Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born February 15, 1945) is an American scholar of cognitive science, physics, and comparative literature whose research includes concepts such as the sense of self in relation to the external world,
consciousness, analogy-making, artistic creation, literary translation,
and discovery in mathematics and physics. His 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid won both the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction
and a National Book Award (at that time called The American Book Award) for Science. His 2007 book I Am a Strange Loop won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology.
Since
1988, Hofstadter has been the College of Arts and Sciences
Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Comparative Literature
at Indiana University
in Bloomington, where he directs the Center for Research on Concepts
and Cognition which consists of himself and his graduate students,
forming the "Fluid Analogies Research Group" (FARG).
He was initially appointed to the Indiana University's Computer Science
Department faculty in 1977, and at that time he launched his research
program in computer modeling of mental processes (which he called
"artificial intelligence research", a label he has since dropped in
favor of "cognitive science research"). In 1984, he moved to the University of Michigan
in Ann Arbor, where he was hired as a professor of psychology and was
also appointed to the Walgreen Chair for the Study of Human
Understanding. In 1988 he returned to Bloomington as "College of Arts
and Sciences Professor" in both cognitive science and computer science.
He was also appointed adjunct professor of history and philosophy of
science, philosophy, comparative literature, and psychology, but has
said that his involvement with most of those departments is nominal. In 1988 Hofstadter received the In Praise of Reason award, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry's highest honor. In April 2009 he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Philosophical Society. In 2010 he was elected a member of the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala, Sweden.
At the University of Michigan and Indiana University, he and Melanie Mitchell coauthored a computational model of "high-level perception"—Copycat—and several other models of analogy-making and cognition, including the Tabletop project, co-developed with Robert M. French. Hofstadter's doctoral student James Marshall subsequently extended the Copycat project under the name "Metacat".[21]
The Letter Spirit project, implemented by Gary McGraw and John Rehling,
aims to model artistic creativity by designing stylistically uniform
"gridfonts" (typefaces limited to a grid). Other more recent models
include Phaeaco (implemented by Harry Foundalis) and SeqSee (Abhijit
Mahabal), which model high-level perception and analogy-making in the
microdomains of Bongard problems
and number sequences, respectively, as well as George (Francisco
Lara-Dammer), which models the processes of perception and discovery in
triangle geometry.
The pursuit of beauty has driven Hofstadter both inside and
outside his professional work. He seeks beautiful mathematical patterns,
beautiful explanations, beautiful typefaces, beautiful sonic patterns
in poetry, etc. Hofstadter has said of himself, "I'm someone who
has one foot in the world of humanities and arts, and the other foot in
the world of science." He has had several exhibitions of his artwork in
various university galleries. These shows have featured large
collections of his gridfonts, his ambigrams
(pieces of calligraphy created with two readings, either of which is
usually obtained from the other by rotating or reflecting the ambigram,
but sometimes simply by "oscillation", like the Necker Cube or the rabbit/duck figure of Joseph Jastrow),
and his "Whirly Art" (music-inspired visual patterns realized using
shapes based on various alphabets from India). Hofstadter invented the
term "ambigram" in 1984; many ambigrammists have since taken up the
concept.
Hofstadter collects and studies cognitive errors (largely, but
not solely, speech errors), "bon mots" (spontaneous humorous quips), and
analogies of all sorts, and his longtime observation of these diverse
products of cognition, and his theories about the mechanisms that
underlie them, have exerted a powerful influence on the architectures of
the computational models he and FARG members have developed.
All FARG computational models share certain key principles, including:
that human thinking is carried out by thousands of independent
small actions in parallel, biased by the concepts that are currently
activated
that activation spreads from activated concepts to less activated "neighbor concepts"
that there is a "mental temperature" that regulates the degree of randomness in the parallel activity
that promising avenues tend to be explored more rapidly than unpromising ones
FARG models also have an overarching philosophy that all cognition is
built from the making of analogies. The computational architectures
that share these precepts are called "active symbols" architectures.
