Although there is a wide variety of definitions of what entails a "God", of which some are mutually exclusive, and also the supposed attributes of such a "higher being" have a wide variety. A loosely based common definition of a "God" would be the entity/being that was responsible for causing/creating the existing world.

Connnected to that idea are the attributed values of such a higher being, like for instance:

  • Omnipotent (all power-full)
  • Omniscient (all knowing)
  • All good
  • All loving

For the sake of this argument of Deconstructing a Concept of God, we will concentrate on the essential part of the concept of God, which is the idea that the existing world somehow needs a reason or cause of it's existing (outside of itself).

Related issues to this is the Fundamental question of Philosphy, which puts forward the question "Why is there something, instead of nothing?"

The Concept of God supposedly provides an answer to Fundamental question of Philosophy that question, in that it attempts to provide an answer to that question by postulating the existence of a God, who then supposedly "created" the world (from nothing), "caused" or "realised"/"actualised" the world, such that there is an existing world, rather than none.

However, from a simple analysis of the Fundamental question of Philosophy it, it can be immediately clear that no such answer can exist based on introducing an arbitrary entity, since any answer to the question "Why is it the case that 'X' exist?" in the form of "Because 'A' exist" does not satisfy the Fundamental question of Philosophy, since the question re-asks the same question as to "Why does A exist?"1

Although in first instance the Concept of God attempts to prove an answer to the Fundamental question of Philosophy, and merely just "names" the answer, and terms this concept it as "God", the issue is of course wether or not in reality such a God exists.

So the real issue is here is that apart from such a concept, if there realy can or cannot exist an entity that would provide a usefull answer to the Fundamental question of Philosophy.

As can be immediately concluded from analyzing the Fundamental question of Philosophy, there is no possible actual existing "thing" or "entity" that can satisfy as an answer, which then leads to the conclusion that no actual thing or entity can exist that could have possibly caused the world into existence, by which we have Deconstructed the concept of a God as a mere construction of the mind itself, without any (possible) realisation in the existing world itself as an existing "thing" or "entity".

In this sense the Concept of God is just an attempt (which fails on logical grounds) to explain the existence of the world, and an artifact of human thought, cognition, consciousness and culture, but which is not realized in the world neither as an actual being / entity (a natural phenomena), nor as a possible (theoretical) explanation of the existence of the world.

With that, the issue of wether or not a God (can) exist, is settled, and needs no further ellaboration, and it can be stated that the very idea of of the existence of God is based on ill logic grounds, that does not conform to (is in conflict with) the real, actual existing world.

The real, actual existing world already satisfactory negates the idea that somehow a non-existing world is or could have been the case (could have been a possible 'state-of-affairs' 2), and therefore gets rid of the idea that some entity would be needed to 'help' the world from being actualised. The actual, existing world "just is" and the non-existing world "is not", which statement needs no further explanation since there is in fact nothing further to explain or ellaborate on that.

Note:

1 This leaves aside the issue that a (formal/logical) explanation to this question might be possible, although not of the form "because 'A' exist" nor raising the need for introducing a concept of any god.

2 And even in the case in which one's metaphysics would allow one to have the "possibility" of there "not being a world", which then would be in urge of needing an explanation as to why an existing world is realised, the invention of whatever deity or concept of God does not help one bit in explaining why the actual existing world has been realised, as even the most powerfull God could not have created the world, as for that matter, even the all-powerfull God needs to be realised / actualised itself (i.e. exist) for that matter, and as a non-existing world in the definitional sense does not contain a God (since, if there would exist anything, there would be an existing world), such could not be the case.


In answering some comments and critique's regarding this article

Spelling

Yes, I'm aware I make awfull spelling errors, as English is not my first language. I'll try to correct them.

This article merely 'deconstructs' a particular (and perhaps personal) definition of the concept of God, and does not realy 'deconstruct' this concept in the philosophical sense.

When dealing with a very broad and loosely defined concept as this, it is of course impossible to deal with them all in just a couple of sentences. I did not arbitrarily pick just one of many definitions, but merely tried to find the most essential aspect of this concept, which is a common denominator for (most) definitions of the concept of God. So this article covers those concepts of God that have in common that this entity is the "final" or "primal" cause of the existence of the world. As far as I am aware, this is the most essential aspect of the "Godness" concept, and is the reason I deal with that aspect primarily. I am aware of course that such can not possibly satisfy all (existing) definitions of God, and for sure a wide range of Gods (like for instance the ancient Greek, Roman and German Gods) do not fall within this concept.

The article refers to the 'Fundamental question of Philosophy' which is not a common philosophical term.

Although not used often, the term 'Fundamental question of Philosophy' is a term in use for the particular issue (for example used by Martin Heidegger). The term was not "invented" for the sake of the argument/article. And as an aside, I'm not particularly happy with coining this issue as the "Fundamental question of Philosophy" as if that would mean that it would somehow be the most important issue that philosophers would be dealing with.

The argument whipes away the 'Fundamental question of Philosphy' too easily/too simply. For sure philosophers have broken their minds upon this issue for centuries that it can not be put aside or settled so easily.

The property of being a "fundamental question" (in the sense that it is the most basic question about reality that can be worded) and the property of being "most widely/heavily debated" or "invoking most discussion" are not related (one does not necessarily implie the other). In particular I think that it is not true just because a question is fundamental, that a simple answer could not suffice. Being a simple answer, on the other hand, does not imply that the way the question is answered does not have far reaching consequences (for one's metaphysical/philosophical worldview).

Central in my argumentation is that the concept of God arises from more simple (ie. less fundamental) questions about reality human consciousness has asked itself regarding the outside natural world, and for which the answering scheme to questions like "Why is it the case that 'X''?" is in principle answerable (although there are still many questions for which no real answer has yet been provided) and has an answer in the form of "Because 'A'", where X and A refer to natural phenomena/entities/existents. Yet the particular question at hand here - in fact the closure of the question over all existing things/entities - as to "why anything at all exists", has no answer within this same answering scheme, so the question is (within that scheme) unanswerable. That does not exclude per se that no answer can possibly exist outside such an answering scheme, solely that they are not of the form of any existing entity (nor would invoke the necessity of some or other concept of God).

The question as to "why is there something / some state of affairs" has of course relevance if for instance the question is raised why is it the case that the earth has a moon, instead of no moon. Such questions about the real world have validity and meaning, since one could imagine the case in which the state of affairs referenced in the question, had not been the case, and are therefore open to scientific inquiry.

Further, "nothing" (in the sense of a state of affairs not being realised) has also meaning, as for instance it is not the case that Venus has a moon. So, a state of affairs about the world can refer to both existing states and non-existing states.

The problem however is that the question as raised by the Fundamental question, does not reference to a particular entity, or particular state, but references the totality of them, and can not have a real answer in the sense that no state of affairs can explain that.

Similarly, when questioning the cause of some facts of reality, such questions loose meaning in the case we would ask the cause of causality itself, since such can not have a meaningfull answer.

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