What is God?
This no longer represents my views about God. Instead, you might look at Why Christian Apologetics Died Years Ago.
It is perhaps one of the greatest questions of all that we all tend to ask at some point in our lives. What is God? What does God consist of? Is there a God? How do you define ‘God?’ To an average religious person, be it Catholic, Christian, Jewish, or other, the whole question might seem either obvious, pointless, or both. But is it really so obvious? And is answering the question really so pointless or fruitless? I do not believe so. I think the question can be answered, and what’s more – I think that after answering many of the questions that the great majority of people are not even thinking about we can also begin to ask the new questions.
The origin of religion has a lot to do with the creation of the very concept of ‘God,’ and it is important to note that many religions were focused around regional areas, within very concentrated groups. A striking fact that always popped out to me in my high school world history textbooks was the idea that the priests of ancient times, often in either the very beginnings of civilization or prior to the creation of civilization, were the original ones in power. If the price for an individual stepping out of line is a furious, burning hell of torment that they will suffer in for all eternity, can you honestly say many people are going to even take the chance to question such consequences? With all of the struggles of a poverty stricken world with little or not technology, I cannot imagine they had much time to contemplate much of anything beyond the realm of survival or serving whoever it was they served in their local tribes and villages.
To begin describing the topic, I’ll use the example of a common conversation I have had with virtually every Christian.
I ask the question, “What is God?” They reply, “The heavenly father.” Okay, “What is the heavenly father?” Can you guess the response? “That’s easy. God.”
Not many people are actually stopping to think about what ‘God’ consists of, and for those who consider themselves atheists, they seem to have the same amount of ignorance toward thinking through the different perspectives. For one to point their finger at science and claim that the universe is governed by a preset deterministic machine and activity is random, then call themselves an atheist, is actually very bizarre. It makes no sense what so ever to compare God to science, or science to God.
At age 12, I believe, I had little or no knowledge of other world religions, and in fact, I’ll be honest – I still don’t. The main two books I have used to study my spiritual development are a standard NIV study bible, written in English, and as of about two summers ago a thick book called Science of Mind
But some things did make sense, and I was certain of some very concrete experiences. For one, every single time that I prayed, I would see my prayers be answered positively. I did not pray that much, either. I think it might even be possible that back at that time I was saying, “Hey, God is a busy guy. No need to bother him more than I need to.” I remember very clearly that one day when I was at my dad’s apartment and losing one of my baby teeth, I was pulling on it, trying to get the thing to finally come out. There was an intense pain in pulling on it. I closed my eyes and made a prayer for the pain to be gone on the very next, and final pull. And so it was. No pain, and the tooth was out. That experience was one that I knew for certain.
But what had I experienced? I later learned the answer was simple. With the full control of my conscious experience that I have always had, I managed to alter my own perception of pain. Or in other words, I was able to eliminate the very perception itself. As far as the working body of contemporary knowledge was concerned there was nothing spiritual or religious about the idea, and it certainly did not grant any solid proof of God’s existence, or at least, the God I was raised to believe in.
I view God as quite simply a universal consciousness. And to view God as a consciousness is something that cannot be dismissed as quickly as the idea is raised. Most children often visualize God as some all powerful humanistic figure that floats above them in the sky. It is interesting that to almost everyone on the planet, people point up for heaven, and down for hell.
How many are questioning the existence of a heaven or a hell? Or a state of purgatory? All the states and places that supposedly exist seem to contradict each other.
If God has total control over the creation of the universe, why does he let “bad” things happen? The answer to this one is free will. Then you come to a different, even more perplexing question. If everyone is given free will, but God knows everything that will happen in advance, that means every choice you’re going to make is already decided – so how is that free will?