Hofstadter's thesis about consciousness, first expressed in Gödel, Escher, Bach (GEB)
but also present in several of his later books, is that it is an
emergent consequence of seething lower-level activity in the brain. In GEB
he draws an analogy between the social organization of a colony of ants
and the mind seen as a coherent "colony" of neurons. In particular,
Hofstadter claims that our sense of having (or being) an "I" comes from
the abstract pattern he terms a "strange loop", an abstract cousin of such concrete phenomena as audio and video feedback
that Hofstadter has defined as "a level-crossing feedback loop". The
prototypical example of a strange loop is the self-referential structure
at the core of Gödel's incompleteness theorems. Hofstadter's 2007 book I Am a Strange Loop
carries his vision of consciousness considerably further, including the
idea that each human "I" is distributed over numerous brains, rather
than being limited to one.
Hofstadter's writing is characterized by an intense interaction between form and content, as exemplified by the 20 dialogues in GEB,
many of which simultaneously discuss and imitate strict musical forms
used by Bach, such as canons and fugues. Most of Hofstadter's books
feature some kind of structural alternation: in GEB between dialogues and chapters, in The Mind's I between selections and reflections, in Metamagical Themas
between Chapters and Postscripts, and so forth. In both his writing and
his teaching, Hofstadter stresses the concrete, constantly using
examples and analogies, and avoids the abstract. Typical of the courses
he teaches is his seminar "Group Theory and Galois Theory
Visualized", in which abstract mathematical ideas are rendered as
concretely as possible. He puts great effort into making ideas clear and
visual, and asserts that when he teaches, if his students do not
understand something, it is never their fault but always his own.
Hofstadter is passionate about languages. In addition to English,
his mother tongue, he speaks French and Italian fluently (the language
spoken at home with his children is Italian). At various times in his
life, he has studied (in descending order of level of fluency reached)
German, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Mandarin, Dutch, Polish, and Hindi. His love of sounds pushes him to strive to minimize, and ideally get rid of, any foreign accent.
Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language
is a long book devoted to language and translation, especially poetry
translation, and one of its leitmotifs is a set of 88 translations of
"Ma Mignonne", a highly constrained poem by 16th-century French poet Clément Marot. In this book, Hofstadter jokingly describes himself as "pilingual"
(meaning that the sum total of the varying degrees of mastery of all
the languages that he's studied comes to 3.14159 ...), as well as an
"oligoglot" (someone who speaks "a few" languages).
In 1999, the bicentennial year of Russian poet and writer Alexander Pushkin, Hofstadter published a verse translation of Pushkin's classic novel-in-verse Eugene Onegin. He has translated many other poems too (always respecting their formal constraints), and two novels (in prose): La Chamade (That Mad Ache) by French writer Françoise Sagan, and La Scoperta dell'Alba (The Discovery of Dawn) by Walter Veltroni, the then head of the Partito Democratico in Italy. The Discovery of Dawn was published in 2007, and That Mad Ache was published in 2009, bound together with Hofstadter's essay Translator, Trader: An Essay on the Pleasantly Pervasive Paradoxes of Translation.
Some religions describe God without reference to gender, while others or their translations use terminology that is gender-specific and gender-biased.
God has been conceived as either personal or impersonal. In theism, God is the creator and sustainer of the universe, while in deism, God is the creator, but not the sustainer, of the universe. In pantheism, God is the universe itself. In atheism, there is an absence of belief in God. In agnosticism, the existence of God is deemed unknown or unknowable. God has also been conceived as the source of all moral obligation, and the "greatest conceivable existent". Many notable philosophers have developed arguments for and against the existence of God.
In the English language, capitalization is used for names by which a god is known, including 'God'. Consequently, the capitalized form of god is not used for multiple gods (polytheism) or when used to refer to the generic idea of a deity.
The English word God and its counterparts in other languages are
normally used for any and all conceptions and, in spite of significant
differences between religions, the term remains an English translation
common to all. The same holds for Hebrew El, but in Judaism, God is also given a proper name, the tetragrammaton YHWH, in origin possibly the name of an Edomite or Midianite deity, Yahweh.
In many translations of the Bible, when the word LORD is in all capitals, it signifies that the word represents the tetragrammaton.
Allāh (Arabic: الله) is the Arabic term with no plural used by Muslims and Arabic speaking Christians and Jews meaning "The God" (with the first letter capitalized), while "ʾilāh" (Arabic: إِلَٰه, plural “`āliha” آلِهَة) is the term used for a deity or a god in general.
