Is the concept of "God" necessary, let alone real?

[Reflex]

However, I am conditioned and can't truly start afresh; there is always a small influence.

Hmmm. As I recall, someone pointed that out to you after you mentioned something about starting out with a clean slate.

So, if everything were boiled down to a single word, what word would you use to describe how your narrative begins?

[Nick_A]

Dubious

The best thing to have done is to completely ignore a troll who has nothing to offer than the ennui of Eternal Recurrence.

They tried that with Jesus and Socrates but it didn't work. According to general understanding they were genuine successful trolls so had to be killed. There was no other way. As trolls they had nothing to offer supporting the dictates of Great Beast. They were starting quarrels or upsetting people, by introducing inflammatory, extraneous, or even alternative ideas. They even questioned experts. Jesus even irritated the Pharisees who were the genuine experts in spiritual matters. Jesus and Socrates didn't stick with the script created by the Great Beast. This was too insulting to be tolerated so they had to be killed. I sympathize with your needs but you are living in the wrong times. It is illegal to crucify or to poison wrong thoughts and ideas. Well you can't have everything.

[-1-]

This thread has been inspired by, firstly, chats with others about agnosticism and, secondly, by reading the over-sure statements of believers on this forum. Dubious had previously aired this thread's idea but I did not understand what he was trying to get across at the time. The penny has now dropped. Sorry Dubious; I was wrong and your idea was good, hence this return.

People speak about God as if the notion is obvious. In truth, we could readily dispense with the notion of God altogether and, in terms of understanding reality, nothing would be lost. We could simply consider what is without running it through the distorting filters of mythology.

Even if the universe is an all-infusive meta-mind, why associate it with a deity who started out as a childishly absurd anthropomorphism? Why not start with a fresh slate? The universe - a speculatively emergent meta-mind. Why isn't that that enough, given the limitation of an inside-out perspective? Blending a modern conception with ancient mythology can only serve to muddy the waters of inquiry, and that is certainly what has happened. Even an attempt to define "God" is fraught because no one agrees - and chaotic results in any given observation or experiment suggest a negative signal.

So the only promising aspects of theism lie in where there is commonality of beliefs. However, they seem to be few and those commonalities also significantly overlap with "secular" people's experiences and observations. Thus, any religious ideation that does not overlap with all other major faiths is necessarily culturally specific, of historical, not ontic, interest.

Today, the God of the Gaps is fashionable because all of the prior anthropomorphic forms were rendered ridiculous with increased understanding of nature's processes. So now God's most credible guise tends to be posited as the ground of being. However, many theists will disagree about what that means too. So why not simply call it qualia? Why add the personification? Is it not possible to feel tremendous love and gratitude towards the Earth, the Sun, the galaxy and universe - even to feel worshipful - without endowing it with a metaphorical grey beard and testicles?

When God is thought of as an it, everything changes, including the need to associate It with a middle eastern Iron Age war god. It becomes simply everything, The All, or rather, The All of Us, given our own infusion within the larger web of being.

Yesterday I was talking to some street preachers in a cafe. We often get together, because they like me and I like them, beyond our obvious gap or schism of world views.

They quoted the Bible passage, something to the effect that our souls and bodies belong to god, and we are just borrowing them. I objected that then we are nothing, if both the soul and the body belong to god. They replied with saying that the belonging signifies ownership, not partness. I replied that that is not clear from the text. Then they very quickly changed the subject, and I left it at that.

So there was a notion in the Christian iron-age war-god as Greta put it, to be a pantheist something or other. He owns everything, or else everything is part of him, according to the passage.

What I meant to say with this is that dehumanizing god and making it and it, albeit an it that contains everything in the universe, may be the end result today of a lot of thinking by Christian theologians, but their work had been prophecised in the New Testament.

Whether we need a god image or not for anything, is a clear answer for me: no, we don't. But at the same time I admit that the notion of god is not something entirely cultural; it is inherent in the human mind; let's say it's genetically passed down, to have a general idea what a god is. Nobody, like Greta pinted it out, nobody needs an explanation to see what a god is, no matter what cultural background they come from.

So; I believe that the god image is inherent in humans; it has served such strong survival tactics, that it became part of the genetic code; but humans with their mighty brain have figured out that we can do without god, and that's about the size of it, as far as I am concerned.

