Is There a God?

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Few people want to say they don’t believe in a god. This is because everyone is supposed to believe in “something.” The result of this is that a lot of different somethings get called “God”--and all sorts of people with all sorts of different ideas then can say, “I believe.”

For example, God can be personal or impersonal, a spirit or a force, a being or an essence. God can be singular, a trinity, or one of many gods. God can exist outside the universe, inside the universe, or even be the universe. And while some see God as clearly definable, others fear that too much precision would serve to limit God. They therefore prefer to render God vague, mysterious, or indefinable.

On top of this, as philosopher Daniel Dennett points out, “Many people believe in belief in God. That is, they think it's a good thing.” So they profess the belief but avoid thinking too much about what they mean by it. To the degree that they have specific ideas, they rarely explore their full implications.    

All of this creates a messy situation that atheists, in particular, find frustrating. For how can they begin to argue about a concept that won’t hold still or that so many people define in different ways? This tends to force atheists in their books to use what they consider the “standard” definitions of God and then go after those. And to the extent that readers mean the same sorts of things by the term God, this can be a fruitful approach. But to the extent that some readers don’t identify with the definitions provided, the book will seem to be attacking a straw man and miss the point.