The Hubris of Knowing What We Cannot Know: The Business of Selling Faith, Certainty, and Divine Authority

There is something fundamentally strange about the way humanity approaches the concept of God. We argue about “His” existence, debate “His” intentions, attempt to establish “His” characteristics, and construct elaborate systems of belief around what we claim to know about “Him.” Yet, when pressed to explain precisely what God is, let alone why we so often provide a gender that is different from the one we more readily associate with giving birth, we frequently arrive at an answer that seems to transcend the very boundaries of human understanding.

Perhaps this is not a coincidence. Perhaps the concept of God, as humanity has constructed it, is inherently beyond our ability to define with any meaningful degree of accuracy or precision. Or perhaps the problem is that we have created a definition so expansive, so abstract, and so resistant to contradiction that it can accommodate virtually any conceivable understanding of existence.

God is frequently described as “being” itself, the underlying nature of existence, the reason anything exists rather than nothing, the fundamental source of consciousness, the totality of reality, or the foundation upon which the laws of the universe depend. But these descriptions are not necessarily interchangeable. They represent fundamentally different philosophical propositions. And none of them, independently or collectively, necessarily establishes the existence of a conscious, intentional being that possesses humanlike desires, expectations, moral preferences, or an interest in human affairs.

Yet the God we frequently argue about is presented as all of these things simultaneously. God is described as both “a being” and Being itself, as encompassing existence while also superseding it, as being responsible for the physical universe while remaining beyond physical investigation, and as possessing complete consciousness and intentionality while remaining inaccessible to the very consciousness and reasoning abilities through which humanity attempts to understand Him.

Consider the problem of attempting such definitions as “a being” and Being.

• A being is a particular existent thing. A person, a tree, an animal, or even an AI.
• Being is existence itself: the fact or actuality of something existing.

Understanding this difference exposes underlying problems. If God is defined as the foundation of everything that exists, for example, what distinguishes that proposition from simply giving the name God to the fact that existence exists?

And if Being itself is the foundation of everything that exists, how do we get from the proposition that everything must be to the proposition that we can possess such certainty about Being itself that we should treat it as a person, let alone claim the ability to accurately interpret what it thinks, wants, commands, judges, or loves?

This is especially disconcerting when we struggle to understand other forms of life, let alone one another, or even ourselves.

How can we presume to understand the intentions of an intelligence infinitely beyond our own when we have yet to fully comprehend the consciousness, motivations, and experiences of the beings with whom we share our own existence, and struggle to understand even our own?

And if we acknowledge that our understanding of consciousness is still incomplete, what justifies our confidence that we can recognize, interpret, and accurately communicate the intentions of something whose very nature we claim transcends our understanding?

In making that transition, haven’t we effectively transformed Being into “a being”? We have moved from contemplating existence itself to attributing the characteristics of an intelligent, intentional entity to its supposed foundation.

Is this not, in some respects, an extension of the same anthropomorphic tendency through which children imagine a talking tree or lion? We take something whose nature we don’t fully understand and make it more comprehensible by projecting onto it characteristics drawn from our own experience.

Perhaps the difference is that, as adults, we have developed considerably more sophisticated explanations for why we believe we’re justified in doing so. But does the sophistication of an explanation necessarily establish the validity of the assumption upon which it rests?

Even if we could justify this transformation, and establish that the foundation of all existence is something we might reasonably call God that is both a verb and a noun, how would we get from that conclusion to knowing what that foundation thinks, wants, expects, or requires of us?

More importantly, how can we do so in a way we can all agree on? 

The existence of an ultimate intelligence, even if established, does not automatically establish that it communicates with human beings, much less that we can understand what it communicates, let alone that our own interpretations are more correct than other interpretations.

And claiming that such a being authored a sacred book in now way resolves the problem. It merely moves the question.

Why should the existence of a particular book lead us to conclude that its words were spoken, inspired, or authorized by the foundation of all existence? What independently establishes that the book represents divine communication rather than human attempts to interpret, explain, or give meaning to the world around them?

We can establish that a book exists. We can investigate who wrote it, when it was written, how it was transmitted, and how its meaning has been interpreted across generations.

But how do we establish that the words within it originate from something beyond the human minds that produced, preserved, and interpreted them?

And even if we could establish some form of divine inspiration, how would we distinguish the original communication from the human interpretation of it?

This creates a profound philosophical contradiction, or at least a tension that deserves considerably more scrutiny than it receives.

The Limitations of the Observer

Before attempting to understand God, perhaps we should first consider the limitations of the beings attempting to understand the every changing ways we try to imagine the idea of God.

Human consciousness is the only experience we know directly. Everything we understand about the universe is filtered through our own subjective experience. We perceive reality through our senses, interpret it through our brains, and attempt to describe it through language and mathematical frameworks that are themselves products of human cognition.