[Greta]

However, I am conditioned and can't truly start afresh; there is always a small influence.

Hmmm. As I recall, someone pointed that out to you after you mentioned something about starting out with a clean slate.

So, if everything were boiled down to a single word, what word would you use to describe how your narrative begins?

Umm

My guess is that time is not linear but circular, spherical or a hypersphere and we lack the sensory and mental capacities to comprehend the scale of reality and the complex depths of its temporal feedback loops. AI will most likely move closer to the truth but there's a fair chance that we won't be able to comprehend their findings, and thus won't be capable of tracing back their steps.

[Reflex]

The evolutionary idea has been a productive one for the scientific imagination, but the theory has its dangers outside the field of the natural sciences. True, there is a growing consensus that the religious impulse is hard-wired, but its survival value is still very much in question. It has well been said that “from the moment in which man is no longer content to devise things useful for his existence under the exclusive action of the will-to-live, the principle of (physical) evolution has been violated.” Between this state, which is wholly subjective, and that in which a man finds interest devising a spear for hunting, there is a greater distance, logically, than there is between inertia and life or between reason and what the mystics call "inspiration."

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” I believe this true. I believe it is also true that someone living comfortably in a make-believe world, secular or religious, has neither reason nor desire to escape. So, is the God-concept the product of imagination having evolved over the course of thousands of years, or is it a conceptual interpretation of genuine experience? Evelyn Underhill wrote:

“There is no trustworthy standard by which we can separate the “real” from the “unreal” aspects of phenomena. Such standards as exist are conventional: and correspond to convenience, not to truth. It is no argument to say that most men see the world in much the same way, and that this “way” is the true standard of reality: though for practical purposes we have agreed that sanity consists in sharing the hallucinations of our neighbours. Those who are honest with themselves know that this “sharing” is at best incomplete.”

I've always had a strained relationship with authority of any kind. Politics aside, I'm open to science telling me what can be said about the natural world, but telling me how the world is is outside its purview and way out of bounds. By the same token, I'm open to what all the religious traditions have to say, but I'll be damned if I'm going to let any of them tell me what I should or should not believe.

[Greta]

What I meant to say with this is that dehumanizing god and making it an it, albeit an it that contains everything in the universe, may be the end result today of a lot of thinking by Christian theologians, but their work had been prophecised in the New Testament.

Whether we need a god image or not for anything, is a clear answer for me: no, we don't. But at the same time I admit that the notion of god is not something entirely cultural; it is inherent in the human mind; let's say it's genetically passed down, to have a general idea what a god is. Nobody, like Greta pointed it out, nobody needs an explanation to see what a god is, no matter what cultural background they come from.

So; I believe that the god image is inherent in humans; it has served such strong survival tactics, that it became part of the genetic code; but humans with their mighty brain have figured out that we can do without god, and that's about the size of it, as far as I am concerned.

It is hard to imagine a person who is completely unfamiliar with the concept of deities. I think it must stem from Sun and Earth worship. What would the utterly innocent make of this blinding light in the sky that warms them and either helps to grow their crops or destroy them? Add the Earth and its equivalent bounty and terrors and it would be hard to think of them as anything but gods. I personally do think of them in that way - what is more impressive to us than the Sun and the Earth? They are cores of systems in which we are embedded, seemingly with a role as change agents, like cosmic enzymes that trigger further emergences.

PS. To Reflex: Just saw your post after clicking the button - interesting thoughts! Looking forward to delving later today.

[Reflex]

As to the question about why a personal God: For me, it's kinda like a "magic eye" 3D illusion.

Why Can't Some People See Magic Eye Pictures?

[Dubious]

Yes, my main issue was with the shoehorning of what was effectively a war god into this supposedly entirely different concept - the panentheist ground of being.

I don’t see any connection between the two. One is a tribal figure meant to coalesce a people into a nation; the other a comparatively late advanced philosophic edition of god proceeding from pantheism to upgrade god into a more modern version so as not to be wholly incompatible with science; in effect, diminishing the momentum of IT receding ever further. Panentheism is God eroding theistically and reappearing philosophically replete with its own dogmas.

