Five strangers in an old fashioned railway carriage get to talking. One, who had said little up to then, pipes up.

“I say, do you fellows believe in God?” The other four look somewhat embarrassed and attempt to change the subject, but she persists.

“Come on chaps no need to be ashamed, tell me what you really think.” They all hang their heads. She continues, woman-like, and catches one of them in the eye.

“You first.” He looks a little shamefaced.

“Well, as a matter of fact I do.”

“Why do you?”

“Well, you know, I just know. That’s it.” Our interrogator sees that one of the others wants to speak.

“What do you think, then?”

“What a load of rubbish. God is just a stupid superstition, made up by people with no brains to think for themselves. Of course there’s no God. As for heaven! When you die, that’s it. Done and gone.” The first speaker responds, angrily this time round.

“That’s just the sort on nonsense that makes my blood boil. When you die you’ll find hell and damnation, even that’s too good for you.” The second gets angry himself.

“What piffle. Who needs hell and damnation when you and your lot make us maim and kill just to satisfy your imaginary God.” Our interrogator intervenes, winking at the other two.

“Now then, now then calm down please. Let’s see what the others think. Now what about you?” The third of the strangers speaks.

“Well, I’m Church of England so I suppose I believe in God. We must have come from somewhere and be here for some purpose, but I don’t worry about it too much. That’s for others to do.” Then it was the turn of the fourth.

“No, I can’t believe in God. Too much mumbo jumbo for my liking. Something must have created us and all of this, and for some purpose. I sometimes wonder what it’s all about, but I’ll never know.”

By this time the true believer and the true non-believer are bursting to take over the conversation and by the end of the journey are at loggerheads, verging on the violent, urged on by their interrogator, who is the embodiment of God and the Devil, to ever greater extremes of illogicality and venom. In the meanwhile the other two have sidled off to the buffet car and are enjoying a drink and a chat about life in general and cricket in particular.

There is little hope of reconciling the views of the believer and the non-believer, both bigots in their own ways knowing that they are completely right and the other completely wrong. However the other two get on very well and could readily converse on the subject and even modify each other’s view, because ultimately they both believe in the same thing. Neither of them knows, but each would like to know if there really is a God, but they cannot accept the tenets of either the staunch believer or the staunch non-believer. They reject the view of the believer that there is a God who created everything from nothing by means which we cannot explain and perhaps should not even question. Similarly they cannot accept the certainty of the non-believer who knows that everything did indeed did come from nothing, without the involvement of any higher power, and that this should be perfectly clear to anyone with a vestige of scientific education. What they both can accept is that something must have happened to have caused the universe and all that it contains to exist, and in particular for each of them to exist and be conversing over a drink in a buffet car. For them the concept on nothingness has no meaning. They believe we came from something although not knowing and often not caring much about what that something might have been. That one calls that something God and the other just calls it something, is only a minor semantic point for neither of them claims to know exactly what it is or what it is not. So why do not both of them call that something God?

I am the Supergod who created the world and all that is in it. I have always been here, even before there was a ‘here’ or a ‘before’. At first there was nothing, not even ‘nothing’, just me. Even I find it difficult to get my head round that one, so I suggest you should not worry yourself too much about it. But I can tell you what I am now: I am all that you do not know, everything you cannot explain, your greatest desires, your worst nightmares. You have made great efforts to understand me, and as your knowledge grows, your desires achieved and your fears conquered then I become diminished. As you get bigger then I get smaller, but unless I disappear altogether my stature remains infinitely greater than yours, because I know everything and there are things you still have to find out. You can only be my equal if and when I finally disappear. Then both of us will be nothing again.

Yes, I do believe in Supergod. It is difficult to refute his own definition that he is everything we do not know, for he allows us the possibility of catching up with his knowledge, at least to the point of his uncertainty of his own origins. I have more difficulty with God and I am not convinced either that God is himself Supergod or that he is part of Supergod’s creation of the world. It may be that God is merely a creation of mankind.

God, if He does exist, appears to have communicated with us through the media of miracles, prophets, saints and even, some religions claim His son; He has spoken to some of you directly, but not as yet to me. There is a wealth of information on what He has communicated to us and how He wants us to behave and many peoples and societies have adopted the principles and conduct themselves in an orderly and humane manner for the common good of themselves and their communities. This is altogether admirable and He should be justly admired for this, whether He exists or not.

Unfortunately there are strongly conflicting views on what exactly His words mean, to the extent that a minority of His various proponents are prepared to kill and die for their beliefs. Wars are fought in His name, both sides believing in the same God, but with different views on the meaning of His teachings. Atrocities are perpetrated in His name, killing believers and non-believers alike and turning otherwise happily integrated communities into racial and religious bigots. To many it appears that God is the problem, not the solution.

What we must recognise is the power and influence of God, whether He exists or not. His manifestations, for good and for evil are obvious and to this extent I must believe in Him. Yes, I fully accept the power of God, if not God himself. As such I shall come back to Him later, that is, if He does not get to me first. But before that I must speak of another god.

