Who is God?

Chapter 2

Faced with diverse opinions and understandings of who God is, how can we know whether or not there is even a supernatural, transcendent Supreme Being? If there is, how can we find out what his essence and attributes are, and of what relevance he is to the realm of nature, to humankind generally, and to each one of us individually? How do we know whatever we do know, or whatever we think we know, about these topics? How much of what we think we know is really true? Does God really exist, or is what we think we know of and about him merely a figment of our imaginations? This type of questioning is addressed in this chapter.

BY HUMAN TESTIMONY?

We human beings gain much, probably most, of the knowledge which we have about any topic on the basis of human testimony, that is to say, on the basis of what someone tells us. The knowledge which we gain in this way serves as the basis for many of our actions. This is the means whereby we gain knowledge of historical events. How do we know that George Washington was the first President of the United States? Because we were told so by teachers or writers. How do we know of the conquests of Gaul by a man named Caesar? By third- or fourth-hand testimony (or twenty-third or twenty-fourth), which in turn is based upon Caesar’s own testimony. We rely on this method of gaining information on more recent events as well. How do we know that the Chicago Cubs won a baseball game yesterday? Some people may know because they observed it (no matter how unlikely and non-repeatable it may have been), but for the rest of us our knowledge is based on the testimony of some other person, such as a newspaper reporter or a radio or television announcer.

Many of us as human beings come to know whatever we know about the existence and the essence of God, or whatever we think we know about God, on the basis of human testimony. We may ask people and hear what they tell us; they may even tell us without being asked. We may read what they have written. We may come to accept it as part of our own body of knowledge, and we may even be very confident that it is in full conformity with truth and reality.

There is no way whereby we can avoid relying frequently upon human testimony in building up our story of knowledge. We cannot stop and take the time to seek alternative avenues of proof for everything we are told by other human beings, and no one person would have the ability to do so even if unlimited time were to be available. And there is no need to do so anyway, because much of what we are told is fully reliable. Yet it may be partly or completely in error. None of us do or should believe everything that someone else tells us.

On what basis do we accept as reliable and valid the testimony of another human being? Two considerations are of particular importance --- the reliability of the testifier and the means whereby he or she obtained the information.