Neville--to nose in on your question
God is, on one hand, an idea. This idea encompasses the whole of reality. To the other, though, that God is an idea does not go far enough, as ideas depend on brains--minds--to have them.
So if God is merely an idea, then God cannot be said to have existed forever, except in the ideological conception. However, if we look at what the idea represents--that, perhaps, can be said to be eternal.
If the whole of the Universe was a purple plastic triangle, would it always be a purple plastic triangle? If the idea of God represents the whole of reality, then we can say that the condition represented by the idea of God is eternal. Regardless of what changes take place in the Universe through the course of time, the whole condition of reality can be speculated to exist inasmuch as any reality actually exists. This condition has always been; pick a moment in the Universe and try to imagine the smaller space, the younger stars, the lack of life in this sector. At that moment, that was the whole of reality, the state of God's creation.
Gods are merely anthropomorphizations of ignorance; this is why the more limited a God is, the less its value over time as human knowledge grows. Wood sprites? Faeries? These are long relegated to the backroom fancies of the pagan revival, and nowadays represent almost arbitrary designations for a certain class of localized perceptual phenomena. God? Father-Son-Holy Ghost? We see the twentieth century brought Christianity into conflict with some of its primary assumptions about the Universe; the relevance of Christian faith is in decline. Allah? Do there not presently exist serious questions about the state of Islamic faith in relation to basic presumptions about the Universe?
But the actual idea that God represents to people is not a thing, but perhaps a condition or state of being. Sufis often assert that Sufism is the core, and the balance of the remainder is "religion". Sparing the detailed part of that, what it implies is that the vague and dynamic spiritual core the Sufis pursue is essentially God, and the rest is just dressings. There are a few disclaimers that come with that, including the fact that Sufis claim to admit when they're wrong about things, but it's the division between the idea of God and the gods of religions I'm actually chasing after.
Prehistorically, I would assert that fire and rain gods held sway long before any omniscient, omnipotent all-creator arose. The Universal potentates signify a chapter in human thought development--the ability to consider abstract origins. The origin of fire is easy enough to question, but the origin of life to the degree of an all-creator requires certain presuppositions, such as the range of what qualifies as life. This is, when you compare it to eating, sleeping, reproducing, and warding off predatory animals, a consideration for luxury. How to deal with fire, for instance, seems considerably more relevant to a prehistoric individual than the origin of the Universe.
I've always tended toward seeking a condition which makes the religious assertion true. For some people, this seems circular. But for me, that's the point. What that circle equals determines the value of the idea. Based on what people assert about God, considering as much of the human endeavor's regard for God as I have fit into my brain so far, this is what I come up with. And, frankly, I'm impressed. Not with myself, but with the idea that a possible solution to the God problem lies so close to our grasp. If I could communicate the idea better, and "sell the Bible to the Devil" by convincing Christians and others that my vision still works within their template as long as they realize the template is a result and not a presupposition ..... Well, if I could pull it off, I would. And someday, maybe I might.
But here I offer the seeds of the idea.
thanx,
Tiassa
The secret to working around this natural conundrum is to stop thinking of God as a thing.
God is, on one hand, an idea. This idea encompasses the whole of reality. To the other, though, that God is an idea does not go far enough, as ideas depend on brains--minds--to have them.
So if God is merely an idea, then God cannot be said to have existed forever, except in the ideological conception. However, if we look at what the idea represents--that, perhaps, can be said to be eternal.
If the whole of the Universe was a purple plastic triangle, would it always be a purple plastic triangle? If the idea of God represents the whole of reality, then we can say that the condition represented by the idea of God is eternal. Regardless of what changes take place in the Universe through the course of time, the whole condition of reality can be speculated to exist inasmuch as any reality actually exists. This condition has always been; pick a moment in the Universe and try to imagine the smaller space, the younger stars, the lack of life in this sector. At that moment, that was the whole of reality, the state of God's creation.
Gods are merely anthropomorphizations of ignorance; this is why the more limited a God is, the less its value over time as human knowledge grows. Wood sprites? Faeries? These are long relegated to the backroom fancies of the pagan revival, and nowadays represent almost arbitrary designations for a certain class of localized perceptual phenomena. God? Father-Son-Holy Ghost? We see the twentieth century brought Christianity into conflict with some of its primary assumptions about the Universe; the relevance of Christian faith is in decline. Allah? Do there not presently exist serious questions about the state of Islamic faith in relation to basic presumptions about the Universe?
But the actual idea that God represents to people is not a thing, but perhaps a condition or state of being. Sufis often assert that Sufism is the core, and the balance of the remainder is "religion". Sparing the detailed part of that, what it implies is that the vague and dynamic spiritual core the Sufis pursue is essentially God, and the rest is just dressings. There are a few disclaimers that come with that, including the fact that Sufis claim to admit when they're wrong about things, but it's the division between the idea of God and the gods of religions I'm actually chasing after.
Prehistorically, I would assert that fire and rain gods held sway long before any omniscient, omnipotent all-creator arose. The Universal potentates signify a chapter in human thought development--the ability to consider abstract origins. The origin of fire is easy enough to question, but the origin of life to the degree of an all-creator requires certain presuppositions, such as the range of what qualifies as life. This is, when you compare it to eating, sleeping, reproducing, and warding off predatory animals, a consideration for luxury. How to deal with fire, for instance, seems considerably more relevant to a prehistoric individual than the origin of the Universe.
I've always tended toward seeking a condition which makes the religious assertion true. For some people, this seems circular. But for me, that's the point. What that circle equals determines the value of the idea. Based on what people assert about God, considering as much of the human endeavor's regard for God as I have fit into my brain so far, this is what I come up with. And, frankly, I'm impressed. Not with myself, but with the idea that a possible solution to the God problem lies so close to our grasp. If I could communicate the idea better, and "sell the Bible to the Devil" by convincing Christians and others that my vision still works within their template as long as they realize the template is a result and not a presupposition ..... Well, if I could pull it off, I would. And someday, maybe I might.
But here I offer the seeds of the idea.
thanx,
Tiassa