Ahura Mazda is the name for God used in Zoroastrianism. "Mazda", or rather the Avestan stem-form Mazdā-, nominative Mazdå, reflects Proto-Iranian *Mazdāh (female). It is generally taken to be the proper name of the spirit, and like its Sanskrit cognate medhā, means "intelligence" or "wisdom". Both the Avestan and Sanskrit words reflect Proto-Indo-Iranian*mazdhā-, from Proto-Indo-European mn̩sdʰeh1, literally meaning "placing (dʰeh1) one's mind (*mn̩-s)", hence "wise".
Waheguru (Punjabi: vāhigurū) is a term most often used in Sikhism to refer to God. It means "Wonderful Teacher" in the Punjabi language. Vāhi (a Middle Persian borrowing) means "wonderful" and guru (Sanskrit: guru)
is a term denoting "teacher". Waheguru is also described by some as an
experience of ecstasy which is beyond all descriptions. The most common
usage of the word "Waheguru" is in the greeting Sikhs use with each
other:
Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa, Waheguru Ji Ki Fateh
Wonderful Lord's Khalsa, Victory is to the Wonderful Lord.
Baha, the "greatest" name for God in the Baha'i faith, is Arabic for "All-Glorious".
The dharmic religions differ in their view of the divine: views of God in Hinduism vary by region, sect, and caste, ranging from monotheistic to polytheistic. Many polytheistic religions share the idea of a creator deity,
although having a name other than "God" and without all of the other
roles attributed to a singular God by monotheistic religions. Sikhism is sometimes seen as being pantheistic about God, see: God in Sikhism.
The Trinity is the belief that God is composed of The Father, The Son (embodied metaphysically in the physical realm by Jesus), and The Holy Spirit.
Monotheists believe that there is only one god, and may also believe
this god is worshipped in different religions under different names. The
view that all theists actually worship the same god, whether they know
it or not, is especially emphasized in the Bahá'í Faith, Hinduism and Sikhism.
In Christianity, the doctrine of the Trinity describes God as one God in three divine Persons (each of the three Persons is God himself). The Most Holy Trinity comprises God the Father, God the Son (Jesus), and God the Holy Spirit. In the past centuries, this fundamental mystery of the Christian faith was also summarized by the Latin formula Sancta Trinitas, Unus Deus (Holy Trinity, Unique God), reported in the Litanias Lauretanas.
Islam's most fundamental concept is tawhid meaning "oneness" or "uniqueness". God is described in the Quran
as: "He is Allah, the One and Only; Allah, the Eternal, Absolute; He
begetteth not, nor is He begotten; And there is none like unto Him."
Muslims repudiate the Christian doctrine of the Trinity and the
divinity of Jesus, comparing it to polytheism. In Islam, God is
transcendent and does not resemble any of his creations in any way.
Thus, Muslims are not iconodules, and are not expected to visualize God.
Henotheism is the belief and worship of a single god while accepting the existence or possible existence of other deities.
Theism, deism, and pantheism
Theism generally holds that God exists realistically, objectively,
and independently of human thought; that God created and sustains
everything; that God is omnipotent and eternal; and that God is personal
and interacting with the universe through, for example, religious experience and the prayers of humans. Theism holds that God is both transcendent and immanent; thus, God is simultaneously infinite and, in some way, present in the affairs of the world.
Not all theists subscribe to all of these propositions, but each
usually subscribes to some of them (see, by way of comparison, family resemblance). Catholic theology holds that God is infinitely simple
and is not involuntarily subject to time. Most theists hold that God is
omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent, although this belief raises
questions about God's responsibility for evil and suffering in the world. Some theists ascribe to God a self-conscious or purposeful limiting of omnipotence, omniscience, or benevolence. Open Theism, by contrast, contends that, due to the nature of time, God's omniscience does not mean the deity can predict the future. Theism is sometimes used to refer in general to any belief in a god or gods, i.e., monotheism or polytheism.
God Blessing the Seventh Day, 1805 watercolor painting by William Blake
Deism holds that God is wholly transcendent: God exists, but does not intervene in the world beyond what was necessary to create it. In this view, God is not anthropomorphic,
and neither answers prayers nor produces miracles. Common in Deism is a
belief that God has no interest in humanity and may not even be aware
of humanity. Pandeism combines Deism with Pantheistic beliefs. Pandeism is proposed to explain as to Deism why God would create a universe and then abandon it, and as to Pantheism, the origin and purpose of the universe.
