Chapter 31: God

March 29, 2015 SpunaroundSaturn 131 Comments

‘God is a concept by which we measure our pain,’ said John Lennon. I’m looking for more specific detail here, though, as this World Peace Adventure we’re all on is, one way or another, going to succeed or fail based on God. So let’s go with this: God is the concept of a supreme supernatural being believed in and worshipped by religious people on Earth as the principle object of their faith.

More specifically still, religious people known as monotheists believe in and worship just the one supreme God – most notably the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but also Sikhism, Zoroastrianism and some branches of Hinduism. The ‘one God’ concept in these religions generally positions this supreme supernatural being as the creator of the universe, with unlimited power, infinite knowledge, the ability to be present everywhere at once, perfect goodness and in possession of eternal life.

God concepts other than monotheism include polytheism (the belief in and worship of multiple gods – from ancient mythology to modern Hinduism), henotheism (the belief in and worship of one primary God while also accepting the existence of others), pantheism (where God is considered to be the universe itself), atheism (where the existence of God is outright denied), agnosticism (where the existence of God is deemed unknown or unknowable), or non-theism (where the existence of God is considered an irrelevance).

The ‘one God’, however, has been known by many different names throughout history – from Aten in the ancient Egyptian monotheistic cult of Atenism, to Elohim or Adonai in Judaism (or Yahweh or Jehovah from the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament YHWH tetragrammaton), to Allah in Islam, Brahman in Hinduism, Waheguru in Sikhism, Ahura Mazda in Zoroastrianism or Baha in the Bahá’í Faith. The identifier ‘God’ is always capitalised in English to distinguish the ‘one God’ concept from other gods and is generally, but not always, in western thought considered male (likely due to the active rather than passive act of creation).

In the 21st Century, there is no agreed consensus between the people of the world on the nature of God, either between the Abrahamic religions or the Dharmic religions. Hindu and Sikh concepts emphasize the attractive view that all theists (all those who believe God exists independently of human thought) worship the same god, whether they know it or not.

Neither is there any kind of agreed consensus on how best to worship God or what God’s plan for humankind may be, or even if God has a plan for humankind. Theists tend to believe God interacts with the physical universe – for example by responding to human prayer – while deists believe God originally created the universe but now takes little to no interest in the affairs of humanity.

Humans have debated the existence and nature of God for thousands of years. One of the key unresolved issues in these debates is human free will – for example, if God is omniscient (knows everything), this means he knows how individuals will act in any given situation, which means there’s no such thing as free will and human actions are all pre-destined. If there is such a thing as human free will, then God is not omniscient and human destiny’s still up for grabs.

So, is there one God, multiple gods, any such thing as supernatural beings at all, what’s the deal here? Muslims believe the entire purpose of human life is to worship God; this is a big deal, surely we can get a bit of clarity and consensus? As we have seen, most religions may come from a similar starting point regarding God, but they disagree with one another on the detail and get hung up on those differences. As touched on earlier, the sustained philosophy known as Perennialism holds there to be one underlying and universal theological truth of which all religions express just a partial understanding, based on the needs of a given culture at given points in history. This universalist concept stretches back to ancient times when different cultures first began to interact, was suppressed, and then began to pick up steam again in more recent times through the transcendentalist movement and ‘ancient wisdom’ teachings of the Theosophical Society in the 19th Century – which eventually grew into the syncretic spiritual New Age Movement of the 20th Century.

So, is God a concept by which we measure our pain? Look around, turn on the television. To some, the concept of God is one of goodness, of outreach, of togetherness. To others, the concept of God is one of attack, of division, of destruction. Knowledge of what God is may be beyond the gift of our mortal lives; control over how we express our belief, however, is well within our gift. What would a being that created this planet and each person on it make of what we have done to each other in the name of religion? God only knows.

To learn more about the concept of predestination and whether humans are free to make their own decisions, jump to Chapter 92: Free Will – content to follow

To learn more about the concept of a single, universal truth underlying all religions, jump to Chapter 93: Perennialist Philosophy – content to follow

To get to the heart of what humans have done with the God concept in order to shape and define their own cultures, jump to Chapter 94: Religion – content to follow