I fancy myself a non-believer. And, I cannot get myself to claim there is no God (the upper case G indicates a special whatever). I may try to explain.
The fountainhead of my thinking is what I read on David Hume, the Scottish philosopher. The simplest understanding of Hume’s position appears to be that all inputs that can cause any idea, partially or fully formed, in one’s mind about an object must be only through our senses such as hearing, seeing, touching, smelling and tasting; these give rise to perceptions, the only occupants of the mind, which houses something “antecedently present to the mind”.(I am skipping a step here, what are present in the mind are ideas and not perceptions. But, you would allow me the leeway as I am not a philosopher.)
What did I hear? What did I see? This “What did I...” does not give the sense of existence of what I saw, touched etc. unless something like it is already present in the mind. This is how I understood the “antecedently.”
I would now jump from Hume to Kaladi Sankara, the Indian philosopher of later part of the first millennium of the Common Era. He said that if in the dark you see something that looks like a snake, you would flee, only to find out later that it was a twig. Sankara assumes that your mind already has ideas about snake and its characteristics, antecedent to that experience.
Yet, Hume was sceptical about relying on one’s senses, as proof of existence of something! Therefore, any notion of a world of permanently existing objects independent of our perception is problematic to him. He does not intend to deny the existence of the body independently of our perceptions. His position is strange yet not unreasonable: We are unable to prove that body exists; yet, a sceptic cannot help assenting to that proposition. “Nature has not left this to his (the sceptic’s) choice.” One way I see the above argument is this lack of choice is where the “God of the gaps” exists!
So, where does that leave me? If I were to discuss about God with a believer, I must first let her tell me her conception of God. This conception which is not anything material as she readily admits, must have caused a perception which in turn must have given rise to some version of an idea in her mind that is already in it. So, I ask what was in her mind before she thought of God. She has no answer, not even nothing because there was, she asserts,something! Read Antony Flew on this, please
I bring in Hume. We have discovered something in the natural world, say, an elephant. What is known concerning it, agrees with itself; and what is unknown, we must be contented to leave so. Here is my poser to her. Someone has told her Lord Indra rides a White Elephant, Airavata. She has not seen such an elephant in calendar art (which is where one may catch a glimpse).
So, a white elephant exists in her mind only as an idea. Yet, if I posit a white elephant as something distinctly different in shape, size and other characteristics of an elephant, could hermind make any connection between the common elephant and my white elephant. Both the everyday elephant and the white elephant exist as distinct ideas in her mind and the twain shall never meet!
We have known in the natural world that one can balance on one finger nothing more complicated than an umbrella. Then, you, schooled in the leelas of Lord Krishna, know that He lifted up Govardhan Giri. But a devout Christian sees this and goes Eh... You two fight on these irreconcilable ideas.
Something like the above happens between Jews and Christians, between Christians and Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus (Sri Lanka) and so on.
If this were the situation between believers, imagine what it would be between a believer and a non-believer! And, I would not want to be in such a fracas; it would not stay one for long.
Hence, I pull back myself from the brink!
Raghuram Ekambaram
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