Pantheism holds that God is the universe and the universe is God, whereas Panentheism holds that God contains, but is not identical to, the Universe. It is also the view of the Liberal Catholic Church; Theosophy; some views of Hinduism except Vaishnavism, which believes in panentheism; Sikhism; some divisions of Neopaganism and Taoism, along with many varying denominations and individuals within denominations. Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, paints a pantheistic/panentheistic view of God—which has wide acceptance in Hasidic Judaism, particularly from their founder The Baal Shem Tov—but
only as an addition to the Jewish view of a personal god, not in the
original pantheistic sense that denies or limits persona to God.
Other concepts
Dystheism, which is related to theodicy, is a form of theism which holds that God is either not wholly good or is fully malevolent as a consequence of the problem of evil. One such example comes from Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, in which Ivan Karamazov rejects God on the grounds that he allows children to suffer.
God has also been conceived as being incorporeal (immaterial), a personal being, the source of all moral obligation, and the "greatest conceivable existent".
These attributes were all supported to varying degrees by the early
Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologian philosophers, including Maimonides, Augustine of Hippo, and Al-Ghazali, respectively.
Non-theistic views
Non-theist
views about God also vary. Some non-theists avoid the concept of God,
whilst accepting that it is significant to many; other non-theists
understand God as a symbol of human values and aspirations. The
nineteenth-century English atheistCharles Bradlaugh
declared that he refused to say "There is no God", because "the word
'God' is to me a sound conveying no clear or distinct affirmation"; he said more specifically that he disbelieved in the Christian god. Stephen Jay Gould proposed an approach dividing the world of philosophy into what he called "non-overlapping magisteria" (NOMA). In this view, questions of the supernatural, such as those relating to the existence and nature of God, are non-empirical and are the proper domain of theology.
The methods of science should then be used to answer any empirical
question about the natural world, and theology should be used to answer
questions about ultimate meaning and moral value. In this view, the
perceived lack of any empirical footprint from the magisterium of the
supernatural onto natural events makes science the sole player in the
natural world.
Another view, advanced by Richard Dawkins,
is that the existence of God is an empirical question, on the grounds
that "a universe with a god would be a completely different kind of
universe from one without, and it would be a scientific difference." Carl Sagan
argued that the doctrine of a Creator of the Universe was difficult to
prove or disprove and that the only conceivable scientific discovery
that could disprove the existence of a Creator (not necessarily a God)
would be the discovery that the universe is infinitely old.
Stephen Hawking and co-author Leonard Mlodinow state in their book, The Grand Design,
that it is reasonable to ask who or what created the universe, but if
the answer is God, then the question has merely been deflected to that
of who created God. Both authors claim however, that it is possible to
answer these questions purely within the realm of science, and without
invoking any divine beings.
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities.
In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there
are no deities, although it can be defined as a lack of belief in the
existence of any deities, rather than a positive belief in the
nonexistence of any deities.
Anthropomorphism
Pascal Boyer
argues that while there is a wide array of supernatural concepts found
around the world, in general, supernatural beings tend to behave much
like people. The construction of gods and spirits like persons is one of
the best known traits of religion. He cites examples from Greek mythology, which is, in his opinion, more like a modern soap opera than other religious systems.
Bertrand du Castel and Timothy Jurgensen demonstrate through formalization that Boyer's explanatory model matches physics' epistemology in positing not directly observable entities as intermediaries.
Anthropologist
Stewart Guthrie contends that people project human features onto
non-human aspects of the world because it makes those aspects more
familiar. Sigmund Freud also suggested that god concepts are projections of one's father.
Likewise, Émile Durkheim
was one of the earliest to suggest that gods represent an extension of
human social life to include supernatural beings. In line with this
reasoning, psychologist Matt Rossano contends that when humans began
living in larger groups, they may have created gods as a means of
enforcing morality. In small groups, morality can be enforced by social
forces such as gossip or reputation. However, it is much harder to
enforce morality using social forces in much larger groups. Rossano
indicates that by including ever-watchful gods and spirits, humans
discovered an effective strategy for restraining selfishness and
building more cooperative groups.
Isaac Newton saw the existence of a Creator necessary in the movement of astronomical objects. Painting by Godfrey Kneller, 1689
Arguments about the existence of God typically include empirical,
deductive, and inductive types. Different views include that: "God does
not exist" (strong atheism); "God almost certainly does not exist" (de factoatheism); "no one knows whether God exists" (agnosticism); "God exists, but this cannot be proven or disproven" (de factotheism); and that "God exists and this can be proven" (strong theism).
