Is god an art?

[The Dude]

For this discussion I would like to set aside at first what I mean by art in this context:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/art

Specifically:
7. the principles or methods governing any craft [...]
9. skill in conducting any human activity
12. skilled workmanship, execution, or agency, as distinguished from nature.
14. studied action; artificiality in behavior.
15. an artifice or artful device.

So with the definition clear, I propose the following:

We can only justify god to ourselves if the notion we have of him conforms with the way in which our intellect works.

Long ago, Xenophanes of Colophon wrote the following:

"But if cattle and horses and lions had hands
or could paint with their hands and create works such as men do,
horses like horses and cattle like cattle
also would depict the gods' shapes and make their bodies
of such a sort as the form they themselves have.
...
Ethiopians say that their gods are snubnosed and black
Thracians that they are pale and red-haired."

This was a fairly primitive argument back then, and it still is today. Despite that, it's frequently used. The simple argument here is that human beings picture their gods as themselves, which is supposed to reinforce the fact that gods are merely a human invention. It gave birth to the popular notion that Abrahamic theists must somehow believe that god is a gigantic invisible old man in the sky with a beard and a finger he points at the world beneath him as he orders it.

Obviously that's not true. And there may even be some christians who believe it still but in any serious theological debate, this concept is dismissed readily by theists and atheists alike.

But perhaps there is a greater truth to what Xenophanes said than merely the physical resemblance that he discusses. No doubt he said precisely what he meant to say but I decided to keep going from where he started and conclude something else. I did this based on a class I attended on John Scotus Eriugena a few days ago where we discussed his rational evidence of god. Allow me to quote this specific part:

"Now God did not produce all men simultaneously in this visible world, yet he made them all at once in that one, first [ideal or prototype] man, created in his image."

Seems something we've heard a lot before, man created in the image of god. But rather than being a spontaneous, or even random, process of creation, Eriugena speaks of a plan here. A prototype. It's neoplatonic thinking, sure, but maybe that only serves to reinforce the point I want to make.

Consider that inherent to human intellect is a certain techne, as the ancient greeks liked to call it. Heidegger uses this word generously in The Question Concerning Technology aswell, where he discusses the essence of technology and how it's hidden from our sight at first. Techne, I suppose we could call it an art, is a means of systematically approaching the reality around us and introducing order into it so that we may place the world by knowledge of its rules at our command. It's a very natural process, inherent, as I said, to how the human mind works and processes information. It's a method that brings order into what at first appears to be chaos.

The reason we think like this should be clear: by understanding the rules of reality, or maybe just the world, we learn to adapt it to our will and increase our self-determination. Through that, we increase our chance of survival in a world filled with a myriad of dangers.

It's spawned the study of Logic, and from there maths. From maths, exact sciences. Exact sciences spawn physical technology. The study of physics, geography and whatnot have through our systematic understanding of them moved from the abstract realm of philosophy to the concrete realm of science.

Now where am I going with all this, because there's a point I wanted to make. Well, it's simply this: philosophy at its core, and therefore also theistic philosophy, is another mere expression of our drive to bring everything into systematical order. We think about the world around us, try to deduct patterns and construct with these patterns theories that often end up satisfying a few criteria while leaving others dissatisfied. We do it like this because there's no other way we could possibly do it. This is how we think.

Now if you look at christianity and the many christian philosophers it spawned, you see that there's a very clear tradition of Rationalism where philosophers like Boethius, Eriugena and Saint Anselm and many others feel there is a compelling need to construct evidence for god based on reason. Apparently merely believing in god is not enough, since many intellectuals endeavoured to fill the gaps of belief with their reasoned theories.

All the way throughout the history of christianity, starting from the earliest Neoplatonic christian thinkers all the way up to today, you see that there's a very systematical, mechanised approach to what god is and how he creates. There are patterns, there are cycli, there are hierarchies, syntheses, the list goes on. Sure, he may not be a bearded old man in the sky, but at the end of the day he's still as antropomorphic as it gets. There's a fundamental human way of thinking that underlines his very concept, and there's no possible way that we could think him to be anything different. Whether the specific theories of the philosophers I mentioned were correct or not (from an atheist perspective, obviously they weren't because god does not exist) isn't relevant. What matters here is that from the ground up, god can only make sense to us if we define him as having just as systematical an approach to creation as we do to discovery.

