RE: What is God?
July 7, 2014 at 10:30 pm
(This post was last modified: July 7, 2014 at 11:55 pm by Whateverist.)
I don't think gods as experienced by believers have anything to do with creation. (They -the believers- are mistaken about that, IMO.) Their minds are quite capable of generating an apprehension of god and possibly more. But I think gods begin and end in the brains of believers. Gods have no separate existence of their own. An eternal after life in heaven or hell following judgement are ridiculous ideas unless understood in some metaphorical way.
I believe the phenomenon of gods -as a way of understanding ones subjective experience- arises naturally. No deliberate attempt to deceive anyone is necessary to explain it. There is no need to turn it into another conspiracy theory. If anyone enjoys having his brain wired this way and he resists fundamentalist/absolutist tendencies then such a one is alright in my book. Fully as respectable and intelligent as any atheist. Projecting the part of your mind which is not under your conscious control into the world in the form of gods is at least as good a strategy as pretending that the mind and self are your conscious plaything. Treating the deeper levels of the unconscious as an 'other' is more useful than pretending it isn't there.
I believe the phenomenon of gods -as a way of understanding ones subjective experience- arises naturally. No deliberate attempt to deceive anyone is necessary to explain it. There is no need to turn it into another conspiracy theory. If anyone enjoys having his brain wired this way and he resists fundamentalist/absolutist tendencies then such a one is alright in my book. Fully as respectable and intelligent as any atheist. Projecting the part of your mind which is not under your conscious control into the world in the form of gods is at least as good a strategy as pretending that the mind and self are your conscious plaything. Treating the deeper levels of the unconscious as an 'other' is more useful than pretending it isn't there.