St. Anselm's approach was to define God as, "that than which nothing greater can be conceived". Famed pantheist philosopher Baruch Spinoza
would later carry this idea to its extreme: "By God I understand a
being absolutely infinite, i.e., a substance consisting of infinite
attributes, of which each one expresses an eternal and infinite
essence." For Spinoza, the whole of the natural universe is made of one
substance, God, or its equivalent, Nature. His proof for the existence of God was a variation of the Ontological argument.
ScientistIsaac Newton saw the nontrinitarian God as the masterful creator whose existence could not be denied in the face of the grandeur of all creation. Nevertheless, he rejected polymath Leibniz' thesis that God would necessarily make a perfect world which requires no intervention from the creator. In Query 31 of the Opticks, Newton simultaneously made an argument from design and for the necessity of intervention:
For while comets move in very eccentric orbs in all manner of
positions, blind fate could never make all the planets move one and the
same way in orbs concentric, some inconsiderable irregularities excepted
which may have arisen from the mutual actions of comets and planets on
one another, and which will be apt to increase, till this system wants a
reformation.
St. Thomas believed that the existence of God
is self-evident in itself, but not to us. "Therefore I say that this
proposition, "God exists", of itself is self-evident, for the predicate
is the same as the subject.... Now because we do not know the essence of
God, the proposition is not self-evident to us; but needs to be
demonstrated by things that are more known to us, though less known in
their nature—namely, by effects."
St. Thomas believed that the existence of God can be demonstrated. Briefly in the Summa theologiae and more extensively in the Summa contra Gentiles, he considered in great detail five arguments for the existence of God, widely known as the quinque viae (Five Ways).
For the original text of the five proofs, see quinque viae
Motion: Some things undoubtedly move, though cannot cause their
own motion. Since there can be no infinite chain of causes of motion,
there must be a First Mover not moved by anything else, and this is what everyone understands by God.
Causation: As in the case of motion, nothing can cause itself, and
an infinite chain of causation is impossible, so there must be a First Cause, called God.
Existence of necessary and the unnecessary: Our experience includes
things certainly existing but apparently unnecessary. Not everything can
be unnecessary, for then once there was nothing and there would still
be nothing. Therefore, we are compelled to suppose something that exists
necessarily, having this necessity only from itself; in fact itself the
cause for other things to exist.
Gradation: If we can notice a gradation in things in the sense that
some things are more hot, good, etc., there must be a superlative that
is the truest and noblest thing, and so most fully existing. This then,
we call God (Note: Thomas does not ascribe actual qualities to God
Himself).
Ordered tendencies of nature: A direction of actions to an end is
noticed in all bodies following natural laws. Anything without awareness
tends to a goal under the guidance of one who is aware. This we call
God (Note that even when we guide objects, in Thomas's view, the source
of all our knowledge comes from God as well).
Some theologians, such as the scientist and theologian A.E. McGrath, argue that the existence of God is not a question that can be answered using the scientific method. AgnosticStephen Jay Gould argues that science and religion are not in conflict and do not overlap.
Some findings in the fields of cosmology, evolutionary biology and neuroscience are interpreted by some atheists (including Lawrence M. Krauss and Sam Harris) as evidence that God is an imaginary entity only, with no basis in reality.
These atheists claim that a single, omniscient God who is imagined to
have created the universe and is particularly attentive to the lives of
humans has been imagined, embellished and promulgated in a
trans-generational manner. Richard Dawkins
interprets such findings not only as a lack of evidence for the
material existence of such a God, but as extensive evidence to the
contrary. However, his views are opposed by some theologians and scientists including Alister McGrath, who argues that existence of God is compatible with science.
Specific attributes
Different religious traditions assign differing (though often
similar) attributes and characteristics to God, including expansive
powers and abilities, psychological characteristics, gender
characteristics, and preferred nomenclature. The assignment of these
attributes often differs according to the conceptions of God in the culture from which they arise. For example, attributes of God in Christianity, attributes of God in Islam, and the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy in Judaism share certain similarities arising from their common roots.
The word God is "one of the most complex and difficult in the English language." In the Judeo-Christian
tradition, "the Bible has been the principal source of the conceptions
of God". That the Bible "includes many different images, concepts, and
ways of thinking about" God has resulted in perpetual "disagreements
about how God is to be conceived and understood".
