God is a position, not a being

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Today I attended a philosophy and theology day which covered a range of issues including bioethics and what it is to be human.

One of the speaker talked about the death of God (though I suspect he is a theist of some variety). He suggested that we have become post-human, or human, or non-human. At any rate, we have changed. And this, he said, was due to the death of God.

He provided three ways in which God has died. 1) In the death of the manifestation of God (Christ). 2) In the fall of Christendom. 3) In the rise of technology. I will focus on the third, and what I believe to be the most valid way.

He suggested that science and technology have killed God in their respective areas (understanding and power).

I think this not to be true.

I think that humanity is a position, as is God (which hence forth I shall refer to as Godliness). Humanity is a position that human kind has occupied for many millennia (when we started to occupy it is a different story). Godliness is a position that has not previously been occupied. We instead, created a being to occupy that position, namely God. God is a filler. God is, in more than one sense, a God of the gaps. God filled the position of Godliness.

Now that we have technology and are able to manipulate our environment and our body, to the extent that the two have become intertwined. We use tools to extent the natural capabilities of our bodies. Using a car allows us to move at speeds that we are not naturally capable of. Some of us use glasses to improve our eyesight. One could even say that, in the use of items such as computers and calculators, we have extended our minds beyond the physical limits of our body.

The point is that we are moving out of the position of humanity.

What position are we moving into? Godliness. We are becoming Gods.

Now that we are partially occupying the position of Godliness, we see that we don't need something to fill it anymore, and we realise that the filler, God, was nothing more than a filler. We are beginning to see that, there was no God there in the first place, and at any rate, we don't need one. We are our own God. God never died. He was just never alive to start with.

So in conclusion: humanity and Godliness are positions, not beings. We are moving out of the position of humanity and into the position of Godliness. In our shifting we are realising that God is and always was non-existent. We never killed God.

Yours ever faithfully (in the best sense of faith),
aperson

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aperson, there is absolutely NO way you are 13 yrs old!

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Mame wrote:

aperson, there is absolutely NO way you are 13 yrs old!

What? Are you suggesting aperson is pretending to be a 13 year-old so he can groom underage children? Quick! Fetch the Paedo-finder General!

By the way, aperson, though your post is interesting, I have to point out that you haven't proven the speaker wrong. God has died. You said so yourself. By inventing a position, Godliness, you have not shown that God is not dead, only that he occupied a position that he no longer occupies.

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Mame wrote:

aperson, there is absolutely NO way you are 13 yrs old!

You forget, Mame, that aperson, is in all likelihood not from America, and therefore his (or her) intelligence should not be brought into question.

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And, by the way, I agree with wolf in his contention that god is dead, and, furthermore, I say god died in a fiery celestial crash and there were also several angels that perished in the unfortunate collision.

fock em.

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*God" IS a position, insofar that for theists "selves" are juxtaposed to "a creator". However if the self is transcended and selves are seen as transient changing nodes in the flux of "consciousness" then "God" becomes merely a name for "other hypothetical manifestations of consciousness" which are "not selves".

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fresco, you said it, in words that I have to look up in a dictionary, as usual.

Mame,
I'm 15 now. Perhaps my country's education system is to blame, though I've never been to America (I can see the shock on your faces) so I don't know how it compares.

Wolf, but if God died, he must have been alive in the first place. What I'm saying is that he never existed, and that in ascending to the position we thought he occupied, we have realised this, and I think that this is far more likely than God dying all of a sudden just because we invented Seguays. I'm not arguing that the notion of God is dead, but to say God himself died implies that he existed at some point.

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13...15... not a whole lot of difference... which is your country, aperson?

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Good ole New Zealand.

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Not a lot of difference for you, but huge for me.

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aperson wrote:

Wolf, but if God died, he must have been alive in the first place. What I'm saying is that he never existed, and that in ascending to the position we thought he occupied, we have realised this, and I think that this is far more likely than God dying all of a sudden just because we invented Seguays. I'm not arguing that the notion of God is dead, but to say God himself died implies that he existed at some point.

Ah, but you see, the speaker you were talking about couldn't possibly have implying that God himself is dead. That would be nonsensical seeing as how he has been defined (immortal etc). Of course, how he has been defined is not necessarily what he is. It could be possible that God's physical existence is entirely dependent on people believing in him, which would make him a rather strange God victim to our whims.

I suspect, therefore that your spearker must also have been talking about the notion of God.

Although, it could then be argued that both of you are wrong. The notion of God is not dead. We are discussing God, so how could the notion of God be dead if we are discussing it? That, of course, assumes a certain definition of the word, notion.

Darn it... perhaps you should define your terms. Philosophy can get quite confusing, especially with words and phrases having more than one possible meaning.