This introduces an interesting problem.

How can a limited, fallible, conscious being, particularly one whose religious framework requires it to regard its own moral judgment as fundamentally unreliable, trust its capacity to accurately comprehend the fundamental nature of the reality in which it exists? More importantly, how can it establish that its understanding of what it identifies as “God” is accurate, or that the entity it has come to trust is actually worthy of that trust, when the very faculties through which it reaches these conclusions are considered inherently flawed?

Put more simply: If we accept the premise that human beings are inherently impaired in their capacity for moral discernment, on what grounds can we trust our ability to recognize the source of all morality, much less reliably interpret that source’s intentions or requirements, particularly when we simultaneously maintain that its nature exists beyond the limits of our understanding?

And how do we reconcile this supposed source of ultimate goodness with interpretations of its nature and commands that appear to violate even our most basic intuitions of right and wrong?

More importantly, isn’t this very inability to reconcile the two, which we are taught to regard as evidence of our own moral impairment by the very sources of authority that so often engage in the contradiction, one of the greatest sources of the uncertainty we are ultimately seeking to resolve?

After all, what could be more effective at making us dependent upon an authority than convincing us that the very faculties through which we might question its goodness are too fundamentally impaired to recognize it?

We are left trusting an authority that assures us we are too morally limited to recognize the righteousness in what may appear, even on its face, to be immoral or evil. And the more difficult that contradiction becomes to reconcile, the more dependent we become upon the very authority responsible for explaining it.

Especially when we are expected to accept that any interpretation of that source as wrong or immoral is itself evidence of our own failure to understand how even wrongdoing might serve some greater purpose, righteousness, or good.

But how do we know this? When the very authority responsible for the apparent wrongdoing is also the authority we are expected to trust when it explains why that wrongdoing was necessary, justified, or ultimately good, what independent standard remains by which we can evaluate its claims?

Can a being that lacks the capacity to independently establish the reliability of its own understanding ever justifiably claim certainty about the ultimate source, nature, and purpose of its existence, let alone what is good or bad?

And if not, on what epistemological foundation can absolute religious conviction rest?

More than that, it invites us to consider something else: If our limited intelligence is indeed the creation of an infinitely greater unlimited intelligence, was our awareness of our own limitations deliberately designed?

Did an intelligence greater than our own give us the capacity to recognize the boundaries of our understanding so that we might learn to bridge the distance between the finite and the infinite through faith, as many religions suggest?

Or might that very awareness have been intended to teach us something altogether different: that the ability to contemplate something does not necessarily confer the ability to comprehend it, and that recognizing the possibility of a truth beyond our understanding does not entitle us, or anyone else, to claim privileged or infallible knowledge of that truth?

More importantly, does the possibility of possessing such knowledge grant anyone, who may have been designed to be incapable of actually accessing it, the authority to impose their interpretation upon others, particularly through violence, while claiming exclusive divine authorization to do so?

Isn’t this precisely the kind of deception that faith in those claiming such authorization enables, empowers, and ultimately permits? Without that faith, could such authority ever be claimed, let alone exercised?

And perhaps more troubling still, isn’t this precisely the kind of environment that deception requires to do its worst: one in which the claim to represent truth is itself treated as sufficient evidence of its legitimacy, where questioning the claim is considered an act of disobedience, and where even the most egregious violations of morality can be committed in the name of upholding it?

Perhaps the greatest expression of intellectual humility is not assuming that an infinite intelligence commands us to overcome the limitations of our own intelligence through the lottery of choosing the right brand of faith, but rather recognizing how readily we regard religious belief systems that claim we are inherently incapable of discerning truth without their guidance as suspect when those beliefs are unfamiliar to us, yet accept those very same claims as self-evident when they belong to the faith upon which we depend for our own sense of meaning, purpose, moral guidance, and community.

Isn’t it worth asking why the claims we readily question in others become so difficult to question in ourselves?

And ultimately, is it an act of humility or hubris to assume that we, or anyone else, possess the means to determine whether our conclusions about the infinite are anything more than finite interpretations of something we all insist we can never fully comprehend?

And if that is the case, perhaps the question is not simply whether we should have faith in something greater than ourselves, but whether we should have the humility to acknowledge how little we can justifiably claim to know about it.

Perhaps the greatest irony of human intelligence is that, if it is intellectually honest, it acknowledges that it has developed sufficiently to recognize the possibility of truths it may never be capable of understanding.

Perhaps the highest expression of human intelligence is not the ability to arrive at answers to our greatest questions, but the ability to recognize that our need to fill the gaps in our understanding makes us vulnerable to anyone or anything claiming to provide those answers. Perhaps genuine intellectual maturity lies in recognizing when the pursuit of an answer has exceeded the limits of what we can justifiably claim to know, and having the humility to accept that uncertainty rather than surrendering our judgment to the comfort of an answer.

