The following is a response to another article (* see link below) that I was prompted to read by its author through a social media group. It might also be useful, alongside this response to view an earlier post on this blog which elucidates my suggested perspective: “what is god or what if god is“
“You say that God appears to be “indifferent, incompetent, or malevolent”… but…
The God of the Bible is a God created by Man, for the purposes of influence, control and dominion over a population by a select group who claim ‘divine right’ (be these religious leaders, emperors or monarchs who deem themselves to be invested by God to do his bidding). This seems quite patently to be power-seeking nonsense. In relation to this kind of God I suspect your arguments are entirely correct.
You state things (see article linked below) such as: ‘if God used evolution…’; ‘…perhaps God likes the suffering…’; ‘…if God used or allowed evolution to create…’; but concepts such as using, liking, allowing…. even creating… are all activities that ‘humans’ do and it implies the central concept that God is like a ‘big, powerful human’… This too is essentially, and I think obviously, nonsense. But this appears to be the kind of God that you refer to throughout your article, because it is the Biblical God, envisaged by ‘man’ as an authoritarian deity base on man’s own tendencies and desires to control other men.
As I have previously suggested, ‘that Thing which some refer to as God’, imho, is unknowable and ineffable—i.e. we cannot either understand nor describe what it is using the human brain/mind and words. And trying to ascribe any ‘human-like’ qualities to such a God, or to try to articulate or judge Its apparent actions (or inaction), is the essential error that belies any thesis that tries to assess or analyze the God of the Bible (or indeed and other human interpretation of God or gods over the millennia).
Man’s abiding folly is to anthropomorphize God and to examine all that has to do with God from an anthropocentric viewpoint. I understand that the Genesis story implies that God created Man in his own image… but of course this is an allegory, suited to setting the scene from which the first testament grows… but, if there is an iota of truth in the myth, then (again imo) it is that Man —as a self-ware, conscious, intelligent being— is not his body, but that body is merely a temporary vessel for a potentially eternal ‘spiritual spark’ that is but a fractal of the greater Thing that is referred to by some as the Source of Divine Love, the Source of All that Is, or God. In other words, if God is (metaphorically speaking) an infinite Ocean, then ‘we’ are essentially each a drop in/of that ocean (hence a microcosm of God’s image)… Simplistically speaking, one intuits that each droplet of ’spirit’, commonly referred to as a ’Soul’, is temporarily attached to a carnal form for some reason or purpose related to that which can only be experienced/learned whilst in a mortal/material form, such an an opportunity for growth being unavailable to a formless, non-corporeal entity that is but one drop of an infinite whole in its alternative mode of ‘existing’ within the Oneness.
It would be my contention that the role that ‘the Thing called God by some’, or Source, might have in terms of creation is once again not to be thought as as an anthropocentric/anthropmorphic endeavour, but relates to the creation of the Universe itself (or indeed Universes themselves — although I am ‘open’ to the possibility that in line with the following hypothesis ‘our’ creator God might only be related to this Universe, or only Universes with the common creative factor!). For me, albeit that I feel that God is unknowable and indescribable, if the Thing that brought the Universe into being, which then led over billions of years to the formation of the stars, galaxies… our own star and solar system, our Earth and all that forms it and resides on it —through the process of evolution— then it is actually some kind of ‘never-to-be-fully-understood-by-the-mind-of-Man’ Mathematical Entity/Function that caused (in the moment of its inception) all the material stuff (molecules, atoms, sub-atomic particles, and so on) of the Universe to come into existence… this includes the known and the unknown (to us and our still primitive scientific and technological wherewithal)… and in this sense It (God) is indeed ‘part of everything’ within this Universe (and prospectively beyond)… It is, therefore, in every atom of every cell of our body…as well as everything in apparent existence. It is a timeless entity for which 13.8 billion years is as nothing… and Its ‘purpose’ in causing all things to be can never hope to be known by just one small group of sentient creatures on one small planet in one small solar system in one unremarkable galaxy among billions. (Revelation 22:13: “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.” — you may have discerned then that as Alpha (α) I am essentially suggesting the God represents the ‘beginning of all things’ through actually being ‘the fine structure constant’ and at the same time is omega in that It also represents, eschatologically speaking, ‘the end of all things’.)
You say God does not deserve to be worshipped… and I agree the god you describe does not… but then again the actual ‘Creator’ of all things is beyond any thought or desire for such things and worshipping is just something ‘man’ desires to do… for, as alpha, God simply ‘creates’ the geometry and structure of the universe we reside within but any deeper meaning of what it acually is to be a Mathematical Entity is necessarily beyond human comprehension.
You say God is “indifferent, incompetent, or malevolent”… but these are traits of humankind and cannot be applied to the Source of All that is, which is outwith such petty descriptors and beyond the ability of mere humans even partially to conceive, except and UNLESS we choose to fulfil our one true ‘purpose’ which is to nurture that ‘fractal spark of spirit’ that dwells within/is connected to each and every one of us… and then in some small measure we ‘might’ achieve a ‘hint’ of what Source is, what Its own purpose is and what our role might be in achieving that greater, and one assumes timeless, objective.
In closing, I’d reassert that God, imho, is not ‘concerned’ with worship, nor ‘bothered’ about ‘not being believed in’, nor indeed about ‘being believed in’… Nor is It directly responsible for ‘waving a magic wand’ to resolve issues (natural or anthropogenic) that happen in this small corner of complex creation …BECAUSE we all have the potential to resolve any issues that beset us, thanks to the all-pervasive presence of the Great Geometrician (a masonic term and insight that may in fact be more accurate than could ever have been imagined, when it was coined) within every one of us …and all else that is.
We, arrogant, self-important, self-centred species that we are — often more concerned about ‘what has been’ or ‘what will be’ that focused on ‘what is’ — are just an infinitesimally small part of the fabric of existence through which the Source comes to know more about Itself… and to accept our minor part in the Great Unfolding Drama is likely to offend many members of the most egotistical species on Earth… who would probably rather continue to stick to proclaiming their myopic Biblical myth, or defending their conceited disbelief!”
(* — With due acknowledgement to the ‘prompting’ article by Jon Peter’s at:
https://www.truthfulorigins.info/post/why-not-theistic-evolution )