If nothing else, the transformation of the OT's Jehovah harsh and jealous god into the God of love and understanding simply confused people.

As I understand it, that transformation, if it ever really happened, was a Christian one, hardly conceivable to Jews who were well aware the discipline imposed upon them by Jehovah. This was a god meant to be obeyed, not grant favors. The Jews are certainly not confused having invented him.

The continuing tradition of using a gendered pronoun is both a sign of that confusion, and a continuing cause of confusion. The God of Spinoza is not always gendered; it's a shame that idea can't cut through the unproven promises of Abrahamic religion.

Understood within the context of Jewish history from the beginning, there’s very little to be confused about...at least not in that respect.

It was a Jewish Saga; Gentiles should have had nothing to do with it! It was a Jewish script belonging to no one else. Remember, they were the Chosen People which purposely excluded everyone else. All that changed irrevocably when Christians got involved...but that’s another story with a pre-history of it's own in the form of Hellenism.

Spinoza’s god has nothing to do with any of this, his god being a genderless abstraction (as most abstractions are) belonging more to philosophy than actual theism. This didn’t make him popular among Jews or Christians and we all know what happened next.

So, given that God's definition is as messy as one of Its definitions - love - I thought I could gain more clarity by cleaning the slate and start again, to imagine what I may have thought about all this without conditioning. However, I am conditioned and can't truly start afresh; there is always a small influence.

We’re all conditioned. No matter how much we attempt to refine ourselves there will always be the leftover nuggets of former beliefs and traditions in the form of practiced and presiding rituals; there is nothing wrong, untruthful or hypocritical about this. Until new ones emerge or old ones get amended (already happening), we should keep the one’s we have; they still perform an essential function even without the mandate of belief which once created it.

[Belinda]

Dubious wrote:

Spinoza’s god has nothing to do with any of this, his god being a genderless abstraction (as most abstractions are) belonging more to philosophy than actual theism. This didn’t make him popular among Jews or Christians and we all know what happened next.

Not abstracted but as whole as can be. Spinoza's God is a name for ontological plenitude. Spinoza's God is reality itself aka nature itself. Spinoza's God is ineffable as it includes not only the temporally relative aspect of reality, and the eternal aspect of reality, (those two aspects which are available to us) but also other infinite and unimaginable aspects of reality.

Regarding Judaism, the Old Testament prophets are widely regarded to have instituted an ethical progression from Jahweh.

[Reflex]

How 'bout sticking to the subject? Instead of talking about who believe what or what people believed historically, answer the damn question!! IS THE CONCEPT OF "GOD" NECESSARY, LET ALONE REAL?

Some have said "no." That's fine, even if the arguments are (IMO) weak. Does the God-concept represent something real? Hard to say. But that has nothing to do with whether the concept is necessary for human progress.

In his book Man's Search for Himself, author and psychologist Rollo May writes:

The human being cannot live in a condition of emptiness for very long: if he is not growing toward something, he does not merely stagnate; the pent-up potentialities turn into morbidity and despair, and eventually into destructive activities.

That statement is prophetic. The God-concept gives the believer something towards which one can grow; secularism does not, at least as far as I can see.

[Dubious]

Dubious wrote:

Spinoza’s god has nothing to do with any of this, his god being a genderless abstraction (as most abstractions are) belonging more to philosophy than actual theism. This didn’t make him popular among Jews or Christians and we all know what happened next.

Not abstracted but as whole as can be. Spinoza's God is a name for ontological plenitude. Spinoza's God is reality itself aka nature itself. Spinoza's God is ineffable as it includes not only the temporally relative aspect of reality, and the eternal aspect of reality, (those two aspects which are available to us) but also other infinite and unimaginable aspects of reality.

I agree but please note, I didn't say "abstracted" whose meaning is more akin to an amputation of something greater. It's the abstraction of Spinoza's god - compared to traditional theistic entities - which yields what you nicely phrase as "ontological plenitude", an ontology even science describes in ever more extreme abstract terms.

If I were forced to choose any "theism" it would be Pantheism which by its fusion of God and nature remains contra to anything Biblical. Spinoza suffered for it but nowhere near to what Giordano Bruno, the other great Pantheist had to bear in imagining "other infinite and unimaginable aspects of reality" of which he was the Master!

