Here's how you answer this question: who is God? When somebody says, 'So David, who is God?' What do you say? Well, there are a lot of different answers. You can certainly waffle your head off about a question like that. You can talk about a Plotinus-like

access to ever more refined layers of reality, a god followed by successive, successive superior gods, that sort of thing. Um, I think we're pretty limited. We're limited to a particular tradition, which is the Judeo-Christian tradition. That's where the resonance exists, and we

we understand that tradition best. I, I know there are Hindu traditions that have a completely different conception of God. The Buddhist tradition has a different concept of God, but I can't talk to those because all I know from those traditions I know as a matter of scholarship,

not intimacy. The Judeo-Christian God is outside time and space, outside the physical universe. It's not one of those things we encounter within the universe. It has certain attributes, certain powers which we assign to it. I mean, this is theology. It's not a matter of a physical

science. We're not discovering this. And there are two, there are two or at least three additional doctrines associated with the question that you just asked. One is the, the very old idea that um, within human beings there's a kind of image of God, that is, there is a

asynchronous appreciation of God for human beings, human beings for God, which is manifested in art by the assumption that a human being somehow reflects the divine. The second assumption is that the surest path to intimacy with the deity lies within it

and that's certainly what the Buddhists say as well, that is the what is within gives you the surest, most accessible way to reach the divinity. And the third is a series of pronouncements about human nature that are part of Western theology.

For example, the Christian doctrine of fallen human nature, which suggests to get back to your question that when we talk about God, I'm talking about people in our position. We talk about God, we're talking about a theoretical entity and it's just

theoretical because we have no hands-on experience. It's beyond experimental science. Who has an intense personal interest in moral judgment and that's an aspect which I think is severely neglected when we talk about God. We're not talking about someone who fulfills a certain

role in explaining how the universe came about. Well, He created the whole thing. Okay, we know that. We know that that's a traditional assumption. But a less traditional assumption, especially in the 21st century, it's not only a creating God, it's not only a God

with enormous powers, embarrassingly large powers, it's not only an infinite God, but it is a guy. And this is the crucial point, it's a God who has a peculiar interest in our moral nature and who is prepared, for example, to judge us.

That's part of the Judeo-Christian tradition, the judging aspect, and it has been the foundational stone for virtually every system of Judeo-Christian morality since at least the fifth century BC. Very much neglected because the question is wide open when

you take that foundational stone away you just yank it away and you eliminate the idea of the universal system of judgment judging human beings for their acts during their life um what's the result what happens to society when you take that foundational stone away this has

been a question that I think is has been pertinent since at least 1830 when the great movement of secular liberation from Christian doctrine began to accelerate and spread to every corner of every corner of Europe in the United States we're talking about a 200 year

old process secularism is not just the last 10 years it's a long complicated tradition and we are living in a secular society it's absolutely obvious we're not living in a society where people are consumed by the thought of judgment or that they're proposing in any way to put

inhibitions or restraints on their desires or to conform in any way to whatever the code of conduct may have been enforced in the 18th and 17th and 16th century who are in fact proposing to make it up as they go along

which I'm afraid we're all doing um but when you remove that judgment you were making a point about what happens when you remove that judgment what happens well it's it's like asking what happens in a physical system you withdraw the energy from it I mean the physical system can

look just the way it it did before but there's nothing doing any work anymore let's just say it's a piston with no external source of of energy driving the piston well I I I cannot say look it's perfectly obvious what happens but

I can say if you want to know what happens, there is a correlation between the rise of secularism and the nature of society. Look around, look around. Are people restraining their behavior? Are they inhibited by a traditional series of codicils being enforced throughout the answer? Seems to

be no. Secularism seems to allow a great many things that previously were forbidden. Is that just come down to accountability? Is judgment accountability? Is, I mean, something that Pat always talks about is accountability, like who's holding the politicians accountable? Well, you know

the voters, but that's a whole other question. But judgment at the end of the day comes down to accountability. Are you going to be accountable for your actions, good or bad? Is that essentially the, that's a good question. I think it's very similar to

the question I was raising. I mean, Hobbes said the fear of death is the source of law. The fear of violent death is the source of conscience. It's a source of conscience because violent death, you meet death without any preparation, any theological preparations, and you're

going to be judged instantaneously. That's a very pregnant remark by, by Hobbes. But I think that accountability is another way of saying, look, we're now living in a society where the essential force behind judgment, the thing that made it live, that's been progressively withdrawn.

There's no point in denying it, seems to me. No point in saying, well, we've, we've recreated a moral universe in every way comparable to the, the moral universe that we have denied or derided. If you enjoyed this short clip, click over here to watch

another short clip and if you want to watch the entire episode or the entire podcast click here [Music] you

The TRUTH About God

The TRUTH About God

Scripts