MY "GOD HYPOTHESIS" AND WILLIAM JAMES

In his Schopenhauerian/Nietzschean-titled work The Will to Believe, the American philosopher/psychologist William James makes the following point which at first sight seems not only to foreshadow, but virtually to coincide with my God Hypothesis:

“We cannot reject any hypothesis if consequences useful to life flow from it… If the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true.”

However, even if our use of the word hypothesis, as applied to God, may misleadingly suggest a closeness, our points are yet at some considerable variance.

It is of course possible to interpret my use of the God Hypothesis in terms of its ‘usefulness to life,’ or, to be more specific, as a pragmatic instrument of establishing a common ‘absolute’ standard, seeing that no other standard rather than “God,” can provide us with the absolute value. To approach it from the other direction, we have posited a necessary general trans-personal/trans-national standard of absolute value, and we offer to call it “God.” Why are we doing it? Exactly because each nation actually already possesses her own notion of absolute value, and identifies it as “God,” which allows us to avoid a major argument and disagreement at this crucial earliest stage of the concept’s development.

In my approach to this matter, I think that I can successfully correlate math and theology without offending anybody’s religious sensibilities and without compromising the integrity of scientific logic, either. It is here, I believe, that I have the nuanced edge over James, who does not seem to care much about nuances here. In this admittedly short entry I may only point out the fact that James approaches his hypothesis from the angle of a certain psychological balance between skepticism, which rejects all unsubstantiated belief, and the will to believe, which accepts anything that makes a person moral and happy, unless it is categorically false, and proven as such. Although sharing in part his pragmatism (but only in part!), I do not justify any hypothesis by the standard of its usefulness alone (thus substituting God by our belief in Him!), but merely calling for the acceptance as a matter of principle of any hypothesis that works within the domain of its inception.

God exists not just because believing in Him makes the believer moral and happy. He exists (or at least, He is supposed to exist) absolutely, that is, outside our belief or experience, and, as such, He is unknowable and incomprehensible. (Refusing to recognize this higher Being and limiting the All to the narrow boundaries of our senses and comprehension would be the height of human hubris, equal to, or even exceeding that hubris, noted by Nietzsche, which characterizes our attitude to God. (See my entry The Spider Of Purpose, posted on this blog on April 11^th, 2013.)

As for my own God hypothesis, it is by no means related to the substance of man’s relationship with God, but represents an instrument of inquiry, while also allowing the carriers of different religions to overcome their religious prejudices against each other’s religions. In my approach, our religiosity and philosophical humility toward God does not suffer, whereas in William James’s pragmatic approach to God, it becomes overwhelming and condescending toward God (we effectively allow Him to exist just because He makes us happy!), reflecting in this attitude to God a giant extension of human arrogance.

The bottom line of my argument comes down to the fact that without our sincere humility in this matter, we can hardly develop a common concept of the Absolute, being tainted from the very start by our insincerity.

(See also my entry The Earth Is Flat, next in this sequence.)