For much of my adult life, I assumed that philosophy and theology ultimately pointed in the same direction.
As my confidence in evangelical Christianity declined, I did what many intellectually inclined believers do: I went looking for firmer foundations.
I was never persuaded by reductive materialism. Consciousness seemed too strange, existence too mysterious, and the experience of beauty, unity and the sublime too profound to be explained away so easily.
So I turned to metaphysics.
I explored Neoplatonism, Advaita Vedanta, Taoism, neutral monism, panpsychism and various forms of philosophical monism. I became increasingly convinced that reality possesses an underlying unity. Mind and matter appeared less like separate substances and more like different expressions of a deeper reality.
Concepts such as the Absolute, the One, the Ground of Being and the Unus Mundus began to make sense to me.
At the time, I imagined I was climbing a ladder.
Each rung represented a philosophical insight:
- Reality is fundamentally unified.
- Consciousness cannot easily be reduced to matter.
- Being itself requires explanation.
- Mind and matter emerge from a deeper ontological ground.
What I assumed, without quite realising it, was that the ladder would eventually top out in God.
It does not.
That has been the most significant realisation of my intellectual life.
Natural theology and metaphysics may lead to an ultimate reality. They may lead to the Ground of Being. They may lead to some unitive foundation underlying existence itself.
What they do not lead to is a personal deity.
In fact, the closer I examined the matter, the more I became convinced that ultimate reality and personhood belong to entirely different categories.
A person is a particular being.
A person has identity, agency, intentions and relationships.
A person communicates, acts, chooses and responds.
The Ground of Being does none of these things.
It is not a being among beings. It is the ontological foundation upon which all beings depend. It simply is.
For years I blurred these two ideas together.
The Absolute became a more philosophical way of talking about God. God became a more personal way of talking about the Absolute.
Eventually the distinction became impossible for me to ignore.
The decisive insight was surprisingly simple: evidence should be appropriate to the claim being made.
Evidence for an ultimate reality is not evidence for a person.
Evidence for metaphysical unity is not evidence for a person.
Evidence for consciousness is not evidence for a person.
Evidence for the sublime is not evidence for a person.
A person is known through signs of personhood.
Communication.
Interaction.
Agency.
Relationship.
Presence.
The God of Christianity is not merely claimed to exist. He is claimed to know every human being, love every human being, guide every human being and desire a personal relationship with every human being.
That is an extraordinary claim.
Indeed, it may be the most extraordinary claim it is possible to make.
Yet after many years examining scripture, Christian testimony and philosophical arguments, I found myself confronted by a striking mismatch between the magnitude of the claim and the evidence available for it.
What I found was evidence for metaphysical depth.
What I did not find was convincing evidence for a divine person.
This is why my journey did not end in atheistic materialism.
The ladder remains standing.
I still reject reductionism. I still think consciousness poses profound philosophical questions. I still believe reality possesses a depth and mystery that deserve serious reflection.
What changed was my expectation of where the ladder was leading.
The ultimate reality disclosed by philosophy is not obviously the God of orthodox Christianity.
The Ground of Being is not simply a more abstract version of a heavenly Father.
The philosophical ultimate and the personal deity are separate ideas requiring separate evidence.
For a long time I hoped the first would lead me to the second.
I no longer think it does.
That is not the conclusion I expected.
It is simply the conclusion I reached.
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