God, Purpose, and Reality: A Euteleological Understanding of Theism

"This is the only one that connects very explicitly to traditional Western religion, to the Abrahamic faiths, but it links to this theme of cosmic purpose. God, Purpose, and Reality , by John Bishop and Ken Perszyk, is coming out this year with Oxford University Press, and I’m going to be reviewing it. Yes. He’s a very interesting, heterodox philosopher of religion. In this book, Bishop and Perszyk argue that the Abrahamic faiths of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam ought to conceive of God not as a personal mind, a conscious mind, but as cosmic purpose, as an impersonal drive towards the good. Anglophone analytic philosophers have become used to thinking of God as some big mind – Richard Swinburne, for example, is very clear that this is his conception of God – but that might be a historical idiosyncrasy. Aquinas thought that God was beyond human categories. Although we talk of God as having knowledge and power, this is an analogy to help us understand the nature of God, but God, in God’s own nature, is beyond these categories. They argue – in a way that’s reminiscent of the ‘new atheist’ Christopher Hitchens – that it’s inappropriate to worship a cosmic dictator. I think they even make reference to Hitchens. Why would we worship this big mind just because it’s really powerful? Even if it is benevolent, it seems inappropriate to worship it. Good point! You probably would, just to make sure you’re in the right place in the hereafter. But, in terms of purer motivations, they think it’s more appropriate to worship an impersonal drive towards the good. This is a different kind of book, but it’s interesting that they’re connecting with this theme. Yes. Their project is not so much arguing for cosmic purpose, but arguing that it gives us a more adequate foundation for Christian, Islamic, and Judaic worship and practice. I guess they wouldn’t say it’s an abstract concept. To be honest, I want to read it again because when they get into the underlying metaphysics , it is a little bit dense. They think it’s part of the necessary nature of existence itself that it is directed towards the good. In that sense, it’s part of reality rather than an abstract concept, but they don’t think of it as a personal, conscious mind. They’re worshiping this drive of existence towards the good. They accept that in worship, we talk about it as though it were personal, but that’s just human necessity. They think this is a better way of understanding that when Moses asks what God’s name is, and God says, ‘I am what I am,’ this does not point towards a personal God but to something deeper, which they conceive of as the directedness towards the good. In a way, they think of the conventional idea – the Richard Swinburne idea – of God as idolatrous. It’s like an idol, this superhuman mind or cartoon god, like Zeus. They’re sympathetic to the critique of the new atheists who wouldn’t want to worship this cosmic dictator, but they think that cosmic purpose is a more appropriate object of worship."