Question Can "God" be used as a name for whatever created the universe, while not actually meaning the "God" that exists in religion? Just a quick example, if the Big Bang was caused by a massive black hole that eventually absorbed all existing matter before imploding, could we call that process "god"? Or is "god" a defined word?

Accepted:
February 7, 2006

Comments

There's an old arugment called the "Cosmological Argument". (I guess it's actually many related arguments.) Roughly: Something had to cause all this stuff; that's God. There are two kinds of objections to this argument. One is that there's just no good argument that something had to cause all this stuff. In this context: How does one know that anything caused the Big Bang? Why can't it just have been uncaused? It's important not to answer: Well, everything has to have a cause. If so, then presumably God has to have a cause, too.

The other objection is that, even if there were, the "God" whose existence the argument would prove need not be much like the God of religion. And, indeed, in this case, too, that is pretty clear.

Hume pushes both forms of argument in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, if I remember correctly.

With a term like 'God' there is no single meaning that you must use, soyour own intellectual and perhaps religious interests should guide you on this.Depending on your exact interests, you may or may not find yourself ininteresting conversation with others!

For example, using the word in the way you describe won't allow you tocontribute much to conversations about how many religions have conceived of thedivine, so if you are interested in doing that this probably isn't a promisingway to proceed.

If you want to contribute to conversations about the origin of the universe,there's probably no harm in using the term 'God' you do in your example,although this may appear idiosyncratic to other cosmologists and so may not bethe best word choice.

Finally, if you are interested in spirituality more generally, perhaps youcan flesh out the idea of the divine in the manner you suggest and reach someinteresting conclusions. This sort of exploration may turn out to be a usefulalternative to, on the one hand, discussions about traditional religions and,on the other, about cosmology.