Chapter 16
God or gods?

Recent chapters have concluded:

So, we have moved out of the realm of atheism (no supernatural creator) and pantheism (all is God) into some form of theism (a belief in one or more “gods” distinct from physical creation). To avoid confusion, let’s clarify the terms “god” (with a little “g”) and “God” (with a capital “G”):

god: A supernatural being having some kind of supernatural power.

God: The greatest of all supernatural beings, and the creator of everything (including all lesser “gods”).

We previously found that the existence of a spiritual realm is self-evident. Acceptance of a spiritual realm usually is associated with acceptance of supernatural beings which exist in the spiritual realm. Almost every religion acknowledges this. For example, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim traditions generally believe in angels and evil spirits. From a natural human perspective each of these is a “supernatural being having some kind of supernatural power,” which correlates with the definition of “god” given above. Hinduism, as well as most other eastern religions, also believes in the existence of multiple gods. Likewise, Satanism, Wicca, and various other occult religions generally believe in multiple supernatural beings with supernatural powers. From this I conclude:

Multiple supernatural beings with supernatural powers exist in the supernatural realm.

While this conclusion may be good progress, we are still left with the question of whether there is one God who is greater than all others, and whether or not this one God is the source of all other gods, and ultimately the creator of everything.

Many people follow religions which are usually thought of as believing in many gods. However, many of these, including many branches of Hinduism, also believe in one God who is greater than the others, and who is often considered to be the creator of everything.

Consider further: In religions that don’t believe in one God who created everything, the various gods are usually understood to be somewhat independent of each other and are often in conflict with each other, in much the same way that people are often in conflict. Just as committees of people often have a hard time agreeing and making progress, such seems to be the case with the gods of these religions. Such a situation seems to me to be incompatible with the tremendous ordered complexity that we observe in the universe. It is difficult to conceive that the universe could have been made by multiple gods each having different opinions of how things should be.

We have previously seen that complex life in an ordered universe demands some kind of creator. Since it appears that multiple lesser gods cannot account for such a creator, it appears that there must be one God who created all things (including all other “gods”). This brings us to another conclusion:

There is one God
who is greater than all other “gods.”

For Further Reflection:

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