Many traditions see God as incorporeal and eternal, and regard
him as a point of living light like human souls, but without a physical
body, as he does not enter the cycle of birth, death and rebirth. God is
seen as the perfect and constant embodiment of all virtues, powers and
values and that he is the unconditionally loving Father of all souls,
irrespective of their religion, gender, or culture.
Throughout the Hebrew and Christian Bibles there are many names for God. One of them is Elohim. Another one is El Shaddai, translated "God Almighty". A third notable name is El Elyon, which means "The High God". Also noted in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles is the name "I Am that I Am".
God is described and referred in the Quran and hadith by certain names or attributes, the most common being Al-Rahman, meaning "Most Compassionate" and Al-Rahim, meaning "Most Merciful". Many of these names are also used in the scriptures of the Bahá'í Faith.
The gender of God may be viewed as either a literal or an allegorical aspect of a deity who, in classical western philosophy, transcends bodily form. Polytheistic religions commonly attribute to each of the gods a gender, allowing each to interact with any of the others, and perhaps with humans, sexually. In most monotheistic religions, God has no counterpart with which to relate sexually. Thus, in classical western philosophy the gender of this one-and-only deity is most likely to be an analogical
statement of how humans and God address, and relate to, each other.
Namely, God is seen as begetter of the world and revelation which
corresponds to the active (as opposed to the receptive) role in sexual
intercourse.
Prayer plays a significant role among many believers. Muslims believe that the purpose of existence is to worship God. He is viewed as a personal God and there are no intermediaries, such as clergy, to contact God. Prayer often also includes supplication and asking forgiveness. God is often believed to be forgiving. For example, a hadith states God would replace a sinless people with one who sinned but still asked repentance. Christian theologian Alister McGrath
writes that there are good reasons to suggest that a "personal god" is
integral to the Christian outlook, but that one has to understand it is
an analogy. "To say that God is like a person is to affirm the divine
ability and willingness to relate to others. This does not imply that
God is human, or located at a specific point in the universe."
Adherents of different religions generally disagree as to how to best worship God and what is God's plan
for mankind, if there is one. There are different approaches to
reconciling the contradictory claims of monotheistic religions. One view
is taken by exclusivists, who believe they are the chosen people or have exclusive access to absolute truth, generally through revelation or encounter with the Divine, which adherents of other religions do not. Another view is religious pluralism.
A pluralist typically believes that his religion is the right one, but
does not deny the partial truth of other religions. An example of a
pluralist view in Christianity is supersessionism, i.e., the belief that one's religion is the fulfillment of previous religions. A third approach is relativistic inclusivism, where everybody is seen as equally right; an example being universalism: the doctrine that salvation is eventually available for everyone. A fourth approach is syncretism, mixing different elements from different religions. An example of syncretism is the New Age movement.
Jews and Christians believe that humans are created in the image of God, and are the center, crown and key to God's creation, stewards for God, supreme over everything else God had made (Gen 1:26); for this reason, humans are in Christianity called the "Children of God".
Depiction
Zoroastrianism
Ahura Mazda (depiction is on the right, with high crown) presents Ardashir I (left) with the ring of kingship. (Relief at Naqsh-e Rustam, 3rd century CE)
During the early Parthian Empire, Ahura Mazda was visually
represented for worship. This practice ended during the beginning of the
Sassanid empire. Zoroastrian iconoclasm,
which can be traced to the end of the Parthian period and the beginning
of the Sassanid, eventually put an end to the use of all images of
Ahura Mazda in worship. However, Ahura Mazda continued to be symbolized
by a dignified male figure, standing or on horseback which is found in
Sassanian investiture.
Judaism
At least some Jews do not use any image for God, since God is the
unimaginable Being who cannot be represented in material forms.
Early Christians believed that the words of the Gospel of John
1:18: "No man has seen God at any time" and numerous other statements
were meant to apply not only to God, but to all attempts at the
depiction of God.
However, later depictions of God are found. Some, like the Hand of God, are depiction borrowed from Jewish art.
The beginning of the 8th century witnessed the suppression and destruction of religious icons as the period of Byzantine iconoclasm (literally image-breaking) started. The Second Council of Nicaea in 787 effectively ended the first period of Byzantine iconoclasm and restored the honouring of icons and holy images in general.
However, this did not immediately translate into large scale depictions
of God the Father. Even supporters of the use of icons in the 8th
century, such as Saint John of Damascus, drew a distinction between images of God the Father and those of Christ.
