As for God: the God of Genesis isn’t a Christian deity anyway, although Christians have tried to claim ‘him’; but that’s another story. As for God being “an actor, existing and taking action” — I guess it depends on how you read Genesis. I read it as myth and anthropomorphism, as part of humanity’s ongoing wrestling match with reality, an early attempt to make sense of our origins, develop a sense of purpose and offer a polemical thrust against other ancient near eastern mythologies…

“Existence is a characteristic of contingent beings and things”
Where do you get that from?

I’m not particularly sure that applies to a “Christian” God as you seem to indicate, since the Bible starts out with “In the beginning God created…”. An actor, existing and taking action. Then the story talks about creation happening. So an actor outside of creation, not contingent on anything previously created. If that is the case, how does that follow given your line of reasoning?

As a defense of monotheism–and, along with that, a defense of your monotheistic religion of choice–I would say this piece is about as good as such defenses get.

However, I have some problems with it–some reasons why it remains, to me at least, completely unconvincing.

First of all, for all its confident rhetoric, the piece presents no evidence of any sort for its claims. Everything is a part of God? Existence is an attribute of God, not the other way around? God came to Earth as a person? God came to Earth as Jesus, specifically, not as a figure from some other religion?

These statements might all sound impressive, when spoken forcefully, but the above piece provides no evidence for any of them, very likely because none of them have any evidence to offer for themselves.

If everything is a part of God, if to exist means to be a part of a god, shouldn’t you have to provide some evidence for that, other than mere anecdotes or strong feelings of conviction? How can you trust those anecdotes when so many have proven unfounded? How you can trust those feelings, when everyone feels something, and not always reliably, and often those feelings are in violent opposition to one another?

If God came to Earth as a person–and not just any person but one man, one time, more than 2,000 years ago–shouldn’t the evidence of his miraculous life extend beyond the few and often contradictory accounts of his most devoted followers? Why are there no contemporaneous accounts of Jesus during his life from nonbelievers? Why couldn’t even the churches of his closest disciples agree in their Gospels about whether or not he was born of a virgin? Why do the more miraculous aspects of Jesus’ life seem so derivative when he compared with other myths of that time and earlier times, such as those of Horace and Mythras? Et cetera!

As for your paragraph addressing why God would have sent his son to Earth–or himself as his son, if you like–that’s all speculation founded on some ultimately nihilistic philosophy–the idea that if there is no God, or no greater matrix of reality or unreality, then all of this life is just worthless, just “remains…fossils…a dream,” and I couldn’t disagree with that more. Maybe reality without God would be worthless to you, but those of us who focus on experiencing reality unadorned by folkloric or faith-based filigrees think life is wonderful and amazing enough as it is.

The Universe is so full of mystery at every level, from the quantum to the universal–real mystery that challenges us to discover it, to know it–that there’s really no need to posit the existence of other, unknowable mysteries, mysteries whose roots lie in Bronze Age superstitions, legends, and now-unsupportable beliefs.

Dave