When people ask my religion, my answer is Religious Science. But it is not that quick of an answer; I cannot really promise to conform to religious science itself and in all exclusivity, because religious science itself does not often conform to itself! Religious Science, as I often love to say, cannot be confused with Scientology, the “religion” that has been, from its start, totally commercialized and is followed by such celebrities as Tom Cruise and John Travolta. This religion, from its “start” in the 1920′s or 1930′s, it has had its own unique set of beliefs. Some of them are similar to common Christianity in some ways, but very different in other ways.
Taken from their website, these are some core pieces about what those in the church of religious science believe:
“We believe in God, the living Spirit Almighty; one, indestructible, absolute, and self-existent Cause. This One manifests Itself in and through all creation, but is not absorbed by Its creation. The manifest universe is the body of God; it is the logical and necessary outcome of the infinite self-knowingness of God.
We believe in the incarnation of the Spirit in US, and that all PEOPLE are incarnations of the One Spirit.
We believe in the eternality, the immortality, and the continuity of the individual soul, forever and ever expanding.
We believe that HEAVEN is within US, and that we experience IT to the degree that we become conscious of It.
We believe the ultimate goal of life to be a complete emancipation from all discord of every nature, and that this goal is sure to be attained by all.
We believe in the unity of all life, and that the highest God and the innermost God is one God. We believe that God is personal to all who feel this indwelling Presence.
We believe in the direct revelation of Truth through our intuitive and spiritual nature, and that ANYONE may become a revealer of Truth who lives in close contact with the indwelling God.
We believe that the Universal Spirit, which is God, operates through a Universal Mind, which is the Law of God; and that we are surrounded by this Creative Mind which receives the direct impress of our thought and acts upon it.
We believe in the healing of the sick through the power of this Mind.
We believe in the control of conditions through the power of this Mind.
We believe in the eternal Goodness, the eternal Loving-kindness, and the eternal Givingness of Life to all.
We believe in our own soul, our own spirit, and our own destiny; for we understand that OUR LIFE is God.”
If you read these words carefully, and especially if you go through the thick volume that I mentioned before on the entire subject, there really is a striking resemblance in these beliefs to the whole core philosophy of subjective reality. And really, much of SoM is just that – a subjective model of reality. Then there are of course some typical religious ideas that can tend to go along with this. For instance, if God is good and the purest, most perfect being or thing in the universe, then why would God create anything other than pure good? For example, why would God have created Satan, who is supposedly bad, and then there is going to be a big battle between the two, oh and by the way – God wins, of course. The whole thing seems purely ridiculous.
Comedian George Carlin makes some funny points about some of the absurdity of many common religious beliefs, where in one of his stand up comedy acts he says something along the lines of: what if when we die everything is exactly as they say it is? What if you when pass on, you really do walk up to big, giant pearly gates with angels and other souls making their way through the literal gates of heaven? Then they tell you everything that you did wrong and why you got there or why you’re leaving. All of it seems a bit too physical and literal for the fact that you’re not going to have an actual physical body after you die, or you could say that it is very theatrical. But people have believed an actual concept like this for hundreds, or thousands, of years, among many different religions, not just Christianity.
If God is a universal consciousness, then that means that every single person’s consciousness, if it in fact does exist, is a part of that entire universal consciousness. And consciousness, not being purely defined by organic living beings, can also take place with plants. Plants could be said to have a consciousness to point toward or seek out sunlight. When we think of concepts of subjective reality, or the Law of Attraction, we might also think about the idea that we cannot prove any other consciousness’ existence besides the existence of our own consciousness. We cannot prove that anyone or anything else around us has consciousness, because we cannot experience what they experience. With this in mind, and with the Mind of a universal consciousness, this would mean that you are, in essence, God.
God is good, God is subjectivity, God is a universal unified consciousness. To believe that God does not exist is to make God not exist, but also to cause your own reality to manifest such terms. To believe that God does exist is to prove God’s existence, as well as a non-existence in seeing others who do not ‘believe.’ God is expression, and without expression you would not see anything that you do in front of you nor know the bounds of both existence and non-existence.
