God in the Mind's Eye
Year Delivered or Published: 2006
Author: Dr. Gerry Lower
Author's Faith: Deism
Date Submitted to Inspiration and Issues: November 30, 2006
Topic: Theology
Citation: Gospel of Matthew:26-27
God in the Mind's Eye
Panentheism and Deity on the Inside
Dr. Gerry Lower, Bell Center, Wisconsin - November 30, 2006
The problem in defining God from a scientific point of view is that most people, upon hearing the term, immediately relate to the western religious notions of god. This would be the external, supernatural god of Abraham (going by the names Yahweh, Jehovah, and Allah), the purported cause of everything in life and the purported provider of purpose in life.
Given the millennial conflict between science and religion (1), many modern thinkers are repelled upon hearing the term "God" employed in scientific discourse. Few western people have any way to relate to the concept of a real "honest-to-God" God, definable in empirical-logical terms instead of supernatural terms (2).
Most people know only of an absentee deity who controls reality through magical means that are beyond human comprehension, a deity that is all-knowing and all-powerful. The western god is a self-righteous and vengeful deity who overtly favors despotism and rule by the rich and powerful - who have struggled from the beginning to maintain the power to define the deity upon whom despotism depends.
In order to understand the nature of any real God, it is requisite to remain honest and real in the material sense. It is requisite to reject all manifestations of the supernatural Abrahamic god as well as the despotic socioeconomic systems that the Abrahamic religions justify.
In order to understand the nature of any real God, it is also requisite to establish the arenas in which God is operative and those in which God is not. We live in an external probabilistic world in which Abraham's external god has no role whatsoever in directing events, except through people who believe and act upon this ancient mindless nonsense.
When Osama bin Laden and al Qaida destroyed the World Trade Center, the cause of the devastation had nothing to do with Abraham's god. The devastation was caused by Osama bin Laden and al Qaida acting on his extremist views of Islam and Abraham's Allah.
When the George W. Bush administration destroyed Iraq, the cause of the devastation had nothing to do with Abraham's god. The devastation was caused by the neoconservative George W. Bush administration acting on their extremist views of Old Testament Romanism and Abraham's Jehovah in service to corrupt corporate capitalism.
The Abrahamic religions, i.e, Judaism, Old Testament Romanism and Islamism, are uniformly infallible, uniformly self-righteous, uniformly vengeful and uniformly apocalyptic, to the point of being prophetic about their own "end of times." In contrast to the eastern ethical systems, the western religions call for their own departure from the world.
When the "end of times" comes for the Abrahamic religions, when they discredit themselves from the global political arena (for trying to impose themselves upon the global political arena), it will be the followers of Abraham's religions who cause the self-devastation and self-denigration in the eyes of the world. It is in their "holy" books to do so.
There are, however, concepts of God that do not emerge from and are unrelated to the Abrahamic god of the west. For example, the native American concept of the "Great Spirit" provides a term unrelated to but virtually synonymous with the term "God". Both terms refer to a higher source of Life with regard to human origins and a higher source of human nourishment. "God" and the "Great Spirit" do differ immensely, however, in both their origins and content.
Abraham's god is an intellectual fabrication designed not so much to define the source of life but the source of authority in the world. It is the result of looking at a world of "things" instead of a world of "relationships" between things. Herein arises the western notion of a material world in contrast to the eastern notion of an ethereal world.
There is no concept of good or evil in the natural world. That concept, like Abraham's god, is an intellectual abstraction that has lured the western world away from honesty and compassion for nearly two millennia, all in the interest of maintaining ancient Roman despotism in the form of imperialism, colonialism and capitalism.
In the beginning, God created the world. Abraham thought about it several billions of years later and got it all wrong, backwards and upside down, the product of ignorance and fear. Under Judeo-Roman religious leadership beginning in the early 4th century, the newly "christian" people of the west had little choice but to go along with the notion that the rich and powerful were somehow closer to god than were the people.
The Great Spirit, on the other hand, was placed at the top of an ethical system based in Nature. While the western people chose to live outside of Nature, the native American people chose to live within Nature, making as little impact as possible on the earth. The native American ethical systems are essentially panentheistic. The Great Spirit was equated with God and resided in every living thing, every living thing residing in the Great Spirit.
Ben Black Elk, the son of the Oglala Sioux holy man of that name, was once asked to speak to the differences between the western God and the Great Spirit. Ben thought about it a moment, looking down at the earth and then up at the sky. Then he quietly replied, "No difference." The biggest problem was that western people did not know very much about God or Nature or anything natural and given.
Given that one can define deity in Nature, unrelated to the authoritarian, vengeful, supernatural god of Abraham, we can legitimately ask just what sort of deity goes hand in hand with science and natural philosophy (3). What is the nature of Jefferson's God? What is the nature of Einstein's God?
The God of science and natural philosophy is necessarily more closely related to the Great Spirit than to Abraham's god. This is because science has been, from the beginning, dedicated to the comprehension of Nature. It has just taken science a few millennia to get down to the cellular and molecular levels of organization so as to attain an even deeper genomic grasp of Nature based on empirical-logical observations of life both as things and as ecological relationships between things.
In addition to Nature-based ethical systems, including Taoism and Shintoism, there are additional scientific concepts of God that do not emerge from and are unrelated to the traditional Abrahamic god of the west. Spinoza, who ignited the EuroAmerican Enlightenment that culminated in Thomas Jefferson and American democracy, had utterly rejected supernaturalism in the nascent Christian tradition. Spinoza merely redefined God in human terms as an agent embedded in human thought, a thinking God, knowing that we humans are the only agents around doing any thinking.
