God, the Asymptote

I am agnostic when it comes to divinity, which means I don’t know if (a) God exists or not. I am a thiest, though, which means that I believe in (a) God. However, to avoid cognitive dissonance, my faith in God is predicated on negative (or apophatic) theology.

A criticism of negative/apophatic theology is that it’s cowardly and shouldn’t be taken too seriously. And I agree with this charge. But I am comfortable with holding this view because it is the most humble and intellectually honest position that I can take. Perhaps, it’s most wise to acknowledge our limitations. If it’s a cowardly stance, that is because it is a stance that yields to the fear of God. Should we not be cowards in the face of the divine? A proponent of a particular religion may respond that the position is cowardly, not because it fears God, but because it fears arguments made by detractors of their religion. This response is only relevant, though, to those who both hold this position alongside whatever religion they subscribe to. And that may be where my personal views diverge. From what I’ve inferred, adopting both a negative/apophatic theological view alongside a positive/cataphatic (religious) view is contradictory. They are mutually exclusive; incompatible. So the claim that negative/apophatic theology shouldn’t be taken seriously is made to prioritize the proseltyzing/evangelical perpective. Using western terminology, the best way that I could describe myself in this domain is as a Cultural Chrisitan with a Negative/Apophatic Theology. I believe in God, but I don’t necessarily believe in Christian doctrine. So, while I do take Negative/Apophatic Theology seriously, what I believe should in fact be taken less seriously are religions. I believe that God is greater than any religion can reveal. Or rephrased into a negation, God is not limited to religion.

I’m no scholarly theologian, and my interest is not in engaging with all of the literature surrounding God. I only intend to define my position for myself, and to project it here. Why am I interested in this in the first place? I was raised in a church and I spent a great deal of my life engaging with thoughts and beliefs related to God. Most of it boils down to what I mentioned before, resolving cognitive dissonance in order to clear up my worldview.

But let me provide the closest thing to a positive/cataphatic description of my perspective on God that maintains coherence. It’s based on the ideas of the God of the Gaps and of asymptotes. The God of the Gaps argument is that gaps in scientific knowledge serve as evidence for the existence of God. This is a contentious position that was criticized heavily for its reliance on humanity’s ignorance. The clearest criticism is that under this belief, God becomes an ever-diminishing entity because as scientific understanding increases, the size of the gaps for God to reside in decreases. My only resolution is found in Mysterianism, which is the philosophical position that there are limits to human knowledge and that certain aspects of reality are inaccessible to humans. In this sense, I see God as the asymptote. And if the scientific endeavor has the ultimate goal of achieving omniscience, then the limit of human knowledge as it approaches the divine is infinite. Represented mathematically, lim K→G f(K) = ∞, where K = knowledge and G = God.

In other words, while scientific knowledge will increase, there is a chasm, or gap, between what humans can understand and the domain of God. And science is the human endeavor to bridge that gap. But again, I believe that we can only asymptotically approach the other side, where God resides. Of course, I’m only asserting this and cannot provide any evidence. This is taken on faith. However, it does resolve my cognitive dissonance and accurately describes my worldview as it pertains to divinity, transcendence, and spirtuality. But this view doesn’t require or advocate for any specific religion as a basis for theism. It isn’t deism, as it doesn’t claim whether or not God intervenes in the universe. It’s simply a basis for theistic faith. I’m otherwise agnostic.

The only practical difference between this position and atheism is in attitude. This position is open. Whereas an atheist may much more readily rule out divine explanations to phenomena that do not (yet) have scientific explanations, I remain open-minded.