In this final post I am going to explain why I have a belief in God and what grounds such a belief.
The first thing to say is that I call this belief a 'faith' type belief because I don't believe my reasons for justification are sufficient to meet the standards of the statistical irrationality criterion that I have discussed in my earlier posts. That is not to say that my beliefs are without justification - I just recognise that there are certain steps that perhaps appeal to certain intuitions that I have that others might not. I like to think of beliefs as having argumentative value on different levels; the belief I intend to expose here is one that I find interesting and observe, but I would not be confident that others would be convinced. Remember as well that I posited that there are no inherent issues with having such faith based beliefs. In accepting that this belief holds such a status I also renounce my ability to use such a belief as the basis of rational argument.
So to start, I would say that I find it very difficult to grasp what are the key aspects of God. The essence of God, one might say. How does one characterise what a God means or even could mean. Different religions have their own meanings, but I think one of the fundamental intuitions is that a God is something 'out there'. By this, I intend to capture the notion that there is something special or supernatural about a God. They go beyond normal understandings or limitations. This at least, is how I think about God.
The next question of course is why I believe that such a being exists. The reason is because I believe in a degree of Modal Realism; a possible world semantics. Essentially I think that there are infinitely many possible worlds that are extremely similar to ours. When I flip a coin, the coin can be heads or tails. Suppose in our 'actual' world, the coin lands on heads, then this is the history that we are tracing. Yet I think that there exists these additional worlds when in fact that the coin flipped tails, and a new history was created. Essentially, I think of these worlds as all existing on some form of timeline, where at every instance or decision, a new branch is created and new worlds are created.
How would I go about convincing rationally one of this position? I think it is difficult, although there are certainly many attempts at doing so. Some of these arguments may in fact be quite convincing. My belief in modal realism however I take to be a faith since I find the whole notion just interesting and perhaps my justification is insufficient on a statistical rationality grounds.
Anyhow, my thought is that in these infinitely many possible worlds, there are also infinitely many counterparts of ourselves that exist in these worlds. Now, I also think that most of these worlds will be unable to access each other, largely based on intuitions that it seems we have not met any extra-world beings. By this, I mean that there are essentially rules that ordinary beings will have to obey in terms of possible worlds. In normal situations, we are unable to transcend worlds or affect individuals in other worlds. The possible worlds are distinct and unconnected in some sense even if they have a similar basis.
I also believe in the idea that we can have a number of different universes, a multiverse if you will. This bears some strong similarities with our possible worlds semantic expect it perhaps also leaves open the existence of worlds or universes that seem to obey fundamentally different rules. The possible worlds that I discussed earlier generally refers to 'close worlds', which makes sense if I'm basing it on a world that occurs or is even created when I flip a coin. The two worlds that arise from the coin flip are of course going to be extremely similar in that they have the exact same history up until that point. Different universes allows for the rules to change a bit more.
I think furthermore, that because these different universes can exist, that it is possible that special beings, 'out there' can exist. The possibility is that these special beings are able to in some sense tr transcend the possible worlds. These beings might be able to come to different universes and might not be limited by the same rules that ordinary agents such as ourselves are subject to. Due to this, we might call such beings 'supernatural', or even Godly.
Thus when I say that I believe in God, I refer to a belief that there exists these beings that could exist in other worlds or universes, that may have the special ability to transcend such possible worlds or universes and enter others (not necessarily ours).
To someone reading this, this might sound completely absurd. I think that there are actual reasonable arguments that can be made to convince about this claim, but I don't see it as my responsibility to do so. The reason is because I believe this, but do not intend to use it as a justification for other things because the 'Gods' are rather different. In religions, that might want to justify their God's existence to convince others to do certain things (e.g. to worship him). They might say that their God is omniscient, omnibenevolent etc. I make no such claims about the God(s) that I describe. I do not know if they have any special knowledge, love or if I will ever experience them. I see no special reason to worship them or talk to them via prayer. I simply believe in their existence, in a faith based manner.
One main reason is because I find these notions of modal realism and multiverses rather uncertain. I do not have a grasp myself of the extent to which I believe such claims. My characterisation of Godlike being is also vague because I do not know the requirements for a God, if there even is such a set. Instead, I am merely attempting to capture intuitions about something 'out there', 'supernatural'.
