One person’s view on the existence of God and the existence of Israel

There is an argument that goes that God exists, but that proof is a concept that is man made and is therefore irrelevant and does not apply when it comes to an examination of God’s existence. Where God is concerned, there is no such thing as “proof” and, furthermore, that what there is, we do not actually know.

If, however, we ask whether God actually exists, says the detractor of the foregoing, we come up against the very same conclusion – that is, when the subject of any discussion is God, words and phrases like “creator”, “existence”, slow to anger and so on and so forth, cannot be applied, as they are to humans and other objects known to man. For God cannot be conceptualized by humans; could not even have been conceptualized by the Patriarchs, who were, after all, human beings, and so, therefore, He cannot be objectified. Not being objectifiable, He cannot – contrary to the claim made by Moses that He had 13 attributes (14, if you count the eternality of God, and 15 if you count Moses’ claim that God created the world, for God is thus presented as a, as the, Creator, etc, etc) – be described or defined using terms that can only be applied to humans and other objects.

How did Moses know that God was Creator? How did Moses know anything about God? Did Moses perhaps feel “inspired”, coming up with the concept of God and calling on the concept, “God”, during his travails with the tribes of Israel on the way to Canaan, in the same way that he appeared to need his staff? From coming up with the concept of God and the statement that He existed, the road to asserting that He had attributes, limited in number though these were, was easy.

The attributes, once enumerated, would, the argument goes, lead to confusion in Jewish thought as they effectively anthropomorphized the being called God.

In fact, Moses was anthropomorphizing God before he set out His 13 attributes – viz Genesis 1:27 where it is stated that God created man in His own image, then in successive verses in Exodus, leading up to – and beyond – the giving of the Ten Commandments where God is said to have spoken to Moses.

If you then say that God promised the Patriarchs the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession, no-one blinks, as by this time, the anthropomorphization of God is thoroughly ingrained in the foundations of religion.

(If you anthropormize God in these ways, it is but easy to graduate to the next level, which is to accept Jesus as the third manifestation of the Trinitarian whole.)

But, if you realize that what you are doing is bringing down the being called God to the level of man; if you refuse to pin God down and say that such statements and attributes cannot be applied for we do not know anything about God, then you are saying that God does not “exist” and never has done.

Once you say, God exists, you open the floodgates to other statements describing God, one such being that God promised Canaan as an everlasting possession to the forefathers and Moses, all these statements being predicated on the claim that God exists.

The implications for believers – and non-believers who harbor secret, or unarticulated beliefs – are there for all to see.

The State of Israel can be said to exist now, but will it exist for ever?