Asking "Does God exist?" is like the question "What does laughter smell like?" Both questions involve a category mistake. "Laughter" and "smell" are different kinds of things. "God" and "existence," similarly, are different kinds of things. In fact, God is not a thing at all. God does not exist like other things exist because God is not a thing. You could say, "God is no thing," nothing at all. But then God is not "no thing" either. We cannot say positively what God is, nor can we positively say what God is not because to say what God is not suggests we know what God is—an assertion, a denial and a denial of a denial.
I became a Christian minister 41 years ago, and since then I have done my fair share of God-talk. Even so, I find it increasingly difficult to talk about God. When asked "Does God exist?" (a favorite question of pollsters to judge religiosity) the answers "yes" or "no" are, for me, inadequate. I want to say, "Yes, of course God exists!" God exists in liturgy, in theology, in imagination, in sacred books, and in not so sacred books. But I also want to say, "No, God does not exist in the way that other things exist, for God is always 'other than'."
But all such talk begs the question. It assumes that we know what we mean by "God," and that is not at all clear. It's one of the problems I find with the "new atheists" who make strong arguments against believing in God. The God they argue against is often a caricature of God; God as a big person in the sky watching over we little people on earth, a puppet-master pulling the strings. In those terms, I too would be an atheist!
The deeper theology in all traditions tells us that God is not a being but, in Tillich's phrase, the Ground of Being—the ground of everything that is. God is in all, but is not the same as all. God is found in nature but is not nature. For ninth century John Scotus Erigena, God is "nothing" and God is "everything." Armstrong says, "The exercise leads us to apophasis, the breakdown of speech, which cracks and disintegrates before the absolute unknowability of what we call God" (p. 126).
If this is true and we cannot know God in any absolute way, then where does that leave us?
First, if we cannot know what God is, then any exercise to try to know God is futile, and the best thing to do is, as it were, abandon God. I have been tempted, but perhaps not seriously.
Second, if we make God so transcendent and the life we live so base, then we might despise the world of nature. This is the case in the more severe forms of Platonism and Neo-Platonism. The great Saint Augustine moved in this direction. Nature and humanity as a part of nature, is rejected as utterly awful; wrapped up in the terrible doctrine of original sin. The goal of life is to escape the world of sense and pleasure in pursuit of the unknowable purity of God. Some Eastern spiritualities take this view too. I'm not tempted.
Third, we might still pursue the knowledge of God, realizing that God-talk is always analogical, always mythos, always inadequate, yet knowing, too, the inexorable pull of the divine spark within. Theology, liturgy, silence, reason, and nature are all sign-posts through which—with awe and wonder—we catch glimpses of the divine mystery; as we transcend the present moment, know our insignificance yet at-homeness in the universe, and discover meaning beyond words. The experience changes us. We become better people, and that is to the good.
Enjoy the moment,
+Ab. Andy