For a while now I've been trying to reconfigure the mental picture I have a of God. Over the past 25 years (since I was a child) I have slowly been moving away from the grandfather in the in the sky image through more and more metaphors to well I'm not sure exactly where. There are probably a range of metaphors to describe my image of God but at the moment I'm finding it hard find any. So it was perhaps a little ironic that one it was something that Richard Dawkins said on a Point of Inquiry interview that rang resonated with me. He described the spiritual or God beliefs of some scientists as a "vast cosmic intelligence at the basis of the whole of the universe" or "a deep spirit at the base of the universe". This, obviously are not his beliefs but for some reason they really resonated with me. I think these ideas might be closer to Paul Tillich's "Ground of Being" or Diarmuid O Murchu's "Relational Matrix", but since I don't really know much about either it might be time to do some investigating.
5 comments:
Since we cannot test or verify anything that we can call "god", i think it's really pointless to even contemplate it. Yes, we know what that the word god exists and it provides comfort, but the fact that so many people believe in god does not make god true God is an unsupported hypothesis based on faith, that is really it - end of story.
Hey Derek,
Thanks for the comment. An honest question for you (rather than a hey here's my brilliant counter argument kind of question). Do you think that we can test or verify love or test or verify the quality of a piece of music. And just to let you know I'm aware that if the answer is no love is not testable or verifiable that does not mean that just because God is not testable or verifiable that this means God exists any more than this would mean that the untestable and unverifiable fairies at the bottom of the garden exist. Ta.
Hi Chris,
Well maybe we can test music (on some artistic level, but certainly not on an emotional one) but not love. You are right about the fairis at the bottom of the garden. Basically i'm just sick of these people who go around talking of god as if it's a fact, and as soon as i exercise critical thought, they look at me as if i have 7 eyes and 4 noses. In other words, it's still taboo to criticize god and religion today. There should be no fear or taboo in 2010.
Hey Derek thanks for the reply. As much as I may disagree with you on whether God exists. I will always vehemently defend your right to believe what you do and I cannot see why disbelief is not the default position. That, if anything, it is I who should be looked at as I have 7 eyes and 4 noses because of what I believe.
What "God" is "like" is beyond our imagining. The idea of an "unmoved mover" is probably the nearest we can get and a lot more rational than some of the nonsense put forward by atheists. Fits in with Okham's Razor too. "God" therefore exists and is not something "invented by faith" - END OF STORY!
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