There have to be systems inherent to why he works, how he works, what he works and when he works. If there aren't, the concept falls short and we can't justify reality anymore. I understand now that this is why the flying spaghetti monster analogy has always fallen drastically short because you can't replace god with something as simple as pure fantasy. That will not make any point. God is not as simple as Sauron, as I recall myself having argued in the past. God is, so it seems to me, our inherent systematical, mechanical thinking given shape. The notion of monotheism has arisen from some very ancient philosophies written long before polytheism was ever abandoned, where the origin of all could only be concluded to be the One and the Good. That idea was around long before Plato and Aristotle ever began to elaborate on it.

So that's my theory. To summarise it, I suppose I would say that god is in the end still a human invention. The way we give shape to his concept is by the only way through which we can, our technical intellect, underlining that he has not thought us but that we have thought him.

I'm interested in replies, especially from some of the more devout christians here. If I elaborated needlessly on some obvious points I apologise, I thought it would be wiser to set out everything crystal clearly even if it might've been anyway, than to let out parts of my thinking process and thereby obfuscate the final conclusion I've drawn.

[Arch-hereticK]

Thou art onto something methinks.

[Col. Tartleton]

This is very much in line with my thinking. I said somewhere on here that God is the "future perfect tense" of man. God is the projection of our idea of a perfect being. God is what we will have become. Every person craves understanding and power. We want to live forever. We want to exist beyond time and space. We want to experience. We want to turn into animals and change forms. Move infinitely fast. Redefine the laws of physics to our will and needs. We want to be able to sleep with whoever we want, give birth to heroic sons and daughters, fly around in a radiant chariot through the heavens.

I don't know if we can achieve those things, but humans see their limitations and seek to always overcome them. God is the transcended man. I've always viewed the character Superman as a metaphor for God. He's got boundless powers and yet remains a perfect example of the human spirit. Look at how he is the Man of Tomorrow. Its no accident they chose that phrase. A super-man is beyond the limitations of mankind. He has become a God. He's the man of tomorrow, a reflection of all our wildest dreams and fantasies. The intriguing element of course is Clark Kent. The fact that this men of men, this God among mortals feels the longing to be human. Its why Jesus is a man. We can't just have God. He needs to still be human. We feel for Mr. Manhattan because he is no longer human, but we can't begin to relate to that. So while part of us longs to be as God, part of us is afraid to lose our humanity.

[Plant]

From your defintion of art, almost any physical process could be defined as an art. However even within such defintion, your defintion of God, may not be what others perceive as God. Indeed, you have failled to define God, and instead described characteristics you percieve in the making of a God story. It is also rather Eurocentric in thinking. Not all human beings picture god as themselves, and adherrents of most gods would not think of their worshipping and beliefs as an artform. From your own defintion excludes the merely thinking, which appears to be the crux of your argument.

Not all wish to bring everything to systematic order. You make grand assumption onto how all peoples think, but that is not evident in itself. We as people may try to deduce patterns but everyone deduce different conclusion except for the mostly physical, there is no overarching mind pattern. The idea of God is that it obliviates the pattern in which you seek. There is no origin that you are coming to, there is not the mind that you say we all have, for there are those who never came to the conclusion that there are an overarching supernatural force. Your theories vary widely with no links in between, and mainly consists of philisophical statements with hollow basis with constant appeals to authority.

Ultimately though, you have failled to link the definitions of art with the definitions and construction of god, by simply failing to define god, and has instead claim truthfully of falsely within ourselves we all have an urge to create a god figure. Perhaps there is an internally consistent structure to each individual gods concept, but it does not follow that it is an art by your own definition. Man may have created gods in their own image, but it does not follow that it is an art for, it is neither a craft, skillful activity, workmanship, a studied action given physical or a device. It may be the results of said activies and devices, but the result itself is not an art by your defintion.