The Limits of Knowing

Like counting, we can contemplate infinity without ever reaching its end. We can contemplate consciousness without fully understanding its origins. We can question the nature and origins of existence without necessarily possessing the intellectual framework required to explain it.

And perhaps we can contemplate the possibility of an infinitely greater intelligence without ever coming remotely close to determining if such an intelligence exists anywhere but within our own, and even if it does, or understanding what such an intelligence would actually entail, let alone require of little old us.

But if this is true, perhaps the question is not whether we should fill the distance between our understanding and the unknowable with one brand of religious faith or another that all claim they alone have the authority to teach us what we must believe to be saved from a hell or to enter a heaven that can never be independently established as anything other than ideas in our head.

Perhaps the question is whether we should have the humility to acknowledge that the distance exists without pretending we already know what lies beyond it.

After all, if an intelligence infinitely greater than our own exists, wouldn’t recognizing our inability to comprehend it be a more honest starting point than assuming we already understand what it wants from us?

Especially when those assumptions so frequently lead us to turn against one another over our disagreements about what we presume to know it wants, and when the strength of our conviction is so often measured by our willingness to treat one another according to what we believe it has commanded, justified, or demonstrated through the sacred narratives upon which those beliefs depend — many of which are quite cruel, violent, even genocidal at times.

We encounter a related difficulty when considering solipsism, particularly its epistemological proposition that our own subjective experience is the only thing we can know with absolute certainty.

Although this is hardly a sufficient explanation of reality, it exposes an important limitation: the fact that we experience everything through consciousness does not establish that consciousness — either our own or an infinite greater version of our own — must therefore be responsible for everything that exists.

Nor does our ability to contemplate consciousness establish that we understand its origins or fundamental nature.

In fact, the relationship between consciousness and the physical brain presents us with an entirely different set of questions.

Our subjective experience appears remarkably dependent upon the biological processes occurring within a particular physical structure. Changes to the brain can alter memory, perception, personality, and awareness. Anesthesia can interrupt ordinary conscious experience. Physical injuries can fundamentally change the way an individual experiences reality. Even the need for sleep, and the experience of dreams, raise questions about the nature of how consciousness appears to depend on physical hardware.

Yet even if we accept the claim that consciousness exists independently of the physical brain, we are left with another difficult question: why is our experience of it so localized?

Why do we experience the world through one particular body rather than experiencing everything simultaneously? What determines which consciousness belongs to which physical organism? Why does consciousness appear so fundamentally confined to, and anchored within, a single physical form, changes to which can so profoundly alter the very experience of being conscious? And what, precisely, distinguishes the experience of being one conscious individual from the experience of being another?

These questions do not establish that consciousness is necessarily produced by the brain, but they demonstrate how difficult it is to separate consciousness from its apparent biological foundations.

The same philosophical difficulty emerges when considering God.

If God exists independently of the physical universe, what does existence mean in that context? If God is conscious, what does consciousness mean entirely apart from the biological and physical conditions through which we understand it? If God possesses intention, what does intention mean outside the framework of causality and experience that gives the concept meaning to us?

We repeatedly use human concepts to describe something that we simultaneously insist exists beyond the conditions that make those concepts understandable or relatable.

Perhaps our language is simply inadequate. Perhaps our understanding is simply too limited.

But if that is the case, shouldn’t we be particularly cautious about pretending that our descriptions tell us more than they actually do?

And shouldn’t that caution extend even further when someone claims not merely to understand the nature of such an intelligence, but to know its intentions, interpret its commands, and exercise its authority over others?

After all, if our ability to comprehend the infinite is limited by the very nature of our finite existence, what makes any of us qualified to distinguish between genuine divine revelation and a mere human interpretation of something we cannot fully understand?

Perhaps the greatest expression of human intelligence is not the ability to arrive at answers to our greatest questions, but the ability to recognize that our need to fill the gaps in our understanding makes us vulnerable to anyone or anything claiming to provide those answers.

Perhaps genuine intellectual maturity lies in recognizing when the pursuit of an answer has exceeded the limits of what we can justifiably claim to know, and having the humility to accept that uncertainty rather than surrendering our judgment to the comfort of answer, and a dependence on whoever or whatever provide it.

We can remain curious without becoming credulous. We can pursue understanding without pretending we’ve achieved it. We can acknowledge the possibility of something greater than ourselves without granting another human being unquestionable authority to define it for us.

And perhaps we should consider that the greatest danger isn’t necessarily our inability to know the truth.

It is our willingness to believe that we already do.