What is a God? The importance of agnosticism

What is a God? Is he/she/it omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent? Can there be only one "God" or are there multiple but only one is "true"?

The Abrahamic religions believes so, but many others such as Norse mythology, ancient Greco-Roman religion etc. does not. Personally I find it hard to believe in an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and caring loving God. The empirical reality simply breaks with the image of the bible so that is out of the question. But what of other kinds? There it gets tricky, and rests in "what is a God?" - should there be aliens far more evolved either biologically or technologically than us, would they then be Gods? Or simply appear "as if Gods"? Or something else?

Perhaps this also relates to questions of whether or not we are alone in the universe. Maybe we have been discovered, but the aliens do not wish to reveal themselves, or they did millennia ago and we mistook them for Gods, or made them into Gods? Who can say. These questions are perhaps incredibly pertinent today, when it appear as if religion as we know it is becoming replaced in part by Science (is Science a God?) as the phrase "evidence shows" is becoming prevalent. This is not all that new, as Feynman pointed out in 1966 there is a prevalence of uttering "science shows", something he believed to be a false statement (See http://www.feynman.com/science/what-is-science/ ) What is central to this form of Science as God is that it flows from Man as God. That is Descartes belief that man both could and should manipulate nature. Something which offends many Christians for example (e.g., debates on stem-cell research) as only God should be a creature of nature. This again relates to a separate issue which is the concept of "nature" - tied forever to "Gods". See for example https://youtu.be/NpOxxzOhZyg for an interesting discussion on "nature"

The trouble with turning Science into God is something I have discussed before, so I will not get into detail on it here. Suffice to say Science is not exact, it is an approximation at best, and is (as for example the replication scandal in psychology, or the recent Covid-19 discussions illustrate quite well) often done with limited rigour as human emotions and doxa guide knowledge construction.

What is very interesting with Science as God is the religion constructed around it. Where people defend Science as infallible (thereby breaking the ground principles of Science, which is to doubt as Feynman, or Bertrand Russell, explain much better than I ever could). Where we regulate access to Science by denoting who can call themselves a scientist (and thereby have the right to make empirical observations) and heighten certain books to the status of a "bible". What should be understood, and accepted, is that knowledge comes in many forms, and at times a non-scientist may have better insights than a scientist, simply because he is less ingrained in a paradigm. As Thomas Kuhn so interestingly observed in "The structure of scientific revolutions", most scientific breakthroughs leading to paradigm change comes from young researchers not yet fully institutionalized (indoctrinated) into the existing paradigm. He still doubts. Once Science is God, doubt becomes blasphemy. Quite the paradox when to think scientifically is to doubt.

Another interesting replacement for religion seems to be the nation. In France for example, as I will explore further in a later post, seems to have replaced Catholicism with La République. This has arguably replaced the priest with the teacher. Perhaps particularly so in the period between 1882 and 1914 in what has been called La République des instituteurs - the republic of teachers. As teachers were, and are, to relay the values of the republic, of science, of meritocracy, and of the spirit of the republic as they become agents of the republic.

The symbolic spirit of the French republic can be seen in anything from the office of the presidency, which according to De Gaulle was to embody the spirit of the nation. In Marianne, who according to the official website of the Elysée palace incarnates the republic. Meanwhile, old "church" hierarchies are well and alive through the meritocratic state. This also lends itself to indignation at critique, as to point out flaws in the divine becomes blasphemy. At least at the level of elites who are further indoctrinated (and reap more benefits) than the lower classes who often struggle to make ends meet. To them, the cultural aspect of the nation or the republic may often be of a lesser concern than getting fed, having clothes, and living in safety.

What then is a God? can a nation, with associated beliefs and rites, create a form of religion with the country as a God? Perhaps when we say it, it sounds bizarre, but can we act as if it were?

This is where it is perhaps important to remain agnostic, to accept how there are things we do not know, do not understand, and that there are things we divinify for a range of reasons. Most central of which is perhaps a human need for sense-making, to render something rational through some form of "logic", even if that logic is as simple as thinking "God made it so". That thinking is perhaps what we see when we attribute divinity to nations and state structures, as the misery of some and luxury of others become explain in such simple terms as "the system made it so".

These are sobering thoughts in many ways, particularly as we struggle to even answer the question, what is a God? Hence, I would amend the above statement on agnosticism and say we ought to be agnostic, to be prepared to accept we are wrong in our beliefs. Be they in religion, science, or the nation