Chapter 1: What is God? In order to say that something doesn’t exist, one has to be able to define what it is that isn’t there. Since the concept of god varies from culture to culture to sub culture to splinter group to sect of the splinter group and so on and so on, nailing down a single, simple definition is a daunting task. I can’t trot the bugger out (being non-existent and all) and describe it, so all I can do is use the attributes most people tack on to the concept. God then, is like a Black Hole. It’s something you can’t describe exactly because it has that infuriating attribute of being (charitably put) invisible and intangible. Thus, we can only define the thing by those visible and tangible attributes that orbit the thing, characteristics attributed to it by those that believe it exists. We give it the attribute of ‘being’. That sounds simple, but it opens the philosophic can of worms, (the carnivorous, size of a city bus type worms, think Sand Worms of Dune without the sweet disposition). First, we have to consider what the word ‘being’ means and fight back the snarling beast of Equivocation the vicious guard dog of all Theists. There is the verb; being, existing, the act of existing in a substantive, ‘real’ way, as in I’m sitting here in front of my computer just BEING. It’s usually here that the ‘Bong Hit Philosophers’ chime in with the old solipsistic “Does anything really exist, I mean, REALLY?” To which I respond, “Hold the small brick in your right hand, Grasshopper. Contemplate its symmetry, its rough texture and cheerful orange red coloration and ask it “Do you exist?” Then, smack yourself in the forehead with the brick. Tend to the bleeding, wait for the dizziness to go away and toss the brick and the solipsistic bull shit over your left shoulder and forget about it. In the noun part, it denotes a thing that actually ’is’ and has the attribute of existence. Technically, a rock is a ‘being’ but the common perception confuses the issue by also insisting that it is, was or will be alive (the being that is, not the rock). Here we delve into a little redundancy and add on the codicil of ‘sentient’ to the term ‘being’. So when I say ‘being’ consider it as read that I mean ‘Sentient Being’, not only does it exist, but it is alive and is capable of knowing or sensing its environment. God therefore is a being, having the qualities of life and sentience. So far, so good, but if we want to consider this being as differentiated from an amoeba we have to also give it the attributes of self-awareness and intelligence. Now we can say that god ‘is’ and knows he is. Now we have this god fellow up to the level of my cousin Jerry. (Jerry, it should be noted, is an asshole.) Now we pull out the metaphysical concept of Transcendence, wave it about, and show it off to the neighbor’s wife while she’s pulling the weeds out of the rhododendrons. We need to dress up god in his little transcendence suit. This wreaks havoc with the whole concept of being as it places god outside the realm of reality, above, beyond and completely outside of the known and knowable universe. But still, the Theist refers to god as a transcendent being. So god exists, just not here. B. Moody
Posted on: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 09:34:36 +0000
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