Is God thought of primarily as a power or a being? Definitely a power. God would not be respected as God if he could give up his supernatural power. So for that reason we may say believers do not care so much if God could be a unicorn or witch or whatever. Do you really think God is loved for being a personal being - the love would soon change if he could give away his supernatural abilities.
We are told that if a witch commanded a statue to come to life and it did it would be magic. Then we are told that God can use no power but merely tell the universe to exist and it comes into being. Creation ex nihilo. That is magic too - on a much bigger scale. A statue coming to life does not compare to ordering anything to come into existence. But religion will not admit that. It fudges around the issue with words such a miracle and supernatural.
We are not talking about whether a unicorn is God but it has the power to create all from nothing that a God supposedly has. The unicorn being a physical creature, or a spirit being, is beside the point. Suppose creation really needs a creator. Then what matters is not what creates but that something creates. A unicorn might not be God but get divine power to create. So a creator could be anything. When you say there is a creator you are in fact saying that. To assert it is the Christian God is just your opinion and one opinion in this case is as good as another. To say it is that God is to say it could as well be a unicorn!
OBJECTIONS:
- The unicorn is a creature and God is not - he is the ground of all being.
ANSWER: Irrelevant - power is power. If it holds the power then that is all that matters.
- God is the ground of morality so how could the unicorn be?
ANSWER: if we get enough morality to get by and we base it on a kind hearted unicorn that is better than basing it on nothing. That is assuming that morality has to come from some authority outside us. It is better to base it on the imperfect unicorn than a perfect God. If we will never be the best all the time, what do we need God for? We need realistic role models.
Also, there is no evidence or proof that a God would be the ground of morality.
- The unicorn is bizarre. We do not need to think God has outsourced his power especially to such a strange creature.
ANSWER: Christianity says God has the power to give a creature his power to create.
A unicorn is a bizarre thing to suppose. But at the end of the day it is only a magical horse with a horn growing from its head. Who is to say that the idea of a God with no parts and who is spirit is better or worse? It is only our custom and habit that blind us to how odd God is too.
The argument only makes a case for the undesirability of belief in the unicorn as creator. But loads of undesirable things are true! In fact such a weak position implies subconscious sympathy for the notion!
- I think God would suffice - why assume a unicorn? Why even suggest?
ANSWER:
If God has supernatural/magical power then what do you need God for? Why not just say there is supernatural/magical power? Imagine there is a superhero called Electro-Man. He uses electricity to help people. Believers in him say he exists because they see how electricity works and sometimes blasts criminals into the next world. They should say electricity exists and stop there. There is no need to say or think there is a man operating the electricity. Electricity is only a proof for electricity and not for Electro-Man. Same thing.
The unicorn would do.
To sum up, they are arguing that "if the unicorn exists, it is no big deal. But if God exists, these questions make this a big deal." But the fact remains that divine magic is the answer to all the questions. The point is the magic so a unicorn doing magic and a God doing infinitely more magic is another red herring - it dwells on the quantity or range of magic when it should dwell on the magic itself.
- The idea of a spiritual God of love is coherent.
REPLY: Your God who loves the sinner and hates the sin is an impossibility. Therefore there is no all-good God. Your innate qualities show in your behaviour. You can't be a sinner because you sin but you must sin because you are at least partly a sinner. Whoever says that they condemn your behaviour, and not your innate qualities are being absurd.
Something being coherent does not help show that it probably exists. Only the evidence can do that.
ALISTER MCGRATH AND DAWKIN'S UNICORN
Page 85 of Alister McGrath's book, Mere Theology (SPCK, London, 2010) states that the following argument given by Richard Dawkins is wrong. "I do not believe in God. It is an unnecessary belief such as belief in a magical invisible unicorn. The believers in God do not believe in all tales about supernatural entities. I am just going a bit further than them and abandoning God."
McGrath says the mistake is that God is thought to be an alleged object in the universe such as the invisible unicorn - God is the source of the universe.
But if supernatural power is the reason the universe exists, that only tells you that supernatural power is the reason. It tells you nothing about it what controls it - God or a unicorn. McGrath is wrong to think that God is a more sensible idea than the unicorn and so in a different league.
It is not always irrational or foolish to favour a view that might not seem to be the most sensible. Being a bit irrational does not make you irrational. If you can be called rational and believe in God - then you can be called rational if you believe in the unicorn instead. You could be a more rational person as you believe in the unicorn, than you would be if you believed in God. If you admit you do not know how all things came to be, the unicorn is as good as God. There are different degrees of rationality.
The point is that the likes of McGrath need to suggest more options than God - it should be about the person they talk to not religious pet doctrines.
THE CREATION "EXPLANATION"
McGrath thinks that the reason it makes more sense to believe in God than the unicorn, is that God explains why the universe exists and the unicorn does not. That is what his source and object talk is all about. He sees God as a source and anything that is not God as an object that exists because of the source.
But God is not really an explanation. We do not know how somebody can make something without using anything. At best for the Christians, we do not know if it is possible. But many of us realise that we do know it is impossible.
The fact that we are here instead of being non-existent, does not help. It is like saying that because a rock is on the shore that somebody put it there. We do not know if God creates or makes all things from or out of himself.
We do not know if the idea of spirit - a being with no parts - like God makes sense. We may as well pick a unicorn as an explanation for creation as God!
THE BIBLE NEVER MENTIONS AN UNCREATED GOD
The Bible says God is the source of everything and had no maker outside himself. The Bible says that God made all things. It says nothing to exclude the notion that God himself is an object though he is source of other objects. It never confirms or denies that God made himself.
There are people who think that God is outside time, is in eternity and still made himself. That is hard to get the head around but it isn't obviously nonsense. The mystery is how there was no "before" and God still made himself. Think of how eternity is like a present moment with no past or future and that might help.
So what if a material or self-making God would be absurd? It would not matter when the Bible is not a book of philosophy so we can expect errors and absurdities of a philosophical nature to appear.
The Bible says that God made what is visible out of what is invisible. It never actually says, "God made all things out of nothing."
Mc Grath then needs to assert that Dawkins' reasoning applies then to the biblical God and not the God of philosophy who is spirit and the source of being. There is no reason to believe that the Bible God and the God of philosophy are the same. The Church only pretends they are and reads philosophy about God into the Bible when it is actually not there.
FINALLY
Dawkins worried that that to say the creator God is a spirit puts it beyond refutation. The same would be true if the creator is a spirit unicorn or any kind of unicorn wielding God's power. It can be whatever the whim takes you.
You say they are outside the physical universe which means nothing can prove they exist or prove they do not exist. You have no reason to believe one or believe the other. That is the point not what role they have, not that God is the source of all and the unicorn is not. There is no reason to believe in either so if you reject the magical unicorn it makes sense to reject God as well.
The claim that God is immune to Dawkins' criticism for he is not an object in the universe but its spiritual source is actually a red herring. For God to be the source means he has the miraculous power to make the universe from nothing. So the point is not if God is an object in the universe or not but his supernatural power. God, by definition, is effectively a spiritual and magical power. Dawkins correctly reasons that if you reject a unicorn with magical powers, just go a step further and reject a God with magical powers. If you reject one magical being why not another?