behind the dizzying variety of surface languages of theism, atheism, non-theism, pantheism, pan(en)theism, and religious humanism and naturalism used here there exists among us a shared, empirically rooted, if highly minimalist, definition of God.
the need within a liberal church for “inclusivity”, “tolerance of different beliefs” and a general acceptance that, these days, everyone creates to some extent, to borrow a phrase from the sociologist Ulrich Beck, a “God of One’s Own”.
Dennett asks, “Why don’t the stewards [of the word “God”] just coin new terms for the revised conceptions and let go of the traditional terms along with the discarded conceptions?”
Dennett believes that all religious people simply keep using the word God because it helps them/us pretend that there is, at least one thing religious people can agree about, “we all believe in God; we’re not atheists!” Sadly, this reveals that, just like the religious fundamentalists he so dislikes, Dennett seems to want to separate the world into two distinct groups, the wheat and the tares, the good and the bad and the enlightened and benighted. His good group (the wheat) is, of course, made up of those who have courageously developed an intellectual clarity which allows them to admit they are atheists.
His bad group (the tares) are those who continue to use the word God, whether wrongly but honestly (i.e. people who really believe in a supreme being) or wrongly but dishonestly (i.e. those who just use the discredited term to show they are not atheists).
So where does that leave a group of liberal religious people like us who value (and generally hold) a naturalistic world view but who still use the word “God” and other words in our culture’s religious lexicon? On the face of it we seem clearly to be gathered together in Dennett’s dark and dull bundle of tares. If we accept his division of the world then we’re certainly amongst the most benighted and to be pitied bunch of tares because we keep using the word God even though we know it really refers to nothing existent or truly shared and meaningful.
Dennett’s argument has power because the word God has so often been used by religious people to theorise about a thing or a being that either does, or does not, exist.
as it seeks a meaningful continuity with, and understanding of, the past it doesn’t, at the same time, require anything like identity and agreement with the past. It was first clearly articulated among us by a twentieth-century American theologian who, between 1927 and 1947, was Professor of Christian Theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School; his name was Henry Nelson Wieman (1884—1975).
as his thought developed he left behind the Presbyterianism of his youth and spent the last twenty six years of life as a Unitarian/Universalist.
Wieman was himself a convinced religious naturalist. This meant he thought it was perfectly possible (and, in fact, was desirable) for religion to contain no supernatural elements at all.
whatever the word “God” meant, or to what it “refers”, it was for Wieman something natural and this worldly.
he set about articulating a very minimal definition of “God” that he thought could clearly, and empirically, be shown to exist. What he thought existed was, “that Something upon which human life is most dependent for its security, welfare and increasing abundance.” He was of the opinion, as am I, “[t]hat there is such a Something cannot be doubted. The mere fact that human life happens, and continues to happen, proves that this Something, however, unknown, does certainly exist.”
The second thing Wieman was concerned about was to encourage us away from asking the normal highly speculative questions about what kinds of qualities God must have to deserve our absolute devotion or worship [such as omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience]. These questions are, of course, the kinds things that Dennett and conventional religious believers get stuck on. Instead Wieman wanted to encourage us to talking about God in a functional way. That is to say we should try to define God in terms of “his” function as that toward which we ought to direct our final devotion and loyalty” (Hardwick: Events of Grace pp. 21-22).
As Wieman’s thought developed into the 1930s and beyond he increasingly began to associate the notion of God (that Something) with “creativity”. God became for him the “creative event” - that constantly refulgent Something, that “World Bud” which constantly gifts us, not with just an extraordinary natural universe but, within it, a life of value and meaning - a world filled, at least always potentially, with ever new “created goods”. This “creative event” was God and to it we ought always to direct our final devotion and loyalty. We should never commit the mistake of directing our final devotion and loyalty to any created good, even such created goods as the exemplar Jesus or the Christian Church. This is idolatry. Only the “creative event” itself was worthy of being called God and of commanding our final devotion and loyalty.
that this “creative event” exists can be seen to be a natural fact of the universe and, moreover, something accessible to our empirical, scientific methods. Our religious question, i.e. that which concerns the, for us, ultimate value and meaning of life, is answered when we understand how best to respond and commit to God, to this “creative event” with complete devotion and loyalty.
Charley Hardwick, a contemporary commentator and advocate of Wieman’s basic theology, sums this up what this looks like in a very simple and powerful way:
“Openness to the future grounded in the giftedness of life received as a gift.”
References
Brown, Andrew James. “Openness to the Future Grounded in the Giftedness of Life Received as a Gift.” Caute, 13 Oct. 2013, https://andrewjbrown.blogspot.com/2013/10/openness-to-future-grounded-in.html.