Discover Journal, July, 2008.
27 Karl Popper, The World of Parmenides: Essays on the Pre-Socratic Enlightenment,
(Routledge: University, 2013), 172.
28Gary Mar, “Gödel’s ontological dream”, in Shyam Wuppuluri, Giancarlo Ghirardi
(eds), Space, Time and the Limits of Human Understanding, (Chicago: Springer Pub., 2016),
469.
29 Lawrence Krauss, A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than
Nothing, (Arizona: University, 2012), 56.
30 Fraser Cain, What is Nothing? (Florida: Harcourt Brace, 2014), 14
31 Fraser Cain, What is Nothing? 15.
32 Cyril Bailey, The Greek Atomists and Epicurus: A Study, pp. 75–76, The
Clarendon Press, 1928.
33 Heidegger, M., The Ground of Metaphysics,
http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/7b.htm. accessed 23/04/18
34 Heidegger, “Letter on ‘Humanism’,” in Pathmarks (Cambridge & New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1998), 250–251.
35 Robert C. Solomon, From Hegel to Existentialism, (Oxford: University Press,
1989), 286-287.
14
36 Karl Popper, The World of Parmenides: Essays on the Pre-Socratic Enlightenment,
172,
37Karl Popper, The World of Parmenides: Essays on the Pre-Socratic Enlightenment,
172,
38Samuel J. Preus, “ Anthropomorphism and Spinoza’s Innovations” Religion,
Volume 25, 1995, Pages 1-8.
39 David Hume, Dialogue Concerning Natural Religion, (Oxford: University Press,
1777), 67
40Ibid.,
41Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great: The Case Against Religion. (Oxford:
Atlantic Books, 2007), 10.
42 http://hubblesite.org/reference_desk/faq/all.php.cat=cosmology. Accessed on
01/06/18
43 Richard Dawkins Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science (Canada: Bantam
Press, 2015), 269.
44 Harry Foundalis, “Why is There Religion” in
http://www.foundalis.com/rlg/WhenceReligion.htm. accessed: 30/04/18
45G. Diane, “What is the Oldest Religion that is Currently Practiced Today” in
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-oldest-religion-that-is-currently-practiced-today.
accessed: 01/06/18
46 Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica. 1274, Part 1, Question 2, Article 3.
According to David Hume, people anthropomorphize for intellectual reason. Hence
anthropomorphism offers explanations to unfamiliar and mysterious world or realities
by using the model of human language that is much more familiar. Nevertheless, this
account fails to explain why human beings anthropomorphize familiar objects, such as
pets and other physical objects.
According to Sigmud Freud, people anthropomorphize for emotional reasons. In this
case anthropomorphism can be referred as anthropopathism by giving emotional
interpretation to make a hostile or indifferent world seem more familiar and therefore
less threatening.
Some philosophers claim that religion is man-made and God is human creation. Hitchens
argued that even the men who made it (religion) cannot agree on what their prophets or
redeemers or gurus actually said or did.2
Every religion has claims of originality, logicality
and authenticity. Also, every religion is always a belief in a supernatural being that
immanently influenced the world and existence. Nevertheless, these claims by believers lack
soundness of logical prove beyond belief. Perhaps even the believers may not know the
precise nature of god/God or the first cause or necessary being as claimed3
hence leading
believers to anthropomorphism in order to substantiate their belief in the Supreme Being.
This concept of anthropomorphism runs through the different world religions manifest in
different religious mythologies and works of art. Hence this claim to anthropomorphism is
manifest in Jewish Tanakh4
, Christian Bible, Islamic Quran, Hindus’ Vedas, Buddhists’
Sutras, Jainists’Agamas e.t.c. Different world religions employ different human
3
characteristics but sublimated to a superlative degree in their attempt to understand and
describe God, who for these religions, supersedes every human person and human
characteristics. Unfortunately, in their claim that God supersedes every human
characteristics, they exclude language as a human characteristic such that if this Supreme
Being is so perfect and beyond human characteristics, why the lure of anthropomorphism.
Christian philosophers and experts in different world religions have done a great work
towards Christian religious anthropomorphism. This was championed by Scholastic
philosophers and Theologians. They employed several arguments to prove God’s existence.
The oldest work in Christian mythology is the Biblical anthropomorphism. Biblical
anthropomorphisms are used primarily in reference to God, who is neither visible5
nor
human6
. It shows God as entering a covenant with human beings7
. Also, it makes reference to
angels8
, Satan9
e.t.c. In the New Testament, anthropomorphism took a radical dimension as
manifest in the mystery of the incarnation of Christ10
.
