It's been a week since I've reached that conclusion. Actually, it would be better to say it's been a week since I came to the understanding of why my beliefs necessitate such a foundation. After all, I can't really say that I've ever really doubted it. I just doubted if I'd ever really be able to explain it satisfactorilly. Well, after a week's worth of reflection and after reposting it on Myspace I still think I've done it.
So now the question is: where do I go from here? Who is the God that is? It's a big step to go from the abstract principle that God exists to the tangible understanding of the Judeo-Christian God, or Allah, or Brahman. To jump from one to the other without building a foundation of understanding why is to be guilty of creating a god after the image of my desires rather than understanding God for who He is. (I'm using "he" as a convenience at this point, not because I've predetermined that God is masculine.)
What worries me is that this entire exercise is preposterous. (I just killed a moth) Where was I? Yes. Preposterous. God, being God, is greater than I am so I will never be able to understand Him fully, but will I be able to understand Him at all? Is this simply going through the hoops to reach a predetermined conclusion? To put it another way, am I simply searching for a rational basis to explain the god I've already created?
I honestly believe that it's not and that scares me. There's a part of me (the part that's currently doing the gut wrenching) that tells me that if I don't arrive at where it wants me to I'm in BIG trouble. Well, if that part of me is right then I'll get there and if it's not I'd rather know now than live my life in a delusion.
But all that is there and I'm still here at the question of: Who is the God that is? I think it's a bit too much to tackle in one night (or even one lifetime), so I'm going to divide it up into two segments: 1)the nature of God, and 2) the charector of God. I'll start on the nature now and not worry about the charector until (if ever) I reach that hurdle.
The nature of God... OK, well um, about ten minutes have passed since I wrote the first sentance and I still have no idea where to begin... So, um... I've moved into the kitchen and poured myself a bowl of cocoa krispies (TM) in an effort to jog my brain. I never realized how difficult it is to go from "God is" to God is [this]" and explain the logic of moving from A to B. Now I understand why it took Descatres a few days to realize he thinks. Thinking is tough work.
Three bowl later I'm back in my chair and I think I'm ready to go. The way I see it there are four predominant views of God. I'm going to call them platonism, monism, deism, and transcendantism. Platonism is the view that God is the source or Creator and everything that exists eminates from Him. Monism is the view that God is omnipresent and therefore everything that exists carries within it a spark of the divine. Deism is the view that God is the clockmaker who basically built the clock and then left it to run on its own. Transcendentism is the view that God is spirit and exists outside of the physical world.
I know that I'm not doing justice to any of these official views and am rediculously reductionist here, but I just wanted to get a simple working definition from which to proceed. The problem now is how to proceed. I'm back to the problem I was an hour ago when I first wrote "the nature of God..." I've determined four potential destinations for B but still haven't figured out the route from A to any of them.
OK. There were actually three things I determined last week. The first, or final, one is what I started with today. There is a God. Along the way to getting to that point I also determined there are no absolutes and that everyone must take some things on faith. I think my problem tonight has been that I'm grasping for absolutes where there are none.
But that does not mean my faith should be irrational. I am simply saying that I do not have to rely on reason alone to arrive at my creed. If I did than I would end up like Neitche who took reason alone to its logical extremes. It was my first leap of faith to determine that his was not the answer. It is my second leap of faith to say that greater men than I have been able to get beyond A where I have not. The fact that the four views exist show me that someone before me has paved the way and reasoned them out. Granted each of these views have also been "disproven" as well, yet they all remain in society in some form or other. It is also much easier to poke holes in an existing theory than to create a new one. Therefore I am moving on the assumption that the minds that created these ideas are greater than the minds that have attempted to destroy them. If they were not they would not last. Therefore, while recognizing the agnostic's right to reject all of these views (at least those not subscribing to a version of #4), I do not share in taking such a view myself.
At some later point I would like to examine each of these four views and critique them at a greater, more detailed, level but for now I am simply going to embrace a form of each of them as my own rather than arbitrarily chosing one over the other. The platonists are right in that God is the source from which the universe flows. The monists are right in that God is omnipresent and that nothing exists outside of Him. The deists are right in that God has created a world bound by physical laws that can continue to keep everything in motion outside of his direct interference. And the transcendentists are right in saying God exists outside of everything including time.
So if my creed is, "There is a God", here is my first corollary: "God is the eternal, transcendent, and omnipresent source of our universe."
Hmm. I often see people stressing over God. They'll be like, "how do I know that God really exists, and if so, how do I know if what I believe about the afterlife is correct, etc etc etc". Here is my solution. If believing in God and an afterlife gives you peace, then you might as well just do so because you're not losing anything in the process. The worse that can happen is you die and that's it, there's no God. In which case, you're dead, so who cares. In the best case, God is there and he's pleased that you've followed his doctrines. So you have nothing to lose, and everything to gain.
Aside from that, I believe that human beings can innately sense and communicate with Him/Her/It/Them. So if you are in communication with God, then your view of God is probably accurate. Although I can speculate that each person sees God through a unique filter in their mind.
You talking about the nature of God reminds me I need to buy "The Nature of the Gods" by Cicero.
You decide a phenomena is real, then try to define it. When a scientist looks around for a phenomena then tries to explain it and understand it by direct examination.
Gods are not phenomena, they are not things that we can study and know, assuming they exist at all, which I seriously doubt.
To try to figure out what a god is by first assuming it exists is not exactly rational. It's sort of like assuming unicorns exist, then determining they must be invisible otherwise we'd have found them by now. Is that really evidence that they're invisible?
The conclusion is based on the assumption that they exist, and like christ's metaphorical temple built on sand, is foundationless.
When you start with the conclusion, in this case that a god or a unicorn exists, you do not find evidence for that conclusion, but rationalizations - what must also be true for my first assumption to be true?
If unicorns exist and their myth has a foundation, they must be invisible.
Or they must have been taken away by aliens.
And their bones must crumble into ash the second they die, or else we'd find invisible bones.
You can weave a complicated mythology, and it does seem to make sense, but it is founded on a big, big, big assumption.
And you can reach any silly, far-fetched conclusion if you get one "free" assumption at the outset.
I was taught by a humanities prof that God does not exists and it's a man-made concept, where since we cannot explain some phenomena we atribute them to God, that we have an idea of perfection and since we havent seen it, we attribute it to God, out there some where it should exist. Personally I belive that as human beings, we get all this conflicting emotions, the world is fu**ed up, we need a sense of stability and comfort, we need to belive in God, in order to explain the unexplainable. I'll keep reading the other blogs before spilling out what I belive God is...
God is man made. "God" is humanity's desire to explain their universe. To give reason to their existence. "God" is used, also, to bring together people, as well as, divide them. When asked for proof, you'll get different explanations, depending on who you've asked. One group will tell you that he is that from which all things are created; while another group will tell you that he is the Life Force and is all things; another may tell you that WE are all of the Higher Being and are parts of him who have lost their 'Godly' way. To define God is to make him what you want, who you want, and give "God" any and all the power you feel he should be attributed with. Who is God? This is where faith comes in, but faith in only what we have read of, what man have written through the ages, and have called it "divine inspirations." Faith not in God, but in the teachings of man of God.
Your views almost fit better with under the blog Understanding Revelation. As you can see from the nest blog (The Pendulum Problem) I had problems of my own with the reasoning here. It was only to show the whole thought process that I left it up.
