Micah Zarin's Blog

let’s start from the premise that language is only meaningful when it refers to something coherent, something that can at least, in principle, be described in a way that makes sense. when we talk about “justice,” for example, people might disagree on specifics, but there’s a shared understanding that it has to do with fairness, rights, and societal order. when we talk about “energy,” even if someone doesn’t know physics, the concept still refers to something measurable, something with observable effects. but when we talk about the judaeo-christian god, we don’t get that. what we get is a word that is overloaded with contradictions, evasions, and shifting definitions. god is called a being, but also beyond being. god is personal, but also incomprehensible. god has a plan, but also grants free will. the more you try to define god in a way that is logically rigorous, the more the concept falls apart. and the core issue is that we have no reference point for what god is even supposed to be. every concept we use is drawn from the natural world, from things we have observed, studied, or experienced. even abstract ideas like justice are grounded in human interactions, in the way societies function. but god is supposed to exist outside of all of that. when people describe god, they are trying to talk about something without any real-world analogy, which is why the definitions remain so unstable.

this is, primarily, a feature of the way the idea of god has evolved. the judaeo-christian god started out as a tribal deity, a localized, personal god who had specific wants, angered easily, made deals with people, and changed his mind. this god was intelligible because he fit within the framework of how people understood powerful beings—like kings, spirits, or ancestors. but over time, as human understanding of the universe expanded, so too did the need for god to be something bigger. god couldn’t just be the god of israel; he had to be the god of everything. he couldn’t just be powerful; he had to be omnipotent. he couldn’t just know things; he had to be omniscient. and as these attributes stacked up, they started to contradict one another. the original god of abraham, who walked in the garden and had regrets, is completely different from the god of aquinas, who is a timeless, unchanging first cause. but these versions of god are supposed to be the same. they aren’t. and part of why this happens is because people are assigning properties to something they have no model for. when scientists define new concepts, they do so based on things they can measure, test, and compare. but with god, definitions are based purely on assertion. every attribute given to god is something imagined rather than something derived from reality, which is why there is no way to stabilize the concept without contradiction.

and this issue is not just theological but structural. believers are not dealing with a concept that can be tested, revised, or clarified through observation, because god, by definition, is removed from the mechanisms we use to refine our understanding of reality. scientific concepts evolve because they are falsifiable; they are subjected to tests, and when they fail, they are discarded or improved. moral ideas evolve because they are lived; people encounter dilemmas, see consequences, and adjust their views accordingly. but god, as an idea, is uniquely insulated from this process. people say god interacts with the world, yet every proposed interaction—answered prayers, miracles, divine inspiration—fails any objective test. the world looks exactly as it would if there were no god, and yet believers maintain that god is active. because god cannot be examined, there is no way for the idea to undergo the same refinement that every other belief must go through. and this is why people’s notions of god often remain frozen in childhood: there is no pressure—no force acting upon the idea—to make it evolve.

but even more than that, god resists definition because definition would limit him. this is the paradox at the center of all theological discussions. a god that is too specific is vulnerable—if he is said to intervene in the world, we can check whether those interventions happen; if he is said to answer prayers, we can test whether prayer works. this is why, over time, god has been pushed further and further into abstraction. he goes from a god who literally walks in the garden to a god who exists “outside time.” from a god who parts seas to a god who “works in mysterious ways.” as knowledge grows, god shrinks—not in importance, but in specificity. and this is not an accident. a god who cannot be examined is a god who cannot be disproven. theological language is constructed not to clarify but to evade, not to define but to prevent definition from ever taking hold.

this is why religion persists. it is not like other beliefs, which must constantly prove themselves against new evidence. it is designed to be immune. people believe in science because it works; they believe in justice because they see its consequences. but people believe in god because they are told to, because the very structure of the idea resists the kind of scrutiny that would force it to be revised. and because god is undefined, he can be made to fit anything. people take credit for good things as evidence of god’s love and dismiss bad things as part of his unknowable plan. there is no possible world that could falsify god, and that alone makes it clear that the belief is not about truth, but about preserving itself.

and the issue is that god is defined poorly—it’s that god cannot be defined at all. a thing can only be defined in relation to what it is or what it does, and god, by every serious theological account, is supposed to be something that transcends all known categories. but meaning comes from categories. every definition we use works by comparing a thing to other things: a tiger is a kind of animal, a prime number is a kind of number, gravity is a kind of force. but god is not “a kind of” anything. god, as described, is entirely separate from the universe, from all things that exist, from all concepts we use to understand reality. but that means there is no way to describe god at all, because description itself is an act of comparison.

people say god is “being itself,” but being is something that applies to things in existence, and god is supposed to exist outside of existence. people say god is infinite, but infinite in what sense? mathematical infinity can be understood, physical infinity can be modeled, but god’s infinity is just a word with nothing behind it. people say god is a mind without a body, but all minds we know are dependent on physical structure. every definition of god is either an empty label or a contradiction, because we have no conceptual tools to even frame what such a being would be. god is supposed to be beyond all known things, but that makes god beyond language, beyond thought, beyond meaning. which is why every attempt to define god collapses, not because people do it badly, but because it is impossible in principle. the moment you try to describe god in a way that makes sense, you lose what makes god god. and if something cannot even be defined, it cannot be believed in, let alone worshiped.
and yet, because the concept of god is insulated from scrutiny, believers do not experience this as a problem. the vagueness of god is a feature, not a flaw. it allows the idea to persist without ever needing to be reconciled with the world. it allows traditions to endure, even as definitions shift to accommodate new knowledge. it allows individuals to hold onto a belief that is at once deeply personal and entirely abstract, something that can be invoked in any context yet remains just beyond the reach of examination. and this is what makes god, as a concept, different from anything else—not just that it is difficult to define, but that it is uniquely resistant to definition. every other belief is shaped by the pressures of understanding, by the need to cohere with reality. god, however, is constructed to exist outside of that process, making it an idea unlike any other—one that is not merely flexible, but fundamentally ungraspable.