Different conceptions of God

The term, God (or "god"), is typically used by people in conversation as if there is a common understanding as to what, exactly, it means. When people ask "do you believe in god?" or "god speaks to me" or "may god be with you", it is unlikely that there is a common agreement among everyone involved in the conversation as to exactly what it denotes. Nor do I think that most individuals, in general, even know what they think it means themselves when they use it. Instead, it seems to be the case (at least in America) that the god concept is loosely tied to a vague religious sensibility, a feeling that there is something or someone who is holding the reins and is, to some degree, in charge of the events of our lives and of our destinies. Whether this is a personal god, an omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent god, or some indistinct "higher power" can vary with the individual.

I thought I would try to categorize as many of the most prevalent god concepts that I could think of. In general, these will be listed from most "primitive" to most "advanced", where primitive means lacking sophistication, and advanced means most abstract, complex, and philosophically subtle. Where such a distinction doesn't apply, historically older religions and concepts will appear before more modern ideas. So, for example, the section dealing with evolutionary adaptive ideas of god will appear toward the end.

I am strictly limiting this to the various and confusing usages of the religious term, "god". This is not a discussion of religion or the meaning of life.

Regardless of the differences, some common threads unify the many conceptions described throughout this presentation:

• The primary feature of religion is the belief in/assertion that there are non-human or super-human agents operating in the world. These entities or forces lack some of the features of normal humans (like bodies), but they possess the most important characteristic - a mind, a consciousness, and a purpose. They may or may not be incorporated into some concrete form, or they may be decentralized and ethereal. They may or may not be immortal. In general they have access to more global information than we do, have more power, and are able to affect events in the natural world in ways that normal humans could not. This is the most common and fundamental characteristic of religious belief - belief in supernatural beings and causes. Few religions lack this characteristic and most religions are founded upon it.


• There is no actual agreed-upon evidence for the factual truth of any of them. The individual adherents of each of these beliefs may consider their definitions of god to be incontrovertibly true, but the vast majority of everyone else in the world would not agree with them. Members of many of the differing sects will also argue that they, do, in fact, have hard evidence for their view. But this use of the word, evidence, is much looser than that which applies to most other aspects of life. For many, if not most, evidence and proof are beside the point, irrelevant, counter-productive, and even indicative of a wrong-headed approach to the issue. What matters for them is the personal and group experience - the feeling of believing, of achieving harmony and peace, not a hard-nosed, dry and sterile intellectual proof. Other groups deconstruct "evidence" and "reality" and "god" to redefine or undefine these terms so as to derail attempts to become specific. Some post-modernists (and many ancient religions use post-modern techniques) throw out the concepts of distinction, of separateness, and even of objective reality to subvert any serious attempt to get a handle on the god concept. In any case, the ordinary experience of reality that we associate with most everyday phenomena cannot apply to the god concept.


• The religion one professes is typically inherited from one's parents or adopted from one's neighbors. The decision to choose a particular belief in a god and a religion is driven by social, cultural, historical, and political trends, and occasionally by personal choice.


• There is a class of people who might be called "seekers", those who branch out from the traditions they grew up with to find new answers to the their questions about the "meaning of life". They generally embrace their gurus, religions, miracles, saints, and saviors to satisfy a passion, to fill an emptiness, to fulfill a desire for meaning, completeness, connectedness, or to give them peace in the face of looming meaninglessness and alienation. They seek to escape from what Kierkegaard described as "sickness unto death" by establishing some relationship with a god. According to Kierkegaard, an individual is "in despair" if he does not align himself with god or god's plan. Only by making a "leap of faith", can you escape from this desperate condition. By abandoning reason and embracing faith, they evaluate and judge their adopted philosophies based on how they feel and think afterwards rather than if it is supported by evidence - has it brought peace, certainty, answers to troubling questions? The quest is driven by a thirst for a feeling, and the beliefs are judged by how well that thirst is quenched. Any rationale, reason, analysis, or logic applied to the situation is done after the fact, ad hoc, to justify in seemingly coherent terms what the individual already wanted to happen, independent of the reasons. As Hume said, reason is and ought to be the slave of the passions. It is difficult and rare for a person to approach the metaphysical questions of life dispassionately. When the emotional drive for answers to painful questions is missing or is not the dominate motivator for the search, the religious quest becomes an academic exercise, an intellectual hobby or pastime of no more or less importance than a game of checkers. For those who approach it emotionally, there are no logical arguments that can sway them from their chosen answers. As the saying goes, and I believe it to be true, "you can't use logic to convince someone out of a position which they did not arrive at by using logic in the first place".


• There are many students of religion who investigate it from the outside, as a discipline or anthropological/ neurological/psychological/sociological phenomenon. They see the sheer fact of religion's importance across all societies throughout history and pre-history as arguing for the existence of a innate human and societal need for it. Humans want answers to questions, especially those questions for which answers are not easily found - why is the sky angry? why does disease kill us? why are we afraid? what happens when we die? why has misfortune befallen us? what will make our hunt more successful? Is anyone watching out for me? Before science could answer (some of) these questions, people turned to their religions for answers. If there was no actual god to answer these questions, one was created (Voltaire - "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him"). There is some evidence of a cross-cultural tendency for humans to assign supernatural purposive "agency" as the reason for unexplainable phenomena. Anthropological, archaeological, and historical evidence shows that throughout our existence, mankind has ascribed the power to create and influence events in life to non-corporeal, supernatural beings. Whether these were conceived of as animistic, elemental, or organic spirits, deceased ancestors, multiple gods for multiple purposes, or a single monotheistic god, non-corporeal spirits have haunted human experience since the beginning of time.


• Throughout human history, and across all cultures, mankind seeks the transcendent, and attempts to ascribe causal agency to unseen, mysterious, and unknowable forces. This perception of an invisible reality, as strange as it sounds, might be a side effect of our large brains' ability to form abstractions and mental models. Having to live with unexplained mysteries is so uncomfortable for humans that we fabricate intentional incorporeal causal agents to explain the unexplainable. For better or worse, it has tagged along with our culture for millennia, possibly as a one of Stephen Jay Gould's "spandrels" - a side effect of our complex neural hardware and software.


• We humans tend to seek meaning and purpose that exist outside and/or above ourselves, driven by a "higher" necessity, whether it's origin is religion, politics, relationships, the government, professional and intellectual pursuits, or social issues. The bleakness of finding no comforting answers to the existential problems of "why am I here", "what is the purpose of my life", "what does it all mean" drive people to seek solid and reassuring answers from outside themselves. The possibility that there is no external "reason" for our existence that is any different from that which could be given for a tree's existence or an ant colony's existence is too painful and disruptive for both individuals and societies. As Kierkegaard wrote, when it comes to existential problems, reason is insufficient; "Human reason has boundaries". The thought that there must or could be a larger purpose or destiny, the mental image of the existence of such things, drives us to seek them and believe in them, regardless of whether they exist or not.