[The Dude]

From your defintion of art, almost any physical process could be defined as an art. However even within such defintion, your defintion of God, may not be what others perceive as God. Indeed, you have failled to define God, and instead described characteristics you percieve in the making of a God story. It is also rather Eurocentric in thinking. Not all human beings picture god as themselves, and adherrents of most gods would not think of their worshipping and beliefs as an artform. From your own defintion excludes the merely thinking, which appears to be the crux of your argument.

Note that the point I was trying to make is that the antropomorphic aspect of god is not in the visual picture we have of him, but in the way we think him to be and to create.

It's definitely interesting to investigate whether or not a mechanical thinking is typical to european peoples and their descendents, but for my OP I assumed it's not.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has an interesting article on the word Techne I used and how closely it relates to Episteme, or knowledge.

Epistêmê is the Greek word most often translated as knowledge, while technê is translated as either craft or art. These translations, however, may inappropriately harbor some of our contemporary assumptions about the relation between theory (the domain of ‘knowledge’) and practice (the concern of ‘craft’ or ‘art’).

[...]

It is in Aristotle that we find the basis for something like the modern opposition between epistêmê as pure theory and technê as practice.

Hence the conclusion I've drawn: if techne is the artful expression of human intellect, the manner in which we construct something be it in an abstract or concrete fashion (this is where I draw inspiration from Heidegger), then god may well be an artificial production too. We have certainly ascribed a great many systematic processes to his being and creation, which I think serves as enough cause to at least travel down this way of thinking and see where it takes us.

Not all wish to bring everything to systematic order. You make grand assumption onto how all peoples think, but that is not evident in itself. We as people may try to deduce patterns but everyone deduce different conclusion except for the mostly physical, there is no overarching mind pattern.

Are there not certain groundrules to how the human intellect works? I agree that it's a grand assumption, but so far it's also been a fairly consistent philosophical notion that as far as I know has not run into much resistance.

The idea of God is that it obliviates the pattern in which you seek. There is no origin that you are coming to, there is not the mind that you say we all have, for there are those who never came to the conclusion that there are an overarching supernatural force. Your theories vary widely with no links in between, and mainly consists of philisophical statements with hollow basis with constant appeals to authority.

Fair enough, care to point some stuff out? I think I've mainly made myself guilty of trying to say way too much with way too little elaboration, but I usually fall into the trap of thinking I've already elaborated too much. Mind you, that if the counter to my argument is "yes but god does not simply have to exist according to rules", then you're effectively proving my point by creating something similar to the flying spaghetti monster.

If someone genuinely wants to believe in a god that can best be described as pure, limitless fantasy they are welcome to it but such a belief is in the end never going to be able to adequately support our perception of reality. And therefore it's disqualified from the beginning.

My OP was in response specifically to the christian notion of god though I am confident that if I were to investigate, say, some medieval islamic philosophers I would run into many arguments similar to what I've seen so far.

Ultimately though, you have failled to link the definitions of art with the definitions and construction of god, by simply failing to define god, and has instead claim truthfully of falsely within ourselves we all have an urge to create a god figure. Perhaps there is an internally consistent structure to each individual gods concept, but it does not follow that it is an art by your own definition. Man may have created gods in their own image, but it does not follow that it is an art for, it is neither a craft, skillful activity, workmanship, a studied action given physical or a device. It may be the results of said activies and devices, but the result itself is not an art by your defintion.

I disagree again, because it is not my purpose to define god. My purpose here was to define the human intellect and how it works in relation to what our notion of god is and whether or not there is sufficient cause to assume that the former is responsible for the latter. It seems to me that the christian notion of god is quite certainly the result of workmanship as a skillful activity. It's just not anything physical, but there's nothing in the word "art" that inherently limits it to physical activity. That's why I quoted the article from Stanford, because there is certainly a notion these days that the distinction between Episteme and Techne is that simple, but I don't think it is.

[Plant]

Note that the point I was trying to make is that the antropomorphic aspect of god is not in the visual picture we have of him, but in the way we think him to be and to create.