Prior to the 10th century no attempt was made to use a human to symbolize God the Father in Western art.
Yet, Western art eventually required some way to illustrate the
presence of the Father, so through successive representations a set of
artistic styles for symbolizing the Father using a man gradually emerged
around the 10th century AD. A rationale for the use of a human is the
belief that God created the soul of Man in the image of his own (thus
allowing Human to transcend the other animals).
It appears that when early artists designed to represent God the
Father, fear and awe restrained them from a usage of the whole human
figure. Typically only a small part would be used as the image, usually
the hand, or sometimes the face, but rarely a whole human. In many
images, the figure of the Son supplants the Father, so a smaller portion
of the person of the Father is depicted.
By the 12th century depictions of God the Father had started to appear in French illuminated manuscripts, which as a less public form could often be more adventurous in their iconography, and in stained glass
church windows in England. Initially the head or bust was usually shown
in some form of frame of clouds in the top of the picture space, where
the Hand of God had formerly appeared; the Baptism of Christ on the famous baptismal font in Liège of Rainer of Huy
is an example from 1118 (a Hand of God is used in another scene).
Gradually the amount of the human symbol shown can increase to a
half-length figure, then a full-length, usually enthroned, as in Giotto's fresco of c. 1305 in Padua. In the 14th century the Naples Bible carried a depiction of God the Father in the Burning bush. By the early 15th century, the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry has a considerable number of symbols, including an elderly but tall and elegant full-length figure walking in the Garden of Eden, which show a considerable diversity of apparent ages and dress. The "Gates of Paradise" of the Florence Baptistry by Lorenzo Ghiberti, begun in 1425 use a similar tall full-length symbol for the Father. The Rohan Book of Hours
of about 1430 also included depictions of God the Father in half-length
human form, which were now becoming standard, and the Hand of God
becoming rarer. At the same period other works, like the large Genesis altarpiece by the Hamburg painter Meister Bertram, continued to use the old depiction of Christ as Logos in Genesis scenes. In the 15th century there was a brief fashion for depicting all three persons of the Trinity as similar or identical figures with the usual appearance of Christ.
In an early Venetian school Coronation of the Virgin by Giovanni d'Alemagna and Antonio Vivarini
(c. 1443), The Father is depicted using the symbol consistently used by
other artists later, namely a patriarch, with benign, yet powerful
countenance and with long white hair and a beard, a depiction largely
derived from, and justified by, the near-physical, but still figurative,
description of the Ancient of Days.
. ...the Ancient of Days did sit, whose garment was white as
snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like
the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire. (Daniel 7:9)
Usage of two Hands of God (relatively unusual) and the Holy Spirit as a dove in Baptism of Christ by Verrocchio, 1472.
In the Annunciation by Benvenuto di Giovanni
in 1470, God the Father is portrayed in the red robe and a hat that
resembles that of a Cardinal. However, even in the later part of the
15th century, the symbolic representation of the Father and the Holy
Spirit as "hands and dove" continued, e.g. in Verrocchio's Baptism of Christ in 1472.
God the Father with His Right Hand Raised in Blessing, with a triangular halo representing the Trinity, Girolamo dai Libri, c. 1555
In Renaissance paintings of the adoration of the Trinity, God may be
depicted in two ways, either with emphasis on The Father, or the three
elements of the Trinity. The most usual depiction of the Trinity in
Renaissance art depicts God the Father using an old man, usually with a
long beard and patriarchal in appearance, sometimes with a triangular
halo (as a reference to the Trinity), or with a papal crown, specially
in Northern Renaissance painting. In these depictions The Father may
hold a globe or book (to symbolize God's knowledge and as a reference to
how knowledge is deemed divine). He is behind and above Christ on the
Cross in the Throne of Mercy iconography. A dove, the symbol of the Holy Spirit
may hover above. Various people from different classes of society, e.g.
kings, popes or martyrs may be present in the picture. In a Trinitarian
Pietà,
God the Father is often symbolized using a man wearing a papal dress
and a papal crown, supporting the dead Christ in his arms. They are
depicted as floating in heaven with angels who carry the instruments of the Passion.