In the first part of his Summa Theologica, Aquinas developed his quinque viae (five ways) of
proving the existence of God. Aquinas’ argument to this effected included; unmoved mover,
first cause, necessary being/contingency, argument from degree or teleological argument11
.
Aquinas’ argument can be said to be a recipe of Aristotelian ontology12
.
The argument from an unmoved mover asserts that, from human experience and
physics of motion or transition from potentiality to actuality, there must be an initial
mover. This argument of an initial mover shows that there ought to be an initial mover
which causes every other thing into motion. Aquinas argued that whatever is in
motion must be put in motion by another thing, so there must be an unmoved mover.13
Aquinas assumed this unmoved mover of everything to be God.
Aquinas’ second argument is “first cause” or “uncaused cause”. Here Aquinas
assumed that it is impossible for a being to cause itself. If a being must exist to cause
another being into existence, there must be a first cause. This is because it is
impossible for there to be an infinite chain of causes, which would result in infinite
regress. Therefore, there must be an uncaused cause or a first cause.14 Aquinas
identified this first cause to be God.
In his third argument, Aquinas asserts that all beings are contingent. This means that
all beings have possibilities of existence and non-existence. Aquinas argued that if
everything can possibly not exist, there must have been a time when nothing existed;
4
as things exist now, there must exist a being with necessary existence. This being
must exist necessarily such that the being can be said to be responsible for its own
existence. The being capable of necessary existence is according to Aquinas, God.15
Aquinas fourth argument is anchored on the degree of goodness. This is one of the
influences of Aristotelian categories on Aquinas. According to Aquinas, things which
are called good, must be called good in relation to a standard of goodness. This
standard of goodness bears the maximum possible goodness. Hence there ought to be
a maximum goodness which causes all goodness and from whom the concept of
goodness comes and whose goodness, good things on earth imperfectly mirror. This
highest goodness in Aquinas definition is God.
The last argument is the teleological argument. Here Aquinas asserts that things
without intelligence are ordered towards an end or a purpose. This cannot be possible
in the absence of an intelligent and capable being to direct the purpose or end of
creatures or unintelligent beings. Hence there must be an intelligent being to cause
objects to their end or purposes.
In his book, The Trace of God: A Rational Warrant for Belief16 Joseph Hinman applied
Toulmin’s warrant in his argument for the existence of God. Stephen Tolumin is notable for
his rational warrant in argument which shows ideas that feature the rational warrant for a
conclusion. For Hinman, the only possible prove to the existence of God is to demonstrate the
rationally-warranted nature of God’s existence”.17 For Hinman, the belief in God is rationally
warranted18. Hence the trace of God is manifest in religious experiences which give a rational
warrant to the existence of God.
Also, there are traces of God’s existence manifest in the deductive and ontological argument
of philosophers regarding the existence of God. These deductive and ontological arguments
were championed by St. Anselm and Rene Descartes. Thus they claimed that God’s existence
is self-evident. Hence they stated as follows:
whatever is contained in a clear and distinct idea of a thing must be
predicated of that thing; but a clear and distinct idea of an absolutely
perfect Being contains the idea of actual existence; therefore since we
have the idea of an absolutely perfect Being such a Being must really
exist.19
5
It was the 20th century German Theologian, Rudolf Otto who attempted describing the basic
transcendence of God. For him, a better description of the “Holy” or what he described as the
‘numinous’ is manifested in a double form such as; mysterium tremendum (mystery that
repels) and the mysterium fascinosum (mystery that attracts or fascinates). According to Otto,
mysterium tremendum is the manifestation of God as dauntful, awful, dreadful, fearful,
overwhelming, e.t.c while by mysterum fascinosum he implied the mystery by which humans
beings are fascinated and irresistibly drawn to the glory, beauty, power of transcendence,
e.t.c. 20 These two dimensions explain the uncanny wrath and judgement of God and His
fascinating grace, mercy and divine love. This was Otto’s expression of man’s approach to
God.21These approaches are manifest in human language definition of the person of God or
anthropomorphism.
The Problem of “Nothing in Philosophy”
Generally, nothing is a concept designating a presumed absence of something or nonexistence. Also, it denotes the lack in importance, value, interest, significance e.t.c. The word
nothing is associated with nothingness which means a state of nothing. Nevertheless, it ought
to be noted that non-existence here gains meaning only when in comparison to existence such
that nothing is a denial of the existence of something or particular entity. Hence both
“nothing and non- existence are denials of existence which in itself ought to be accepted so as
to give meaning to “nothing” and “non-existence”22
.