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Good stuff aperson. I think of seats in a huge theatre or say the colosseum of Rome that offer differing perspectives. In this sense humanities position if you like, is changing, that is, how we define ourselves. As we change seats, new perspectives of the whole illuminate "greater" awareness as our relations to everything else changes and we ourselves change. I would think of Godliness in two different senses though. Technology wise and how we view ourselves with respect to the rest of the finite world or all the other finite objects we see in the colosseum, Godliness may have been used to explain say, the power of the Sun and what it provides us with. In this sense I think humanity is being re-considered but without God or godliness as factors. The second sense of Godliness I think represents for at least some, that which deflates or deconstructs everything. By this I mean it isn't just another finite perspective that we can objectify in perception but not yet hold, it's essentially that which transcends all finite perspectives. Not the usual connotation of God or Godliness but just a thought anyway.

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Are you looking for a reason not to go to church on sunday? :wink:

Whats "god"?

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There is also the view that God is simply beyond human comprehension.

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Wolf,
Yes, I see what you mean. We could both be right, in which I like my view because it's neater! We could both be wrong. He didn't really define which "God" he was talking about in the first place, but I don't really blame him - 'tis a difficult job! I suppose we are both, in essence, talking about the same thing.

I suppose in that sense, "notions" never really die, as long as we can imagine them. In that case, God is not dead, but I think that is besides the point. The point is that, once God was something we believed in. Now it is merely a hypothetical thing.

Ashers,
I love your colosseum metaphor! That's exactly what I'm getting at.

In roughly the same sort of metaphor - there is a huge, beautiful seat, and we could not comprehend such a amazing seat being unoccupied, so we imagined up an equally huge, beautiful, amazing being to occupy it. Now we are starting to sit down into that seat, and so seeing that the being was just part of our imagination.

In a sense we are growing out of an imaginary friend.

That second sense of God is that of a deist. That is not the religious God. That is Einstein and Hawking's God - the God that does not play dice (apparently). Nature. Being. Everything. Too often the two are confused.

Cyracuz,
I have to go to church on Sunday. I'm in a choir, and have been so for since I was eight (more than one choir, obviously). Unfortunately this means I have had to listen to 7 odd years worth of sermons - that's roughly 350 sermons.

Anyway, I think God can be approximately defined (as I have discussed, definition is rather hard in this case) as a creator being that is believed in unanimously. And no twisting of words, please.

wandel,
Those who hold that view can obviously find no other way to defend the notion of God. I hope you are not one of them.

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Creator being.... Well, if you are attributing personality to the combined forces of the known and unknown universe, then I guess I can agree. But if you mean creator being as in an entity that is resposible for everything and aware of it....

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Just a religious God, nothing more, nothing less. Don't get up over semantics.

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Being, yes but not a being, being in itself. Everything, that too, but everything as in the "totality of all things", so no individual thing or. . .nothing, to be precise. Form is exactly emptiness and emptiness is exactly form as they say. I can't say more than that, it's just the sense of things for me.

The Tao te Ching:

Quote:

There was something formless and perfect
before the universe was born.
It is serene. Empty.
Solitary. Unchanging.
Infinite. Eternally present.
It is the mother of the universe.
For lack of a better name,
I call it the Tao.

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Poetic maybe, but do not seek fire when what we need is ice, and lots of it. Fire consumes the mind, and melts ice. I hope you can read through my words.

If God is being, then yes, God exists. But that is not God. God is more than that, or less. The God we are talking about is a religious God, remember. I have met people who sign God off as being. One particular chaplain, who is very intelligent, used this definition to shield God from any application of logic and reason. Do not do this to me, please. God has many meanings. This is not the relevant meaning.

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aperson wrote:

Poetic maybe, but do not seek fire when what we need is ice, and lots of it. Fire consumes the mind, and melts ice. I hope you can read through my words.

Not really, sorry. Embarrassed

aperson wrote:

If God is being, then yes, God exists. But that is not God. God is more than that, or less. The God we are talking about is a religious God, remember. I have met people who sign God off as being. One particular chaplain, who is very intelligent, used this definition to shield God from any application of logic and reason. Do not do this to me, please. God has many meanings. This is not the relevant meaning.

I'm not sure if maybe you misunderstand me, I'll try and expand. I have no interest in shielding God from anything, the idea is nonsensical to me, it would be like trying to shield nature, I mean, from what? It just IS and that's my whole point. I can only imagine you think this chaplain's approach applies to me because you questioned, say, why does God disapprove of homosexuality and he waved the question away with a "his are mysterious ways!" line. That's not my game. There is no God to do this or that, to approve or disapprove of anything else or for that matter to have logic thrown at it, IMO of course.

Now if you want to keep this topic to just such a God as the disapproving type above then by all means, I'll happily step aside, the last thing I want is to make it something it wasn't meant to be. However, it seemed just what God was or could be was up for questioning, particularly in light of Wolf's replies. You see when you say the highlighted part above ^ Iamb not sure if that is exactly what you mean. What of the Holy Trinity in Hinduism between the gods, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva representing creation, preservation and destruction, three aspects of one but often I believe worshipped or loved individually. So it seemed if you want to say God as a position is being filled, even "a religious God" has a multitude of meanings for a multitude of religions. That was why I posted an alternative possibility for what God means (in a vague reference that words offer) to me and maybe for others too around the world, outside of the stranglehold some forms of Christianity can have on thinking. That and your use of the words, "nature, being, everything". Like I say though, a misunderstanding on my part.

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God is a position, not a being

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