God: A Different Point of View
Before you can conjure up an image of a Grand Designer of the universe in any form, or start to draw from the teachings of any religion, let me help you put those notions aside. This essay is not about a Grand Designer or about religion—not yours or anyone’s. It also is not about debate—a format presumably with truth as its objective that has always left an unsavory taste in my mouth—to use a bitter metaphor. My objective is merely to set forth a different way to think about the concept of god (lower case) without rancor or malice aforethought. I have no desire or reason to engage anyone in a debate or a verbal fistfight about his or her religious beliefs. I simply try to be a free-thinker in the style of Socrates, perhaps the original grand examiner of life.
At least three undeniably brilliant Western thinkers also stand as intellectual obstructionists in my pathway. They are Bertrand Russell, Carl Sagan, and Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Each had (or has) no need or time for religion or Grand Designers in his life. Nor do I. But if my understanding of their thoughts on this subject is correct, they also rejected any notion about an overarching force that could manifest itself as ultimate reality in an entirely different way from the beliefs of grand designers (also lower case), or religionists. I agree with these three objectors about most religious practitioners, and to the propensity of some religious believers to venture into the domain of science in spite of their ignorance of it. My thoughts are nevertheless quite different from their objections and that of most other scientists and philosophers, yet they are still within the framework of Socratic inquiry. Here is a little background.
In his effort to establish a logical argument for the existence of god, René Descartes (c. 1630), reasoned from this premise: A thought cannot spontaneously appear in a vacuum that is totally apart from and devoid of any substance. But he noted that thoughts arose from within himself, therefore, he must exist as a substance that occupies space. Or, as he put it so eloquently: “I think, therefore I am” (cogito ergo sum). Few have ever argued against this premise in support of our existence, but they nevertheless have argued that it does not prove the existence of a supreme being. I agree. But Descartes gave us an unencumbered way of thinking about this subject that still leaves it open to examination. He did not fall into the trap of creating a god that conveniently looks, thinks, and acts more or less like us.
So…What if god is the truth? By that I mean something that is beyond all knowledge that we might ultimately be able to deduce? You may say that I have stated a contradiction. And I would agree it is an apparent contradiction. But only in this limited way: It contradicts all that we know today, but it does not necessarily contradict all that we might learn far down the road of knowledge. Perhaps god is the force behind the pursuit of knowledge, a concept that is nearly identical with science and the pursuit of truth. And somewhere, someday, in that pursuit we might also find a satisfactory way to define our purpose in life with much greater clarity. We might even find that we are immortal, and that our main purpose is to constantly expand our knowledge base while gaining greater insight to our immortality and our place in the cosmos.
These concepts—although beyond the observable limits of science as we know it—nevertheless leave open the possibility of an immortal spirit without being an obstruction to science or to the pursuit of knowledge. They might also be able to pierce the shroud of finality surrounding death as we suppose it to be, while leaving open the possibility of a perpetual spiritual existence without the need to listen to sermons, or to sing hymns, or to pray, or to try to impose such activities onto others. These notions are consistent with Deism, the belief in a Providence of which we are already a part, such as Nature.
Deism, as we know it, was a direct product of the Enlightenment, the 17th and 18th century intellectual movement that championed human reason and scientific thinking. The Enlightenment is closely tied to the scientific revolution of the 16th - 18th centuries. Many of America’s founders were Deists. Spiritism is a form of deism that attempts to answer issues within the context of those posed in this essay. It is not an all-knowing, omniscient truth, rather a collection of facts and fact-based evidence that helps to allay fears of death. It rejects heaven, hell, judgments, damnation and all related religion-based beliefs in favor of spiritual growth through successive reincarnations here or elsewhere in the universe. Our purpose within it is to gain knowledge and to improve ourselves and humanity through enlightenment gleaned from knowledge. It assumes an overarching universal truth (perhaps love) as god or god-like without attempting to define that term beyond our present understanding wherein we have not yet evolved enough to articulate what it means in its grandest sense. Such a driving force seems to be compelling us to achieve a common goal in which we can understand ultimate reality. Are these improbable possibilities? Perhaps. But their outcomes are all infinitely more satisfying than are the finality of ashes to ashes, and dust to dust.
ticket!
Love ya!
Jane
Intelligence enabled us to survive and grow to the preponderance of nearly 8 billion of us that occupy the earth. But only a few of those billions are able down through the centuries by the excess of survival support to ponder questions such as whether or not there is a god.
The current explanation of our universe with the Big Bang Theory is sufficient for Sagan, Tyson, Russell and I, with or without the need for a superior force. I believe that by the 22nd century, that theory will be as far removed as is Aristotle's view of our universe in his time. So, I remain existential and of this time, without wasting my time pondering things I wish for like immortality without having sufficient knowledge of its existence except through the promise of science and technology. If we want immortality we can make it. Why should we think that it is already here through religion, reincarnation, parallel universe or other magic?
Ron