It's definitely interesting to investigate whether or not a mechanical thinking is typical to european peoples and their descendents, but for my OP I assumed it's not.

The anthropomorphic aspects of god, are not always innate in their own conception, it is rarely the whole, for even in western thinking, it is often given to be far grander.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has an interesting article on the word Techne I used and how closely it relates to Episteme, or knowledge.

Hence the conclusion I've drawn: if techne is the artful expression of human intellect, the manner in which we construct something be it in an abstract or concrete fashion (this is where I draw inspiration from Heidegger), then god may well be an artificial production too.

However, it is unsubstantiated that it is so, it is merely one of a philosophical structure. It cannot be drawn from that, except as a part of that structure.

Are there not certain groundrules to how the human intellect works? I agree that it's a grand assumption, but so far it's also been a fairly consistent philosophical notion that as far as I know has not run into much resistance.

It is a grand assumption that everyone learns and experiences in the same way. It is a philosophical starting point simply because it has to be, but it is a shaky foundation to use, one which has been used for other philosophical ideals.

Fair enough, care to point some stuff out? I think I've mainly made myself guilty of trying to say way too much with way too little elaboration, but I usually fall into the trap of thinking I've already elaborated too much. Mind you, that if the counter to my argument is "yes but god does not simply have to exist according to rules", then you're effectively proving my point by creating something similar to the flying spaghetti monster.

Mainly, you are guilty of appeals to authority, and an ad hoc collection of disparate thoughts, which makes it an assembly of ideas, without a clear line of thought. You appear to study philosophy, surely it is a requirement to follow a line of logical thought?

If someone genuinely wants to believe in a god that can best be described as pure, limitless fantasy they are welcome to it but such a belief is in the end never going to be able to adequately support our perception of reality. And therefore it's disqualified from the beginning.

However by one person doing so, it disqualifies your argument, rather than the other way round. In the end, though, it is hard to say what is pure imagination and what comes of innate and cultural factors when imagination itself is influenced by those.

My OP was in response specifically to the christian notion of god though I am confident that if I were to investigate, say, some medieval islamic philosophers I would run into many arguments similar to what I've seen so far.

Actually, I was saying that it needs to be expanded out of the straightjacket and cultural isolation of the Abrahamic religions.

I disagree again, because it is not my purpose to define god. My purpose here was to define the human intellect and how it works in relation to what our notion of god is and whether or not there is sufficient cause to assume that the former is responsible for the latter. It seems to me that the christian notion of god is quite certainly the result of workmanship as a skillful activity. It's just not anything physical, but there's nothing in the word "art" that inherently limits it to physical activity. That's why I quoted the article from Stanford, because there is certainly a notion these days that the distinction between Episteme and Techne is that simple, but I don't think it is.

As I have said, the creation of a god could be classified as an artwork, however the conception of it isn't so. I care not for the philisophical schools, your argument wherin the OP is what I was discussing. You will have to define god, as it is a term in your question, just as you have defined art, otherwise the definitions will be a term of topic in themselves.

[Arch-hereticK]

If man created God, then yes he is a work of conceptual art by any post-duchampian definition. If man didn't invent god then still all this subjective musing on his attributes and characteristics are of human artifice.

[SigniferOne]

So that's my theory. To summarise it, I suppose I would say that god is in the end still a human invention. The way we give shape to his concept is by the only way through which we can, our technical intellect, underlining that he has not thought us but that we have thought him.

But because we feel the need for systematized, rational explanation doesn't ipso facto mean he doesn't exist, does it? Any more than the fact that we apply so much effort to science mean that the scientific project is ultimately useless.

But furthermore, how can applying a rational principle to an idea automatically make it suspect? That seems awfully inverted to me. It's only when you fail to apply a rational principle that the idea becomes false. There is no rational principle TO apply to the flying spaghetti monster, as you said, that's why we know it's false. There are tons of rational principles to apply to God, which is what makes it in a whole other category entirely. So let me correct what you said earlier: God is in a different category from FSM not because we merely choose to apply rational approaches to one but not the other, but because one is actually susceptible to rationality, while the other one isn't.