Representations of God the Father and the Trinity were attacked both by Protestants and within Catholicism, by the Jansenist and Baianist
movements as well as more orthodox theologians. As with other attacks
on Catholic imagery, this had the effect both of reducing Church support
for the less central depictions, and strengthening it for the core
ones. In the Western Church, the pressure to restrain religious imagery resulted in the highly influential decrees of the final session of the Council of Trent
in 1563. The Council of Trent decrees confirmed the traditional
Catholic doctrine that images only represented the person depicted, and
that veneration to them was paid to the person, not the image.
Artistic depictions of God the Father were uncontroversial in Catholic art thereafter, but less common depictions of the Trinity were condemned. In 1745 Pope Benedict XIV explicitly supported the Throne of Mercy depiction, referring to the "Ancient of Days", but in 1786 it was still necessary for Pope Pius VI to issue a papal bull condemning the decision of an Italian church council to remove all images of the Trinity from churches.
In both the Last Judgment and the Coronation of the Virgin paintings by Rubens
he depicted God the Father using the image that by then had become
widely accepted, a bearded patriarchal figure above the fray. In the
17th century, the two Spanish artists Diego Velázquez (whose father-in-law Francisco Pacheco was in charge of the approval of new images for the Inquisition) and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo both depicted God the Father using a patriarchal figure with a white beard in a purple robe.
While representations of God the Father were growing in Italy,
Spain, Germany and the Low Countries, there was resistance elsewhere in
Europe, even during the 17th century. In 1632 most members of the Star Chamber court in England (except the Archbishop of York) condemned the use of the images of the Trinity in church windows, and some considered them illegal. Later in the 17th century Sir Thomas Browne
wrote that he considered the representation of God the Father using an
old man "a dangerous act" that might lead to Egyptian symbolism. In 1847, Charles Winston was still critical of such images as a "Romish trend" (a term used to refer to Roman Catholics) that he considered best avoided in England.
In 1667 the 43rd chapter of the Great Moscow Council
specifically included a ban on a number of symbolic depictions of God
the Father and the Holy Spirit, which then also resulted in a whole
range of other icons being placed on the forbidden list,
mostly affecting Western-style depictions which had been gaining ground
in Orthodox icons. The Council also declared that the person of the
Trinity who was the "Ancient of Days" was Christ, as Logos, not God the Father. However some icons continued to be produced in Russia, as well as Greece, Romania, and other Orthodox countries.
Muslims believe that God (Allah) is beyond all comprehension and equal, and does not resemble any of his creations in any way. Thus, Muslims are not iconodules, are not expected to visualize God, and instead of having pictures of Allah in their mosques, typically have religious calligraphy written on the wall.
Bahá'í Faith
In the Kitáb-i-Íqán, the primary theological work of the Bahá’í Faith, God is described as “Him Who is the central Orb of the universe, its Essence and ultimate Purpose.” Bahá'u'lláh
taught that God is directly unknowable to common mortals, but that his
attributes and qualities can be indirectly known by learning from and
imitating his divine Manifestations, which in Bahá'í theology are
somewhat comparable to Hindu avatars or Abrahamic prophets. These
Manifestations are the great prophets and teachers of many of the major
religious traditions. These include Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, Zoroaster,
Muhammad, Bahá'ú'lláh, and others. Although the faith is strictly
monotheistic, it also preaches the unity of all religions and focuses on
these multiple epiphanies as necessary for meeting the needs of
humanity at different points in history and for different cultures, and
as part of a scheme of progressive revelation and education of humanity.
Many philosophers developed arguments for the existence of God,
while attempting to comprehend the precise implications of God's
attributes. Reconciling some of those attributes—particularly the
attributes of the God of theistic personalism—generated important
philosophical problems and debates. For example, God's omniscience may
seem to imply that God knows how free agents will choose to act. If God
does know this, their ostensible free will might be illusory, or foreknowledge does not imply predestination, and if God does not know it, God may not be omniscient.
The last centuries of philosophy have seen vigorous questions regarding the arguments for God's existence raised by such philosophers as Immanuel Kant, David Hume and Antony Flew, although Kant held that the argument from morality was valid. The theist response has been either to contend, as does Alvin Plantinga, that faith is "properly basic", or to take, as does Richard Swinburne, the evidentialist position.
Some theists agree that only some of the arguments for God's existence
are compelling, but argue that faith is not a product of reason,
but requires risk. There would be no risk, they say, if the arguments
for God's existence were as solid as the laws of logic, a position
summed up by Pascal as "the heart has reasons of which reason does not know."
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