I am the Megod, that part of you which fundamentally differentiates you from all other species. I may exist in all humankind or possibly only in a few select groups. I may be the product of evolution or I may have been gifted to you by some power outside of the evolutionary process. I make you good or evil, generous or selfish, kind or unkind, thoughtful or thoughtless and I give you the power to exercise these characteristics as you think best. Often I cause you to act outside of the evolutionary realm of the survival of the fittest; sometimes I make you save the weak or destroy the strong. Some of my actions you may eventually be able to explain and prove are the result of evolution; if you succeed in explaining them all then you will have proved that I do not exist and that you are indeed just another example from the multitude of species.

My mind is open on the Megod. It may be, as some scientists think, that all our characteristics can be explained by evolution. There is even the concept of a ‘God gene’ that has evolved within us to give us our Megod beliefs and powers. Some of the attempts to show that we are no different from other species border on the laughable, but just because at present they seem absurd to us does not necessarily mean that they will turn out to be untrue.

I need to look into this in more detail, but even if we can show there is no Megod it will do nothing to dim my faith in Supergod. But will it influence my belief or disbelief in God? Or in the uniqueness or otherwise of humankind?

So let us consider now the trinity of gods: Supergod, God and the personal Megods. The extremes are that none of them exist or that they all coalesce into the one True God. I must dismiss the former, for if it is true then there is no point in any further consideration of the matter. However in between there is a spectrum of possible scenarios, some of which I will examine.

*

Supergod initiated the ‘big bang’ and left it at that. This is the preferred scenario of the atheist and commends itself to scientists because of its simplicity. The big bang was followed by the expansion of matter to form the universe, the galaxies, the solar system and eventually our own dear Earth. Life evolved on Earth and quite probably elsewhere, culminating in the appearance of our modern humans. Science has made huge strides in understanding how all this came about and continues apace, in particular in understanding what makes us humans tick. Apart from the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of the big bang itself scientific thought and investigation is untrammelled by considerations of non-scientific beliefs and superstitions, in particular the existence of an omnipotent God.

Within this scenario God is a product of us humans and is nothing more than an abstract model or more precisely a series of competing models promoted by theologians and used to encourage or enforce degrees of order into human society. As a man-made phenomenon the impact of God has been studied extensively by philosophers and sociologists, and it is undoubtedly true that what to non-believers is an abstract concept is to billions of others an unquestioned reality. Thus even the full-blown atheist cannot deny the impact of God in the world even though he can vehemently deny his existence.

Another feature of this scenario is that human beings as a species are fundamentally no different from any other species even though at present we are vastly more accomplished than any rivals. Evolution states that in the longer term we have no intrinsic advantages, thus there is no reason to believe that humans will continue to dominate life on Earth and potentially elsewhere or even to survive at all.

*

My second scenario is as the first but with the vital extension that humans have bucked evolution and gained permanent advantage over other species. Evolution has taken us to the point where we have become so accomplished that we can understand evolution’s workings and modify the process to our own further advantage. To that extent while we are certainly not Supergod it can be argued that we have become godlike without any help from a God. Later on I will expand on this idea but for the time being I will leave it as just another theoretical Godless scenario.

*

My next scenario brings God into existence either as Supergod himself or as a product of Supergod’s working. This real God has all the characteristics of theological teaching and is compatible with all religions, that is, He is the God most of us of whatever race or religion were conditioned to believe in. This God at once controls are destinies let allows us free will. It is the God whose actions are often beyond our comprehension and whose motives we often question. There are many sub-plots within this scenario, for example does God control the destinies of all living things or just humans? Or perhaps just some classes of humans or possibly just one chosen class? Does God have an infinite presence in that He has been with us from the beginning and will be there at the end, or is He with us for only a finite time? Maybe He has deserted us already? These sub-plots are my area of thinking most likely to offend followers of particular religions most deeply, even so I feel I must explore them further.

*

Another scenario is that Supergod did not create a God nor does he act as God. However Supergod did create in the evolutionary process a feature which would facilitate the emergence of humans with the unique ability to evolve into the permanently dominant species. In particular humans were gifted with the characteristic I call the Megod which causes us to behave in a matter compatible with the teachings of a non-existent God. Thus we invented God to reflect how we behaved or felt we should behave rather than our behaviour being determined by a real God. Again I shall look at this in more detail.

*

Our final scenario is one that is out of vogue in Western religions but prevalent in ancient times and in some of today’s Eastern religions, namely that there are multiple Gods; such Gods might have differing roles and conflicting agendas and thus could help explain the apparent inconsistencies and vagaries of a monotheist God. While this prospect is intriguing and the stuff of some of the greatest ancient story telling, it does not actually differ from endowing a single God with multiple faces. After all the Devil features prominently in Western supposedly monotheist religions so it is with some reluctance that I must conclude that multiple Gods and a single multi-faceted God amount to one and the same thing.

*

I hope that my line of thinking is of some value to our passengers on the train and that at least now they can calm down and talk rationally about a possible trinity of the Gods. However I fear that there will be more ructions as our pretty interrogator moves on with her provocative questioning.

© Vic Forrington 2009