My Conception of God
Good day my friends,
The title of this thread was considered with vigor; I first decided to call it "My Idea of God", but realized that the way I see God is more of a conception. A conception is something we form, and an idea seems to be a random thing which comes to us. An idea may turn into a conception in time, but the initial state of "having an idea" is not a conception, and an idea is not planned, whereas a conception is. When someone says "I have an idea!", it is usually more of a conception, if it is fully formed as a plan of action. Ideas may come from the sub-conscious, God, etc., but they are unformed and may pass away or may become a conception. A conception is a thought which has evolved from the state of a mere idea and has become a cogent thought, plan, or principle. As an example, I would say that the individual sperm and the individual egg are mere 'ideas', in this specific application of the two words, but that the fetus is a 'conception'.
My initial definition of God was an idea. The mere idea of God seems to be the purest of all religious and spiritual feelings, because it is a sudden pang; it is an unthinking "eureka!" The moment the idea is expounded upon by rational thought and becomes a conception, however, all sorts of pure, impure, logical, illogical, political, and apolitical explanations must follow to justify the shift. When God was a mere idea, God was a great and noble entity without a need for justification; however, the moment Human beings made God into a conception, all applications of God must be explained. When God shifts from a mere flash of an idea in the mind to a planned and explained conception, something goes wrong. Upon the shift to a conception, God must be endlessly stretched and rationalized in order to explain all new discoveries until God rips in two from the stress of being applied to such an immense cosmos.
We Human beings, desperately searching for something that will allow us to continue our experience of all the scents, sights, surfaces, and sounds of this Earth, require God's conception to be satisfied. We deceive ourselves that whole bodies can be sucked into a mystical paradise (Mary, for Catholics), that the fields of Elysium exist just beyond a certain firmament only pierced by entities so light in weight as to be unmeasurable (souls for Muslims, Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians), and that the time-less and space-less can become manifest in time and space (God -> Jesus Christ).
Having said that, my conception of God, as advertised, is: God is an idea. This is not to declare that God is a mere Human imagination, but that God is more like the first word in my two-word metaphor of 'idea' vs. 'conception'. God is indeed a real, extant entity in my opinion, though a time-less, space-less, and unknowable entity. That which is God happens to be unknowable precisely because we are beings that live in time and space, and so cannot conceive of a thing that lives without time or space. Using the infamous way of describing this point in time without time, and a space without space, I can only refer to Alighieri's "Empyrean". The Empyrean is precisely nothing, but it encompasses everything; It is not 21:46, but It is 21:45, 21:47, and all seconds, minutes, hours, days, and years. I do not call God "Him" or "He" simply because the idea of attributing gender to such a being, let alone giving It the appearance of a wise old man upon a throne, seems silly to me.
If I were to be pressed on the subject, my conception that God must only be an idea can only turn into a conception again, for God, having been idealized, must then be explained. If God created all of this that we call Cosmos, how did God gain this essential and fundamental power, if the power was indeed 'gained' at all? The biggest fault I can personally see in "God" is this: In this Universe there is the passage of time, by which matter grows and atrophies, and there is space, in which all matter moves. The problem sits in the duality of timelessness and time; of spacelessness and space. How could God, being time-less and space-less, create a place that has time and space? To press the point even further, how could God conceive of such a universe so alien to God's nature, let alone create it? 'Time-less' and 'in time' cannot mix together, yet the time-less "God" made a universe that has time, apparently.
Naturally, if God had any experience of Time, God would simply age, grow, and dismantle along with the rest of existence, and that would hardly be godly. By this way of seeing things, God cannot possibly be in time, just as God cannot, by Its very fundamental existence, be in space.
Secondly, and more importantly for us as living beings, God cannot possibly be so moral and perfect as would be hoped from the creator of all things. Using God's infinity, or timelessness, as a reference, the fits of passion which God exhibits in the Bible seem uncharacteristic. How could a God of such infinite space and infinite time become enraged and, in this sudden flow of adrenaline, send down armed and barded archangels to Earth to slaughter Its unruly children? The very ideas of passion, enragement, anger, and adrenaline are immensely Human in scope; we become passionate, then take time to normalize ourselves. Likewise, we become enraged, and over time we are made calm. In this sense, God, as is, seems to be a Human creation, for God exhibits our most fundamental behavior. Of course, I happen to take a different view....
In addition to passion and rage (things which pass away with time, thus precluding God from becoming passionate or enraged and thus invalidating the passionate God of the Bible and Qu'ran), the conception of God and morality is a truly puzzling one. From the most simplistic and cursory look at the matter, Humans require an objective moral code to function, or else there would simply be no way that we could say what is good, and society would crumble. There would be no Humanity, rationality, civilization, or thought at all with no objective moral code, because reasoning that "X is bad and Y is good" seems to be the first and most fundamental bit of logic in thinking beings. The problem I have with a-theism is precisely that it can say "X is bad and Y is good", but it cannot say why this is so. Conversely, God may declare that "X is bad and Y is good", but who is to say that the creator of a thing has moral authority over the thing that has been created?
We might say that God has private property rights over Its creation called "the universe", but then that would seem to grant all of our private property immediately to the Church which represents God, thus removing our own private property rights and making the idea hypocritical. A clock maker may create a fine watch, but the maker can hardly command that time stop, and the hands begin to move in the other direction, for this would defy the rules the maker itself had set! It is quite easy to conceive of a creator, but what of the history of that creator?
