A discussion about God often leads to the question: “Why do you believe in God?” or “Why don’t you believe in God?” But when you further drill down, you notice you don’t agree what ‘God’ is. The unbelieving are usually tuning out there. Because why should they bother to discuss the existence of something that is not well-defined. And right so. But when you discuss things that are not of the ontological category “Physical Object” it is always difficult to define them. (As a side note: It is also difficult to define physical objects. However, there we are more willing to just accept a definition.)

For example, let us look at numbers. Numbers do not exist in a physical sense. However, most people would agree that they do exist. Or that they are something. 1 + 1 = 2 not because of experience. Because we added many times, one apple to another apple to see there are now two apples. It is because of the properties of the numbers ‘1’ and ‘2’ and what ‘+’ and ‘=’ mean. It has nothing to do with the physical world. But if we would now start discussing the existence of ‘1’, we would see some challenges. Let us take one challenge to the existence of God. I witnessed once a debate between a renowned christian and an atheist. The atheist, at one point, challenged the christian by saying: “God show yourself.” and then claimed: “Why should I bother if he doesn’t do so?” But no one would ever say this to the number ‘2’. Numbers are just from another ontological category.

No person of faith would claim God to be a physical object located in space and time. It is something else. But if you are not talking about this ontological category, it becomes immediately challenging to say any positive statement about its existence. Speaking to scientific people, they only feel comfortable having maybe three ontological categories. Which are: ‘Physical objects’, ‘Laws of Nature’ and ‘Mathematical Objects’. They smush everything into these categories, however bad it fits in. Namely, they squeeze consciousness into the ‘Laws of Nature’ and ‘God’ too. However, the first of which is obviously from an entirely different nature. (If it is not obvious to you, I might write an article about that in the future.) In a recent article of mine about the Kalam cosmological argument for God, we concluded that the cause of the first instance of a certain ontological category has to come from another category. Meaning either the ‘Laws of Nature’ always existed and were able to cause the big bang or something else was causing the laws of nature and with them the big bang (or something like that). However, assuming the universe started at some point and before there was either no time or an infinite time of nothingness, then the laws of nature also have to have a creator outside themselves, demanding another ontological category able to cause practical time to start.

Given, God is neither an instance of the three ontological categories nor the categories themselves, it is of a different kind. Meaning, speaking about attributes of it, and its existence is hard, as we don’t know what God is. However, the religious claim is more concrete. They believe to be able to pray to God, and that he listens. So, instead of following the rabbit hole of ontology, I practice a different strategy in my life. Instead of trying to concretize the abstract, I try to find lower bounds to God.

I complete the following sentence: “God is at least …” Where others attempt to say things like: “God is omnipotent, omnibenevolent and allknowing.“ I will not do this, as these claims are hard to substantiate. So here I state the following lower bounds to God. God is at least …

• … the person I direct my prayers towards.
• … the voice in my head that wants the good for me.
• … the cause of cognitive dissonance.
• … the enforcer of sociological laws like: “The rich will become richer.” and “Love thy neighbor.”

The list could go on, but I stop here. You might want to claim that certain if not all effects could be explained by psychology or sociology. But, I found it helpful to have the concept that there is actually a unifying force or concept that cares about my life. Given you accept to think using this category, you can explore the characteristics of such a God. You can build up a relationship and find out whether he is loving or not.

When you go down either rabbit hole, you might find the urge to merge the uncaused causer with the god lower bound by the sentences I just stated. But this is an adventure you have to take yourself.