[The Dude]

But because we feel the need for systematized, rational explanation doesn't ipso facto mean he doesn't exist, does it?

Not according to christian philosophy, no. But at the same time it didn't stop a long tradition of christian rationalism from forming. Be it evidence for god a priori or a posteriori, there's little we can do to justify god to ourselves if he doesn't work in a mechanical manner.

The divine plan needs no further elaboration, really. Simply looking at the chosen words to describe god's aspirations says enough about how we see him. God approaches the creation of a thing no different to how we would approach it. He makes a plan. Input, processing, output. Means to ends.

But furthermore, how can applying a rational principle to an idea automatically make it suspect? That seems awfully inverted to me. It's only when you fail to apply a rational principle that the idea becomes false.

It makes it suspect as being an idea that's supposed to transcend us. So many christian thinkers have emphasised his transcendental just as eagerly. Pretty big contradiction, I think. The point of god is that he is a being that in excellence transcends the realm of existence or non-existence and operates on a level far beyond ours.

Yet in defining the manner in which he works, our earthly intellect is apparently sufficient. The application of our human thinking, which you would think is inherently limited to the realm in which we live, functions quite sufficiently in the realm of god. Almost as a pair of lungs that keep working in an environment devoid of oxygen.

[SigniferOne]

The point of god is that he is a being that in excellence transcends the realm of existence or non-existence and operates on a level far beyond ours.

Yet in defining the manner in which he works, our earthly intellect is apparently sufficient. The application of our human thinking, which you would think is inherently limited to the realm in which we live, functions quite sufficiently in the realm of god. Almost as a pair of lungs that keep working in an environment devoid of oxygen.

It's not entirely a valid analogy. True enough, some if not many aspects of God are beyond rational understanding, and I don't think anyone in history has ever tried to claim otherwise. But God does interface with the world that we observe and live in; obviously, right, if he exists, then there's some sort of residue of his existence and/or impact on the natural world. The rational capacity is the only capacity capable of detecting that, and drawing possible conclusions about it, if any. It is possible to draw out an understanding of God via rational means in only a very vague, very generic way, and it stops there. Nobody would say that it can go further than that, but it CAN go that far.

[The Dude]

It's not entirely a valid analogy. True enough, some if not many aspects of God are beyond rational understanding, and I don't think anyone in history has ever tried to claim otherwise. But God does interface with the world that we observe and live in; obviously, right, if he exists, then there's some sort of residue of his existence and/or impact on the natural world. The rational capacity is the only capacity capable of detecting that, and drawing possible conclusions about it, if any. It is possible to draw out an understanding of God via rational means in only a very vague, very generic way, and it stops there. Nobody would say that it can go further than that, but it CAN go that far.

I'm curious, would you say that Peter Abelard (who has been called arrogant by many of his contemporaries) overstepped his authority as a mortal when he applied limitations to god in the following rationale:

"We are so constructed that the feeling of pleasure is inevitable in certain situations: sexual intercourse, eating delicious food, and the like. If sexual pleasure in marriage is not sinful, then the pleasure itself, inside or outside of marriage, is not sinful; if it is sinful, then marriage cannot sanctify it—and if the conclusion were drawn that such acts should be performed wholly without pleasure, then Abelard declares they cannot be done at all, and it was unreasonable (of God) to permit them only in a way in which they cannot be performed."

Is this an unchristian thing to say? As an atheist, it seems to me that he is asserting something very true. At the same time, he is using his human reason to draw a clear line which tells, maybe even orders, god "to here and no further". Is this not a perfect example of the point I am trying to make?

@ Plant: will get back to you asap.

[SigniferOne]

I'm curious, would you say that Peter Abelard (who has been called arrogant by many of his contemporaries) overstepped his authority as a mortal when he applied limitations to god in the following rationale:

"We are so constructed that the feeling of pleasure is inevitable in certain situations: sexual intercourse, eating delicious food, and the like. If sexual pleasure in marriage is not sinful, then the pleasure itself, inside or outside of marriage, is not sinful; if it is sinful, then marriage cannot sanctify it—and if the conclusion were drawn that such acts should be performed wholly without pleasure, then Abelard declares they cannot be done at all, and it was unreasonable (of God) to permit them only in a way in which they cannot be performed."

