What is God?

[Mudhammam]

I never quite understand what people mean by God. If God is mind, then all available evidence and intuition derived from experience suggests that mind is fundamentally physical. This is probably the most controversial point for reasons unbeknownst to me--is there ANY reason to assume the contrary? Because it poses more problems for scientific inquiry? Is that it?

Well then, it seems that God is thus physical--some 'philosophers' have even gone so far as to suggest that God dwells in his own special time and space-- all of this obviously unnecessary as physics has unveiled enough to sketch a purely natural explanation for the Universe that omits God.

So I ask again, what is God?

[Dystopia]

I never quite understand what people mean by God. If God is mind, then all available evidence and intuition derived from experience suggests that mind is fundamentally physical. This is probably the most controversial point for reasons unbeknownst to me--is there ANY reason to assume the contrary? Because it poses more problems for scientific inquiry? Is that it?

Well then, it seems that God is thus physical--some 'philosophers' have even gone so far as to suggest that God dwells in his own special time and space-- all of this obviously unnecessary as physics has unveiled enough to sketch a purely natural explanation for the Universe that omits God.

So I ask again, what is God?

God is everything and nothing, he is everywhere and nowhere... Oh wait what did I just say?

[Ravenshire]

I'll let George explain:

[professor]

I have heard God defined as "Intrinsic energy, but you can call me Dad"

[Mudhammam]

I have heard God defined as "Intrinsic energy, but you can call me Dad"

That means about as much to me as the laughable suggestion that photons have personality... wait, you're not going to claim that, are you?

[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.

[Mudhammam]

Whateverist, I'm reluctant to agree for two reasons:
1. People generally grant their fallibility but not God's. When projecting their inner voice onto God, they're more resistant to contradicting that voice, even when presented very good reason to do so.
2. How much wasted time and energy is invested into this fabrication that serves no one but the inflation of the individual ego? If one can treat God like anything else-- and indulge in moderation, then that's one thing but... That never happens unless the person is largely irreligious to begin with.

[Whateverist]

I do agree that any theism involving gods involves an incorrect attribution. I'm just saying there is something intrinsic to our subjective experience which naturally lends itself to being understood as the presence of gods. The more controversial part of what I'm saying is that this something intrinsic represents something real about us which is best not ignored. Theism has an advantage over nothing-but atheism by virtue of at least providing a handle for this aspect of our consciousness. But atheists need no more be shackled to a nothing-but-rational-calculation understanding of consciousness than theists need be shackled to a literal understanding of religion.

The something intrinsic to our experience for which gods are such a natural fit can be even more adequately accounted for without gods. But it isn't something science can put in a pill for you. It involves dancing with an internal otherness which is with you but not narrowly you. It isn't about schizophrenia or split personalities or any sort of pathology for that matter. It is about reaching for wholeness by letting in more without immediately squeezing it to death with an overly controlling grip. It is about integration, not conquest. Anyhow, that is the way I see it.

[Mudhammam]

I do agree that any theism involving gods is an incorrect attribution. I'm just saying there is something intrinsic to our subjective experience which naturally lends itself to being understood as the presence of gods. The more controversial part of what I'm saying is that this something intrinsic represents something real about us which is best not ignored. Theism has an advantage over nothing-but atheism by virtue of at least providing a handle for this aspect of our consciousness. But atheists need no more be shackled to a nothing-but-rational-calculation understanding of consciousness than theists need be shackled to a literal understanding of religion.

The something intrinsic to our experience for which gods are such a natural fit can be even more adequately accounted for without gods. But it isn't something science can put in a pill for you. It involves dancing with an internal otherness which is with you but not narrowly you. It isn't about schizophrenia or split personalities or any sort of pathology for that matter. It is about reaching for wholeness by letting in more without immediately squeezing it to death with an overly controlling grip. It is about integration, not conquest. Anyhow, that is the way I see it.

Sorry to quote from Dan Dennett's Breaking the Spell at such length, but I think he offers a pretty plausible explanation that exceeds any notion of a "God center" in the brain:

Sweet-tooth theories: First, consider the variety of things we like to ingest or otherwise insert into our bodies: sugar, fat, alcohol, caffeine, chocolate, nicotine, marijuana, and opium for a start. In each case, there is an evolved receptor system in the body designed to detect substances (either ingested or constructed within the body, such as the endorphins or endogenously created morphine analogues) that these favorites have in high concentration. Over the ages, our clever species has gone prospecting, sampling just about everything in the environment, and after millennia of trial and error has managed to discover ways of gathering and concentrating these special substances so that we can use them to (over) stimulate our innate systems. The Martians may wonder if there are also genetically evolved systems in our bodies that are designed to respond to something that religions provide in intensified form. Many have thought so. Karl Marx may have been more right than he knew when he called religion the opiate of the masses. Might we have a god center in our brains along with our sweet tooth? What would it be for? What would pay for it? As Richard Dawkins puts it, "If neuroscientists find a 'god center' in the brain, Darwinian scientists like me want to know why the god center evolved. Why did those of our ancestors who had a genetic tendency to grow a god center survive better than rivals who did not?" (2004b, p. 14).
If any such evolutionary account is correct, then those with a god center not only survived better than those without one; they tended to have more offspring. But we should carefully set aside the anachronism involved in thinking of this hypothesized innate system as a "god center," since its original target may have been quite unlike the intense stuff that turns it on today — we don't have an innate chocolate-ice-cream center in the brain, after all, or a nicotine center. God may just be the latest and most intense confection that triggers the whatsis center in so many people. What benefit accrued to those who satisfied their whatsis craving? It could even be that there isn't and never has been any actual target in the world to obtain, but just an imaginary or virtual target, in effect: it's been the seeking, not the getting, that has had a fitness advantage.

(Bold mine

Basically, our brains have evolved with an insatiable desire to seek and ask questions, part in parcel to our ability to organize and transmit thoughts via complex languages. God is a meme, perhaps a virus, that our species is just beginning to overcome now that tangible answers to our questions have proven themselves available by ever-improving methods.

As to the mysterious quality one feels when pondering the apparent duality of the self...a product of trillions of nerve cells with no locus or center of identification in the brain...this might naturally lead to conversations with dead ancestors.. or a guy in the sky...or a tree...or a teddy bear...but I don't find that very compelling for God's existence.

[Whateverist]

I don't know what to say about a god center. Seems so tidy and sterile somehow.

I'm not sure that all the characteristics of our subjective life arose or were selected for on the basis of evolutionary pressures. Some things may be by-products of other things which were selected for that way. I wouldn't think that our extreme self-awareness would convey much survival advantage. What good does it do us in the natural world to go about wondering whether it is better to be or not to be? (What the hell kind of question is that evolutionarily speaking?)

For that matter, why do we require a concept of "me"? Does any other animal have this? The whole personal narrative which adds up to our having a history, a character, a personality and the rest of what we might call a sense of self .. what purpose does that serve? Is it even real?

If the brain can come up with the confabulation we call our 'self' why shouldn't it be able to manage the one we call 'god'? What purpose does either one really serve? Naturally once we have either, if there is one we should want to keep it would be our sense of self. But realizing our organisms produce both, shouldn't we at least be curious about what function the latter might serve? Anyone interested in self discovery should definitely open that door. What we don't fully understand is breath taking. I'm not interested in putting so many parameters on it from the start when we know so little. No babies will be thrown out with the water on my watch.