BIG10.THE GOD QUESTION
“God is the only being who need not even exist in
order to reign.” – Charles Baudelaire
How God
is Human?
BIG outline: Richard Dawkins (evolutionary theorist & author of 'The God Delusion') writes that “we are all atheists about most of the Gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one God further.” This statement is borne from a lack of critical thought around the subject matter of God, religion and how culture works. Instead, ponder on this question: Is it possible for different peoples and cultures over time to express God in the exact same, or similar way? Bear in mind that humankind has around 7,000 different languages, which are all different modes of expression as a consequence of culture's inherent relativity. Understanding that multiple, diverse expressions of God would be a logical outcome IF God existed, then having many, many expressions wouldn’t underline God’s existence but that alone wouldn’t undermine it. This BIG isn’t about proving whether God exists or not. It is about critically thinking through the question 'How God is human?' and what that means for an understanding of humankind and culture, and the place (if any) that plays in the outcome/solutions to the problems any of these BIGs highlight. God isn't just in churches, ways of living, across art and the humanities. God is across many fields of knowledge, including a noticeable presence in science. Historically, Francis Bacon called the human mind “divine fire” centuries before neuroscience illuminated neural firing at the heart of mental activity, and Isaac Newton thought the universe was “God’s sensorium”. In mathematics the Mandelbrot set is referred to as “the thumbprint of God”, and more recently the Higgs boson particle was nicknamed “the God particle”. In these senses God is a powerful metric for how humans see(m) the world. Full disclosure moment: I believe in God. I haven't always, in fact only since 2007. I'm the father of 3 kids and if they all grow up non-believers and good people, I'll take that from them, so the idea I'll ask more of you, we can knock that down straight away. You can understand culture, mind and time through all of these BIGS without believing in God. However, if we're interested in what makes the human world tick, then there has to be an understanding that God (real or not real) has a part to play in the outline, and as we'll see, in outcome.
BIG outline: Richard Dawkins (evolutionary theorist & author of 'The God Delusion') writes that “we are all atheists about most of the Gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one God further.” This statement is borne from a lack of critical thought around the subject matter of God, religion and how culture works. Instead, ponder on this question: Is it possible for different peoples and cultures over time to express God in the exact same, or similar way? Bear in mind that humankind has around 7,000 different languages, which are all different modes of expression as a consequence of culture's inherent relativity. Understanding that multiple, diverse expressions of God would be a logical outcome IF God existed, then having many, many expressions wouldn’t underline God’s existence but that alone wouldn’t undermine it. This BIG isn’t about proving whether God exists or not. It is about critically thinking through the question 'How God is human?' and what that means for an understanding of humankind and culture, and the place (if any) that plays in the outcome/solutions to the problems any of these BIGs highlight. God isn't just in churches, ways of living, across art and the humanities. God is across many fields of knowledge, including a noticeable presence in science. Historically, Francis Bacon called the human mind “divine fire” centuries before neuroscience illuminated neural firing at the heart of mental activity, and Isaac Newton thought the universe was “God’s sensorium”. In mathematics the Mandelbrot set is referred to as “the thumbprint of God”, and more recently the Higgs boson particle was nicknamed “the God particle”. In these senses God is a powerful metric for how humans see(m) the world. Full disclosure moment: I believe in God. I haven't always, in fact only since 2007. I'm the father of 3 kids and if they all grow up non-believers and good people, I'll take that from them, so the idea I'll ask more of you, we can knock that down straight away. You can understand culture, mind and time through all of these BIGS without believing in God. However, if we're interested in what makes the human world tick, then there has to be an understanding that God (real or not real) has a part to play in the outline, and as we'll see, in outcome.
BIG
outcome: The broader issue here is the question of how God is the sum total of
human expression. In the superpower nation of America the motto “In God We
Trust” was adopted in 1956 and is displayed on all US paper currency. There are
over 4,000 different faiths and religion that have expressed God, and more than
80% of the world population have some form of belief system. Again, the
question is not whether God exists, but for a lot of humans God is real and
that means that serious, rounded attempts to solve some of the problems for
humankind (and as we’ll see in the next BIG, nature) have to accept that
enough. Any humanism that denies how God is human can only be niche/fringe
humanism, until that wider reality changes. So when we’re crafting social capitalism
and range economics as a move away from consequence free market capitalism, or
getting some science to understand religion more as real human phenomena, or
getting some religious people to
understand evolution and science more, or a range of other issues, no more than
our relationship with the natural world the idea of God is present. This is not
a battle of genes, it is one of knowledge and we have to win that battle of
hearts and minds through reason, and other human cultural expressive areas, and
that includes religion and
science. This BIG challenges the ID of intelligent design, and the UD of
Universal Darwinism as well. With that in mind, and through all the BIGs we’ve covered we’re laying
a platform for the biggest BIG of all: an 11th Commandment.
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