Proofs of Deity, II

God, Fact or Fiction?
By John Taylor; 2007 Dec 26 (1983 Apr 08)

We just launched our discussion of the proofs of God with a talk the Master gave in New York just after arriving in America. Let us follow this up with one of my earliest discussions of the proofs of Deity, which I wrote on April 8, 1983 for my friend and lodger at the time, Albert Ouimet. He challenged me to write an essay a day on a topic of his choosing. (I kept up this writing pace for about a month, as I recall -- only now am I sufficiently prepared to write a daily essay indefinitely). Anyway, this is a heavily re-chewed version of what I spewed out back in my salad days.

 

God, Fact or Fiction? Part One, How We Know

"Think of God as a direction rather than an object." (Rainer Maria Rilke)

God is an unknowable essence, so by definition it is impossible to produce a rigorous, final proof of His existence. It is difficult enough to prove the existence of beings on our own level, for me to be sure that you are you, or for you to be entirely certain that I am a human and not a machine; imagine how much harder it is to point to a Being by nature beyond comprehension. Nonetheless, we do arrive at a comfortable degree of certainty about one another's existence by what the Baha'i Writings term "confirmations." I do not have problems or doubts about the existence of a spouse, parent or child because that is confirmed by our reciprocal interaction.

"Confucius was asked if there was a single word that sums up the true way, and he responded, `"reciprocity" is such a word.'" (Analects 15:23)

If I am in interaction with someone, I love them and know them, and doubt does not enter in. I am constantly in receipt of "live" confirmations of their existence as long as we have direct reciprocal relations. Nonetheless, I have cousins and other family members whom I have never met, yet I do not doubt their existence. The same is true of the several billion human beings that I have never met and never will. I may never hear of them, nor they of me, but I do not doubt their existence, however circumstantial the evidence that they are out there.

This is why I believe that before asking how we know God, we first must ask how we know anything at all, or, more to the point, how we can know any person at all. When we are sure about this we can then proceed to the question of whether we know God or not.

What does it mean to say that I know (savoir) something, or know (connaitre) someone? In neither case can my knowledge be considered solid and unchanging enough to be examined as one would pick up an object in the hand. A person is impossible really to know, connaitre, without having seen and lived in their skin from the moment of their birth. Even then, with complete knowledge of their past, that person would still have free will; I could in no way predict the decisions he or she may make in future. No, it is hard than that; how often does it happen that we do things that surprise ourselves, much less other minds. So even that person does not have complete knowledge of his or her self. Thus, the basis of personal knowledge is pretty shaky. Yet we do not doubt that other minds exist.

Nor is it any easier for the savoir type of knowledge. Ultimately, objects cannot be known without complete omniscience. I might know everything humanly possible about a certain object, its past and composition as a thing in itself; but how do I really understand it if I do not have complete knowledge of its significance in context, its place in the universe of time and space? I must know how it fits into the cosmos, and that would require knowing everything else as well.

Thus according to this chain of reasoning the only being that could know anything in the strict sense of the word would be an omniscient God. Therefore Baha'u'llah says that we can only know God through the Manifestation, and the Manifestation only through His own Self.

"The source of all learning is the knowledge of God, exalted be His Glory, and this cannot be attained save through the knowledge of His Divine Manifestation." (Baha'u'llah, Tablets, 156)

Through God's holy Mirror we gain knowledge of God as both Connaitre and Savoir. We are confirmed as we interact with Him in prayer, which brings about the reciprocity in our relations with Him to the point where we cannot doubt His existence, for He is our Father, and I His son. Thus the proofs of God become my life process, ever dying but at the same time ever flowering again.

"Likewise continue thou to ascend through one Revelation after another, knowing that thy progress in the Knowledge of God shall never come to an end, even as it can have no beginning." (The Bab, Selections, 91)