Emotional God

A Thought Experiment on the Power of Judgment and the Meaning of the Universe

Let's assume for a moment that there exists a personal God, similar to humans in that He possesses both reason and emotions. This is how God is depicted in the Old Testament, so it's not an especially fanciful example. This God would not be an example of a being who primarily guides His actions through reason; on the contrary, He would be an utterly emotional being, relying almost exclusively on feelings and making decisions based solely on them.

In such a case, a rational justification for the existence of the Universe would come to nothing, since the decision to create it was not rational but emotional. Moreover, this decision could contradict reason but still be made precisely for emotional reasons.

Many scenes from literature come to mind here (for example, from the works of Knut Hamsun), where a person who has been starving for a week suddenly receives a significant amount of money. In a burst of joy, they begin to behave irrationally and squander the money—buying themselves luxurious food, starting to give away money, purchasing extravagant items. After a few days of such a lifestyle, this person returns to starvation—the very state they desperately wanted to avoid earlier. Such behavior cannot be comprehended rationally. Only by understanding emotions, the irrational part of the human mind, can we shed light on why someone who most wants to avoid starvation seems to do everything to bring themselves back to that state.

An emotional, personal God would have to be considered just like the person described above. In such a case, the sense of the Universe could be understood primarily by mystics—that is, people who reject reason and strive to understand God differently, aiming to emotionally feel His presence and nature.

Now let's imagine that God possesses some other faculty of judgment inaccessible to us. According to it, creating the Universe was the best possible course of action. Thus, the existence of the Universe, interpreted in its terms, would be entirely justified; however, lacking that faculty of judgment, we could not comprehend or justify that decision ourselves. It would remain a mystery to us, much like rational decisions made by parents are mysterious to a child, as they are made in a realm completely foreign to them—for example, in the legal or financial sphere. Even more, this decision could be entirely unjustified to us when judged by reason or emotion, even though from a higher, divine perspective, it would be quite the opposite.

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