Concepts of God

One of the things that have been changing and will continue to change throughout this critical period in history is our old paradigms of what “God”, “spirituality”. etc. mean to us as individuals an as a society. Many people with the sensitivity to perceive the demise of those old paradigms have jumped off the boat entirely, which actually seems to have become a raging fad in the “Western” world.

I wonder why it is so important to defend a belief in the non-existence of God, a human soul, true Prophets, etc. What is it that is REALLY at stake underneath all the nonchalance and cynicism?

I sincerely admire those who have had the guts to abandon those old paradigms without having anything to fill the awful, hideously gaping emptiness that they have left behind. That kind of leap into the abyss is truly an act of faith, albeit somewhat mislead, because their rejection of these things is much like seeing that our food has gone bad and turned poisonous for human consumption, and in consequence deciding that the whole concept of eating food must be rejected in the name of healthy living.

No wonder the 20th Century has succumbed to spiritual famine! I think that one of the truly urgent needs of the times is to work together in the search for new, healthier paradigms of “religion”, “God”, “spirituality”, etc. This may prove to be another of the things that can help save the people untold suffering and enable us to reach our glorious destiny as a race.

All our concepts of God are limited attempts to define the undefinable. Our ideas of God seem to have evolved by paradigm shifts, much as our scientific concepts do, and there is no reason to believe that they should not continue to do so. Most atheists I know have chosen that path simply because they have rejected old paradigms of God and not had new ones to replace them with.

Someone said he initially felt obliged to pray and search in order to be accepted by others, which I never thought was a good reason to do anything. In fact, I would often do just the opposite of what I felt pressured into, in protest against that method of manipulating one's feelings in order to achieve a forced conformity. He tried God and found Him lacking; God failed to live up to his expectations of Him.

I wonder if those expectations were not cultivated by the consumer-society brand of "feel good" spirituality that surrounded us as children (outside of home, of course), which seeks personal satisfaction through getting "happy vibes" by anything from drugs to meditation to hiking.

My own mystical experiences have taught me that, more often than not, one's search leads through blood, sweat and tears, and not necessarily to any "spiritual high". But after all, the purpose of the search is not to "feel good", but to learn, to grow, to mature. And often, one's sustained effort, difficulties and long-suffering do much more for us than walking around on cloud nine all the time.

So my counsel to other seekers is this: if along the way you enter a tunnel with no end in sight (a "dark night of the soul" in mystic lingo), be glad, for you are being tested by One Who shall not be put to test. And if at another time a sheering joy fills your soul ("consolations", the mystics call them) just keep on walking, for this is only a signpost, not the end or purpose of the journey.

To this, another wrote: "I agree that there is a lot more blood, sweat and tears than euphoria in the search for God's Will. A lot of it is simple obedience. It is definitely a way of self-denial for the greater good…”

This brings up another reason for rejecting belief in God: to avoid having to obey His laws, some of which one may not necessarily understand or agree with. The western world has become overly enamored of individual freedom, leading us away from that “simple obedience”, while perhaps divine laws were always meant to protect us from our own ignorance, short-sightedness and self-centeredness.

Historically, whenever a Messenger of God has revealed laws and limits, according to the needs of the time and place where they have been given, it has been for our own protection and education, and not out of some kind of perverse authoritarian whim or fancy.

It is interesting in this vein that the Incan Prophet Viracocha taught the people three basic commandments that are still sacred to Indians today, while most of the rest of society has forgotten them: no lying, no stealing, no laziness.

Some say that they would only believe in God due to a strong ‘personal experience’ such as His coming up and talking to them. This kind of crass empiricism has been found useless for much of contemporary scientific inquiry, in fact for all but the most simple matters. Imagine someone saying he will not believe in subatomic particles unless one comes up and slaps him in the face. ¿Then why expect a test for God to be that simple?

Most (some say all) phenomena cannot be studied directly, but only through the observation of their effects on other phenomena. Take gravity, for example: we still do not understand why or how it works, but only that it exists because of how things behave. ¿Why expect the ‘God’ phenomenon to be otherwise?

Furthermore, such a direct, personal experience of God, such as many claim to have had, falls under the category of subjective knowledge. Such a ‘proof’ would therefore not be scientific, as science supposedly seeks objective knowledge.

In order to be scientific, one would have to develop a number of necessary criteria by which to judge the person’s claim to be God, and then test them out repeatedly under different circumstances and by different people. ¿How does one distinguish between a mineral, a plant, an animal, a human, a Prophet, or God?

These criteria would have to take into account at least our basic definition of God, which I am assuming would include aspects like ‘unlimited’ (while humans are limited), an ‘unknowable essence’ (as per the blog on agnosticism), etc., and therefore would end up excluding your friend in the street, leaving you back at square one.

In conclusion, it is almost as if this requirement for believing in God had been designed for the sole purpose of avoiding ever having to face such a possibility.

(June 21, 2003 )