Is this an unchristian thing to say? As an atheist, it seems to me that he is asserting something very true. At the same time, he is using his human reason to draw a clear line which tells, maybe even orders, god "to here and no further". Is this not a perfect example of the point I am trying to make?

Well it is an unchristian thing for him to phrase it in terms of what is proper for God to do or not do, but the basic point he makes is a right one, and I agree with it as much as you do. It boils down to symantics of how you phrase your point:

if you believe free will exists, you can say that God ought to let us exercise our choice, else he would be infringing on a metaphysically free capacity; or you can say that God so constructed the world that lets us exercise our capacity insofar as it determined our moral worth, and in all other situations he made us a tool to impact (and test) the free will of other people.

[Helm]

Is God the art or the artist? Or is he a bit of both?

[Helm]

Lets see *flicks to the beginning of the Bible" "Be fruitful and multiply." It seems God didn't have anything much against sexual pleasure, as long as it wasn't adulterous or homosexual.

[The Dude]

The question was whether or not it's Abelard's place to tell god what is and what is not unreasonable. My point is that Abelard would naturally do so, as would anyone. We have little choice.

[Helm]

It's like science fiction, the aliens you see on TV are fictional but there could be aliens in real life as well, and there probably are it would seem kind of strange if they didn't exist. Some people claim to have met aliens or seen flying saucers but we can take that with a pinch of salt. Though you will find religion is as much about "how to live a good life" than it is about gods and things.

[Squiggle]

I'm confused as to your [final] thought process, Dude. It seems to be contradictory.

Whether the specific theories of the philosophers I mentioned were correct or not (from an atheist perspective, obviously they weren't because god does not exist) isn't relevant. What matters here is that from the ground up, god can only make sense to us if we define him as having just as systematical an approach to creation as we do to discovery.

Here you basically assert that you dont care weather the ideas about the nature of God are true or not. From this point onwards I was pretty certain we were purely going to discuss the concept of God, weather we have limitations in our brain in how we perceive, etc. You completely detached yourself from using your own post as a proof of anything. Obviously, as it commits the genetic fallacy. That would be ridiculous. And then...

T To summarise it, I suppose I would say that god is in the end still a human invention. The way we give shape to his concept is by the only way through which we can, our technical intellect, underlining that he has not thought us but that we have thought him.

you randomly defy previous statements, and commit the genetic fallacy. If human assertions on the nature of God are true [a question you declared irrelevant in the course of this discussion], it wouldnt matter if human perceptions were limited and we could only conceive of a God that makes sense to our primitive brain. If they are true, God does make sense [to a degree] to our primitive brain. You discard the relevance of the truth claims and then immediately bring them back in, presupposing their false. This is just a terribly fallacious arguments. The nature in which one comes to hold a belief does not invalidate the belief itself, Dude. If that were true basically all rational beliefs humans hold would be invalidated. We know intuitively others exist, but its simply our nature to think so, we dont know it to be true objectively. Its a conclusion based on our own limitations. Therefore others do not exist, and *I* is just alone in the universe. Ridiculous.

I actually agree with you that the human brain understands the world in certain patterns, and we cant break that. Our understanding of God is therefore going to be very one dimensional, but that hardly does anything to say that the Christian depiction of God isnt true, or that there isnt a God at all. Its simply incomplete knowledge based on our own limitations. Not much else.

[Plant]

He is arguing from the point of view that dieties are construct, you are arguing from the point of view that your diety is real and true. You are arguing from two different foundations, perhaps because he is gathering from many foundations.

[Squiggle]

He is arguing that we have evidence that God is a construct, and therefore false, because the conception of God works with, and is confined to, the logic and rationality that the human brain can understand. Thats the genetic fallacy. His argument is completely without validity.

[Squiggle]

No it doesnt...