Like other problems in philosophy, the problem of “nothing’ is yet to receive a final
acceptance or solution among philosophers regarding its possibility. Parmenides was one of
the earliest Western philosophers to consider the concept of “nothing”. Minding the
possibility of change as proposed by Heraclitus, Parmenides denied “nothing” as a reality
proceeding from change. For him, to speak of a thing, one has to speak of a thing that exists.
Since we can speak of a thing in the past, it (the thing) must still exist though in some sense
now and from this he concludes that there is no such thing as change. As a corollary, there
can be no such things as coming-into-being, passing-out-of-being, or not-being.
23
Nevertheless, to this view, Aristotle denied Parmenides saying, “although these opinions
seem to follow logically in a dialectical discussion, yet to believe them seems next door to
madness when one considers the facts”.24
6
G. W. Hegel is said to have brought the dialectical method to a new pinnacle of development.
Hegel applied this method in his philosophy of religion. In Hegel’s work on the Science of
Logic, he explained the dialectical method of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. For Hegel, no
proposition taken on its own can be true except through the whole granted by dialectical
synthesis. The whole is the spiritual and is also referred by Hegel as the absolute. Thus Hegel
sees nothing as the antithesis of pure Being while Becoming is the synthesis25. Hence for
Hegel, nothing is something even though Hegel’s nothing is a debased form of nothing as
used in this study.
Philosophers and physicists argue a great deal that “nothing” does not really imply nothing
and is not the same as nothing as ordinarily conceived. For the scientists, the idea of nothing
is impossible such that even a vacuum cannot be said to be nothing in content because a
vacuum still has the capacity of radiation, expansion and contraction, to warp and bend, e.t.c.
Even if all particles including energy and electromagnetic fields are removed from a vacuum,
it would contain at least gravity since gravity itself cannot be removed or cancelled in space.
This is an experiment even a non scientist can provide the proofs by throwing an object up
even in a vacuum. The force of gravity acts on the object even when the vacuum is said to
contain nothing.
In his article on “Nothingness of Space Could Illumine the Theory of Everything”, Tim
Folger opined that;
In a discipline where the stretching of time and the warping of space
are routine working assumptions, the vacuum remains a sort of cosmic
koan. And as in the rest of physics, its nature has turned out to be
mind-bendingly weird: Empty space is not really empty because
nothing contains something, seething with energy and particles that
flit into and out of existence26
.
The great scientist, Einstein in the modern time adopted a position similar to Parmenides.27
On the death of his friend Michele Besso, Einstein consoled his friend’s wife with the words;
“now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That signifies nothing. For
those of us that believe in physics, the distinction between past, present and future is only a
stubbornly persistent illusion.” 28 However, Einstein’s definition of nothing here denotes; not
just emptiness of spaces or vacuum rather a state of meaninglessness. Meaninglessness here
is born out of man’s impenetrability to the world beyond. Hence the fear of the strange world
beyond leads the mind to think it as nothingness.
7
In his book; A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing, the
great cosmologist and physicist, Lawrence Krauss attempted to answer the mind boggling
question, “why is there something rather than nothing” in his explanation of the beginning of
the universe. He asserted that there was in fact something to begin with, namely gravity and
the quantum vacuum from which the universe was born. Here Krauss aligned his idea with
the Big Band theory of creation. Hence if it is possible that the universe did come from
nothing, then “nothing” is everything we see around us, and “everything” is nothing. Here
Krauss attempted answering the puzzle of nothing from everything and defined nothing out
of existence29
.
Nothing, as a thing to be perceived becomes something, therefore not nothing as ordinarily
thought. Hence nothing has a conscious existence in human mind though it may lack
calculation or measurement. It is with regard to this lack of measurement and calculation that
anthropomorphism failed in the definition of God. Anthropomorphism attempts what it does
not have the criteria to measure and cannot even in the subjunctive mood calculate
accurately. Therefore, an attempt to understand or any form of thought about nothing gives
nothing an existence, and existence is something not nothing30. Little wonder Fraser asked
the following questions31;
Is there any place in the universe where there is truly nothing?
What are the properties of nothing?