The most meaningful, the most spiritual thing that will happen in most people's lives is the birth of their children. The birth of a human baby has long been considered a gift from God, and that would be the honest and literal truth of it. The birth of a human baby, however, has nothing to do with Abraham's god, except insofar as that god is seen in public as requiring more troops for religion's wars (4).
The creators of human babies are humans. Men and women initiate the process that keeps humankind around in growing numbers. In this way, we have created ourselves from the beginning. The genome is not a gift from God, the genome is God at the biological level of organization. Human babies are a gift from the God within, the totipotent, creative human genome, the molecular-level biological knowledge base.
With fertilization, the union of complementary half-genomes, the life process runs itself under the direction of a new, never-before-existent human genome, half derived from each parent. From fertilized ovum to newborn baby, life literally comes of itself, driven by genomic information - as the virtually flawless word of God, as old and as new as life itself.
This is true, of course, for all living things. The biological genome is resident in all living things and it is the source of biological creativity and productivity. It carried life out of the water onto the land and back into the water and into the air. The entire biosphere, the entire biological world, is literally a gift from the God within all living things.
The creators of human knowledge are humans. Men and women initiate the process that keeps knowledge around and keeps the knowledge base growing. In this way, we have created ourselves from the beginning. The ideome, the world of mind and human knowledge, is not a gift from God, it is God at the cultural level of organization. Human values and knowledge are a gift from the God within, the totipotent, creative human ideome, the natural philosophical, transcultural knowledge base.
Like the world of living things, the world of mind and knowledge is evolutionary. Human values and human knowledge began in ancient Greece with the rejection of supernaturalism and the union of eastern and western values in science and natural philosophy. This involved the dialectic synthesis of complementary eastern and western value systems to produce the middle ground values of science, natural philosophy and democracy.
Realism is the dialectic synthesis of eastern "pragmatism" and western "idealism".
Freedom is the dialectic synthesis of eastern "harmony" and western "order".
Honesty is the dialectic synthesis of eastern "loyalty" and western "obedience".
Integrity is the dialectic synthesis of eastern "relationships" and western "image".
Consistency is the dialectic synthesis of eastern "comport" and western "conduct".
With this Hellenic beginning, the first Christian was able to complete the human picture with dialectic syntheses of his own, to arrive at a set of human values based in human rights. Jefferson embedded these values and nascent Christian human rights in the Declaration and at the core of American democracy. Jefferson's America was intended to provide a Hellenic Christian nation, not Old Testament or Roman in character at all.
Compassion is the dialectic synthesis of eastern "acceptance" and western "judgement".
Empathy is the dialectic synthesis of eastern "sympathy" and western "apathy".
Human rights are the dialectic synthesis of eastern "ethics" and western "laws" (5).
This western scientific tradition on middle human ground has been around much longer than Old Testament Roman religion and Islamism, having evolved from a descriptive grasp of reality (Socrates - What?) to a mechanistic grasp of reality (Newton - How?) to a systematic grasp of reality (Einstein - Why?). It is an evolutionary program that has been running itself just beneath the western cultural surface all along, knowledge begetting knowledge with a little human help.
The "noosphere", the mind and the human knowledge base, is literally a gift from the God within, as is the biosphere and the geosphere (6). The values beneath the human knowledge base are dialectic human values suitable for the emergence of a global democracy, ultimately a direct democracy. Governing the world under human values and human knowledge will get humankind as close to God as we, the people, will ever need to be.
When we establish a global democracy dedicated to human rights, equality and fairness, dedicated to world peace and life on the whole, most people on this planet will only be able to conclude that we have all died and went to Heaven, right here on Earth.
To be sure, we will have moved "toward a heaven that is already here. To know that is to know our destiny" (7). We will have , with religion and capitalism's self-inflicted departure, an opportunity to make the earth both our heaven and our home (3), all in service to the God within, a decidedly human God. Only when we "Keep God Within Us" (8) and keep our religion at home do we give God the opportunity to work through us for the human good. Old stuff to Thomas Jefferson.
Readings
1) George Johnson, A Free-for-All on Science and Religion, NY Times, November 21, 2006.
(http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/21/science/21belief.html)
2) Carolyn Porco, The Greatest Story Ever Told, Edge, June 8, 2006.
(http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_8.html)
3) Dr. Gerry Lower, Making the Earth Our Heaven and Our Home, Axis of Logic, September , 2005.
(http://www.axisoflogic.com/
4) Eileen Filan, How Full is Your Quiver?, Newsweek, November 13, 2006.
(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15701301/site/newsweek/)
5) Dr. Gerry Lower, Jefferson's Eyes, Turtle Island Books, October, 2003.
(http://www.jeffersonseyes.com/dialectics.html)
6) Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, 1955.
(http://www.butler-bowdon.com/phenomenonman.htm)
7) James Redfield, The Celestine Prophecy,
(http://www.thecelestineprophecymovie.com/celestine/insights.php)
8) Norman Lear, Keep God Within Us, Washington Post, November 28, 2006.
(http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2006/11/keep_god_within_us.html)
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Dr. Gerry Lower lives in Bell Center, Wisconsin. His website is at www.jeffersonseyes.com and he can be reached at tisland@blackhills.com.
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