[Dubious]

How 'bout sticking to the subject? Instead of talking about who believe what or what people believed historically, answer the damn question!! IS THE CONCEPT OF "GOD" NECESSARY...

Absolutely not!

...LET ALONE REAL?

Add another "absolute" to the above statement.

Does that answer the question I tried to simplify it for you! No need to thank me!

[-1-]

Yes, my main issue was with the shoehorning of what was effectively a war god into this supposedly entirely different concept - the panentheist ground of being.

I don’t see any connection between the two. One is a tribal figure meant to coalesce a people into a nation; the other a comparatively late advanced philosophic edition of god proceeding from pantheism to upgrade god into a more modern version so as not to be wholly incompatible with science; in effect, diminishing the momentum of IT receding ever further. Panentheism is God eroding theistically and reappearing philosophically replete with its own dogmas.
That transformation was the resuilt of the transformation of "shoe-horning", as Greta put it. You say the same thing, but with a tone that the original claim was wrong. If it was wrong, you are wrong. (Neither of you are wrong in my view.)

If nothing else, the transformation of the OT's Jehovah harsh and jealous god into the God of love and understanding simply confused people.

As I understand it, that transformation, if it ever really happened, was a Christian one, hardly conceivable to Jews who were well aware the discipline imposed upon them by Jehovah. This was a god meant to be obeyed, not grant favors. Well, the Jewish god DID grant a lot of favours in his time. Parted the red sea, threw manna from the sky, led the Jews to Canaan, invented the credit card transaction system, etc. Much like in Christianity and Islam, in Jewdaism there is a lot of give-and-take between humans and god, and there is a name for the preagreement: the covenant, the second covenant, and so on. The Jews are certainly not confused having invented him.

The continuing tradition of using a gendered pronoun is both a sign of that confusion, and a continuing cause of confusion. The God of Spinoza is not always gendered; it's a shame that idea can't cut through the unproven promises of Abrahamic religion.

Understood within the context of Jewish history from the beginning, there’s very little to be confused about...at least not in that respect.

It was a Jewish Saga; Gentiles should have had nothing to do with it! It was a Jewish script belonging to no one else. So was the New Testament. Nobody Gentile had to do with it. St. Saul simply forced himself upon this pile of Jewish mavericks. Remember, they were the Chosen People which purposely excluded everyone else. All that changed irrevocably when Christians got involved...How did that change? It did not change at all. Jews are still God's chosen people, both by Jews and by Christian faith... this did not change at all but that’s another story with a pre-history of it's own in the form of Hellenism. Well... the Christians that got involved were each and every one of them a Jew, not a Christian. Christianity did not exist in the early days of Christianity... it was the Fish Party, and it was detached theologically and spiritually and officially form Judaism only several hundred years after Christianity was born. Even the god of the Christians was Jewish. Both the almighty and the biped. (I can't vouch for the Holy Ghost's ethnic origin. Nothing is said about that.)

Spinoza’s god has nothing to do with any of this, his god being a genderless abstraction (as most abstractions are) belonging more to philosophy than actual theism. This didn’t make him popular among Jews or Christians and we all know what happened next.

So, given that God's definition is as messy as one of Its definitions - love - I thought I could gain more clarity by cleaning the slate and start again, to imagine what I may have thought about all this without conditioning. However, I am conditioned and can't truly start afresh; there is always a small influence.

We’re all conditioned. No matter how much we attempt to refine ourselves there will always be the leftover nuggets of former beliefs and traditions in the form of practiced and presiding rituals; there is nothing wrong, untruthful or hypocritical about this. Until new ones emerge or old ones get amended (already happening), we should keep the one’s we have; they still perform an essential function even without the mandate of belief which once created it.

[-1-]

If I were forced to choose any "theism" it would be ...

Very well put. If one is choosing his or her own theism, or system of belief, or object and practice of worship, then the atheists could really be claiming that religions are not true, they are subjective choices of individuals, and since two individuals' choices may differ, there is no absolute truth in religion.

Therefore instead of choosing a religion, you must rather follow the path of the one and only true religion.

[Belinda]

God ( a name for ethics) matured and probably still evolves.

“See that justice is done,
let mercy be your first concern,
and humbly obey your God.” (Micah 6:6-8 CEV)