Despite all of that, I cannot shake the idea of God from my mind. All things in this universe, at least, require a mover to move them. Thomas of Aquinas made famous the argument that if all moveable things require something to move them, there must be an unmoved mover that began the process. As an example, I have no patience for people who say that this Cosmos had no beginning and is merely in an endless loop of expansion and contraction. One version of this theory says that, say, 50 billion years ago, exactly the same events occured as are occuring at this moment, and in 50 billion years, exactly, the same events that are occuring at this moment will occur again at precisely the same point in time, after another death-birth cycle has completed. This idea seems repugnant to me, for it seems that the cycle itself must have been initiated by something, which would have had to be God, or some sort of creator(s). The next logical step to take, then, is to say that the cycle of death-birth has simply always been happening, but this is the same as God having always existed. At least the conception of "God" can give our species a set of moral laws to follow; galaxies can not do this, unfortunately.
The second argument, and most irksome to me, I must admit, is the one regarding the "Big Bang" (We all know that the name started as a joke by a creationist, so let's leave the actual taxonomy of existence aside). The Big Bang theory seems to say that a point of immeasurably small matter and energy expanded forth from what was apparently nothing. My own hilarious observation that "rays of light became dust became stars formed planets developed life came to apes evolved into Mozart" seems to fit here, for some reason. Most distressing to me is the way atheists often tout the Big Bang as rational and logical, when that very explanation of how things began seems closer to God than any other explanation. God existed, then made existence; conversely, the Big Bang happened, then the Universe existed. Both of these arguments appear to be precisely alike, in my mind, and the latter only reinforces the former.
I am not able to consciously and rationally believe in Jesus Christ, for all the chronicles of his life and deeds seem too fantastical for me. However, in terms of rational and philosophical discussions, God seems all too evident in the eyes that allow me to see this universe of ours. An atheist may well say that Islamists cutting off heads is wrong, but nothing tells him this other than his gut feelings. On the opposite side, God ingrains within the human soul the idea that everyone should not to kill; rather to love, but we may ignore it and kill each other anyway. I do not believe in the hypocritical, violent, passionate, and destructive God of the Talmud, nor in the disassociative and haunting God of the New Testament. I do believe in God, a creator, as it were, for the very fact that Mozart can be perceived, that Haydn can be enjoyed, and that Beethoven can move. We have had a Brunelleschi, a Schenkel, a Dostoyevsky, and a Michelangelo. On the other side of that, we have had villains such as Lenin, Guevara, Napoleon, Hitler, Wilson, and Stalin. These facts all seem to point toward a God that instilled good in Its creatures, allowing them to change over time and develop themselves in good measure; to leave them, free to obey or disobey the inherent commands. I believe in a watch maker, not a jail keeper; the spring and cogs may unwind in time, but the caged door never opens once the key has been discarded.
To conclude, I must say that I have no patience for the vitriol thrown by men like Dawkins and Falwell. "There is probably no God, now stop worrying and enjoy life" is as stupid and irritating to me as "Believe or burn in Hell forever!". I believe fervently in conversations and arguments using the logic of men such as Thomas of Aquinas. The man was famously quiet, calm, and deeply involved in writing; it would be nice, for once, if all theological argument turned to Aquinas for inspiration.
I cannot account for evil in the world, nor can I account for the fact that a time-less being created a world within time. I can conceive of a God that made it all, programmed certain things, then shut the lid and went about Its affairs. Perhaps I will, in time, come to believe in Jesus, or perhaps I will come to reject God entirely. If God exists and does lock us in jail and throw away the key, rather than provide a pin to re-wind the clock spring, It may be assured that I have more contempt for It than I do for Adolf Hitler. Conversely, if God exists and actually adheres to all those moral teachings attributed to It, God would be made happy that we consistently and honestly question our beliefs. For those who merely make a decision and doggedly run it up against a brick wall until they run out of breath, that God would surely be disappointed.
You may have noticed that, throughout this unreasonably long post, I mention honesty, clarity, and constant questioning as attributes that God would expect and enjoy in us for our dedication to fact and learning. This very point of my argument shows that I am biased in my conception of God, and thus I use my own long-held bias to inform that conception. It is a massive circle, now that I think of it, but the fact that I can recognize that fact makes me believe in God even more, and puts a great smile on my face.
Isn't being a Human such a glorious and golden thing?
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Originally Posted by Vizsla
) and impose the despicable tithes system, for example. The duty of private religion, in my opinion, is to use funds that they earned, through service and labor, to build their own houses of worship, and to disseminate their own ideas without torture or enacting laws which force people to accept their beliefs. A mistake atheists make, in my opinion, is to conflate the disgusting acts committed in the name of God, throughout history, with God Itself. 
Evidence isn't everything, but it is a pre-requisite in making public policy (this turns into politics, but I want to be clear that it is always more philosphical and moral in character). I don't believe that the mere dogmatic belief in God is any reason to kill non-believers, or, for example, to force a special tax on atheists.
However, I shall always have a distaste for the use of income-tax money to bandy about atheism or religion. We need an ongoing and painfully honest debate, and the way I see it, the internet just doesn't have much of that on this subject.