Metaphysics of God as “Nothing” against Anthropomorphism
Having explicated the difficulty of anthropomorphism in bringing humanity to the real truth
of God’s existence, this paper proposes an alternative to anthropomorphism. This alternative
is the definition of God as nothing. It is obvious that an attempt to picture nothing is an
impossible task for the human mind because even that we refer as nothing has a reality
attached to it in human consciousness32
. Hence even the Buddhist monks’ claim to clear their
mind during meditations does not really imply that their mind is blank of nothing because
even a blank slate is something. Nevertheless, there is great need to put the term “nothing” in
the right perspective as the need of this paper demands. Thus by nothing, this work refers to
the impossibility of perfect definition of God and elusiveness of available anthropological
definitions of God. Hence for us, God as nothing as culled for use here implies God as
8
nothing phenomenologically describable, ontologically definable or imaginatively
conceivable.
In his fundamental questions of metaphysics, Heidegger described the problem of nothing as
that which human contemplation reveals the importance and vitality of our moods. For
Heidegger nothing is what produces the feeling of dread which he referred as the Angst. This
deep feeling is only the clue to the nature and reality of nothing for Heidegger. For
Heidegger, nothing is seen to be concomitant rather than opposite of Being as claimed by
Hegel. It is obvious that the distorted human representational thinking blocks every effort
towards profound understanding of being. Hence Heidegger introduced the idea of Dasein
which implies self-awareness or consciousness as means of authenticity of life created out of
nothing or existence33. Thus Dasein becomes a spectrum through which a profound
understanding of being and existence can be made.
For the reasons of the limited and distorted nature of human representational thinking as
already explained by Heidegger, we claim therefore, that it becomes obvious that
anthropomorphism cannot be a good alternative towards defining God. Human
representational thinking as an anthropological attempt in the definition of God places an
ontological, operational and geographical limitations to what God is. The awesomeness of
God and His perfection is not really captured by mere human representational thinking.
Hence to save human representational thinking from this form of banalization and limitation,
it becomes most convenient to address God as nothing. Hence just as Dasein saves the
understanding of being from the block of human representational thinking so does nothing
save the understanding of God from the banalization of anthropomorphism.
In his book, Being and Nothingness (L’etre et le neant), the most outstanding existentialist
philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre being heavily influenced by Heidegger’s Being and Time,
defined two types of being34. The first is the brute existence of being (etre-en-soi) such as
trees, animals, e.t.c. while the second is consciousness (etre-pour-soi). This second kind of
Being is what Sartre referred as nothing. This is because for him, consciousness cannot be
said to be an object of consciousness itself35. It is obvious therefore that the authenticity of
the human person is indescribable but lies in the self awareness or consciousness of the
Dasein following Heidegger’s philosophy. Thus it can be said that though humanity is
conscious of God’s existence, the quintessence of God is indescribable. Little wonder
9
Einstein claimed that; “the most comprehensible thing about God is that He is
incomprehensible”36
.
For Karl Popper, the traditional religious affirmations are not analogical truths but rather
sheer nonsense.37 These traditional religious affirmations are the works of religious
anthromorphism. Little wonder God is said to be the creation of man. Since God by definition
extends beyond the frame of materiality, nothing in the material universe can most
appropriately prove God’s existence. It is to be noted at this point that anthropomorphism has
brought different forms of atheism such as; implicit and positive, weak and strong, practical
and theoretical, e.t.c. These forms of atheism are warranted by insufficient explanation or
definition of God in human language. The incongruence between the Being of God and the
limitation brought by anthropomorphism dissatisfied some philosophers making them unable
to come to terms with the existence of God.
In the first of his five books on Ethics, Spinoza wanted to liberate readers from the dangers of
ascribing human traits to God through a critical reconsideration of anthropomorphism. Hence
Spinoza sought an idiosyncratic and philosophical argument on the existence and nature of
God. He had a primary reason of rejecting anthropomorphism in the sense of attributing
human characteristics to something non human such as plants, animals, sky or God.
Spinoza’s denial of anthropomorphism has the following implications:
That God is an impersonal power who cannot respond to human beings’ request as
defined in anthropomorphism. For Spinoza, such God neither rewards nor punishes
thereby disproving the religious belief on fear and moralism as God inspired.
It attacked the teleological proves on the existence of God. Teleological prove on the
existence of God assumes that God acts according to reasons and purposes. This was
the anchor of Aristotle’s account of nature which was borrowed by medieval
theologians in the prove of God’s existence. This is most apt to the Christian Biblical
narrative on creation of a God who made the world according to a plan comparable to
a craftsman.38