The great idea of God

Persoalan tentang Tuhan bukanlah sesuatu yang asing bagi manusia.

Barat yang dianggap telah mencapai ketamadunan tinggi dan manusianya condong ke arah humanisme pun persoalan tentang tuhan dan ketuhanan masih dan sentiasa menjadi isu sentral.

Ahli falsafah Amerika Mortimer J. Adler dalam rencananya “The Great idea of God” meyatakan seperti berikut:

“It should not surprise you to learn that the idea of a Supreme Being is itself supreme among "The Great Ideas." In the Syntopicon where we were working on the 102 Great Ideas of Western thought we found this out as we went through all of the 102 ideas, we found that the idea of God was the idea to which there were more references in the literature of western writings, poetry, philosophy, theology and science and references by more diverse authors, different kinds of authors than occurred in the case of any other idea; both in the extent of the references and the variety of the references, the discussion of God is the largest single discussion that has gone on in the intellectual tradition of the West.”

Apakah yang menjadi persoalan utama dalam literature ketuhanan mereka? Kata Adler:

"Now in this extraordinary discussion over twenty-five centuries there are four main questions that have been raised and debated. The first is, does God exist? The second is, what is God's nature? What is God like? The third is, can we know God's existence and nature? Can we know God's existence and nature independent of revelation and religious faith by the operation of reason, by the natural processes of knowing? And finally, the fourth question is, what is God's relation to the world and to man?”

Dalam rencara itu Adler telah menunjukkan bahawa kewujudan tuhan boleh dibuktikan secara rasional, melalui akal murni (pure reason). Dengan asas tuhan sebagai “supreme being”, tuhan telah dibuktikan sebagai `necessary being’ kerana wujud alam dan segala kandungannya adalah `contingent being’. Dengan argumen sebab akibat, contingency being tidak mungkin wujud tanpa suatu being lain (ie Necessary being = Tuhan) dan kewujudan contingent being mesti bersama-sama dengan necessary being.

Walaupun itu adalah pembuktian secara rasional, dalam hal keimanan (faith) kepada Tuhan nampaknya Adler masih mengikuti Kant, iaitu keimanan adalah berdasarkan kepercayaan semata-mata, tiada kaitan dengan akal rasional. Dengan itu dia perlu “melompat” dari domain rasionaliti ke domain lain, iaitu kepercayaan… (seperti juga halnya Kierkegaard dan Kant). Kata Adler:

“My understanding and reason carry me far enough so that I'm entitled as a rational man, as a reasonable man am entitled to make a leap beyond reason to the belief that God exists. And when I make this leap, I think I make it not to a belief in the God of the philosophers but I think the God I believe to exist is the God that is worshipped by the religions of the West. As Pascal says and other philosophers, "The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob."