In the Defense of God

There are many books on denying God, or to be more precise, promoting the atheistic philosophy of science worshipping.

This is all well as I suspect most of this fervor is directed against religion (which I am not fond of) and in generally Christianity that is based on a false doctrine. I am not anti-Christian, I am anti-religion. I consider the Christ story a most important mystical legend of the era. The reason being, the Christ legend is based on a premise of anti-clergy and anti-church. He mainly had gone up against the powers of His day, the clergy. I find the Christ story especially endearing in its main theme, “you do not need a priest or a rabbi or any intercessors to reach God”, and you only need to do what Christ did. And I do not mean the need to be crucified. This is a true and very liberating concept in the midst of the heavy hocus-pocus and dogma of clergy. These self-anointed men who think for you and tell you what to do and believe in, actually had altered the truth; cherry picked the bible source manuscript and even burned books and heretics (people who disagreed with them).

When Christ said and I paraphrase, “you can get to God through me”. He did not say, “I am God or you must worship me”. To me this quote means; we can ALL use the venue, the mechanism he had used and hence you can too can achieve even greater things than he has (this is also a quote in the Bible somewhere). It is all in the good book, look it up.

Unfortunately the flock either forgot to read or simply used selective comprehension from a very complex and allegorical text. The whole New Testament is a testimony that via love and sacrifice we can get to where Christ has gotten. It is all there for everybody, all you need to do is to follow Christ’s footsteps. But how did the church hierarchy interpret this? They claim we only have to worship Christ as God and the only begotten son of God! Then and only then we can go to the place, he dwells. So which is it? The Son of God or God, or perhaps both? I never could get this one straight… The Gnostic followers knew it better but of course history taught them a lesson, politics and spirituality do not mix well.

God is a different story altogether. The Abrahamic tradition uses God as an anthropomorphic deity which is the attribution of human characteristics to non-human creatures and beings. The implication of this anthropomorphic, personal God concept is that this is an entity that exists external from our realm; He dwells in a place called heaven, which is separate from our dwelling place, Earth. This philosophy is THE cause of much controversy and argument against the very existence of God.

Simple human reasoning cannot be shut down. The anthropomorphic God theory also suggests that God made all that is and has caused all events in human history. So the main argument against this anthropomorphic God is how a perfect and otherwise all powerful deity could create such an imperfect world? This, amongst other arguments is the main lynchpin of the atheistic philosophy.

There is a separation in the Abrahamic tradition of God. He lives in one place and we in another. This is somewhat of a puzzle. He also has human characteristics, I suspect because the human mind can easier deal with a deity that is like us, albeit more powerful. He gets angered and is vengeful and jealous. All these are signs of human weaknesses. It is not hard to see why so many people have trouble accepting and believing in such a phenomenon. This was my main dilemma since childhood. I refused to become an atheist like my father, but I could not, EVER accept this anthropomorphic deity. It just did not make any sense to me. For a while I thought perhaps nature was God. This was the old fashioned Pagan heritage surfacing in me. After all, historically, Paganism was a long and accepted tradition of nature worshipping. But nature does not make that much sense when you start looking up in the sky and stare that the magnitudes of stars, celestial bodies and vast distances in space. Our Earth is a spec of dust in the vastness of the known universe, so how can our environmental nature be the all encompassing godhead? When I looked at the exactness, the perfect choreography of ALL living things in nature, I could easily see God there, but we have not found life in outer space, and seemingly, as we know it, is alone. Nature could not be it. Instead, the Divine was everywhere, representing Itself in the orderliness of micro and macrocosms alike.

Things started to make more sense to me as I was learning about the Eastern philosophies and their version of God. There were many mystics who took it upon themselves to bring and translate these ideas to the West. This was like a fresh breath of air to many who were lost and trying to find answers that actually made sense.

The Hindu and Jewish traditions are the oldest religions in existence. I am talking about organized religions. All others are offshoots of these two. Buddhist and Jainism are the offshoot of Hindu tradition and Islam and Christianity are the offshoot of the Abrahamic (Jewish tradition).

For the Hindu, their God is ParaBrahman[1], which is the unspeakable and unexplainable. ParaBrahman is not even an entity. The very idea of trying to explain ParaBrahman will lesser or limit its magnitude. So they chose to leave it alone. They do not write or speak about it too much, instead, it is alive and well in their own consciousness.

The charming Indian greeting, the Namaste, is greeting the divine in you. Whenever you do see this greeting, this means that your greeter acknowledges the divine and God IN YOU. This gesture symbolizes the huge difference in the view of God in the East. There is no division, no boundary of the Divine and man. It is all one. Their view of God is a transcendental God that has no emotion or human characteristics. It is decidedly not anthropomorphic. We cannot blame or assign responsibility to human events, nor can we assume that prayers will be answered or rejected.

There is God in all of us. We all have a slice of the Divine and this is called our higher self. When we are in need of help or guidance we can always depend on our higher self to be there. It is always there for you, you only need to accept and acknowledge it. So searching or seeking is not advisable as everything you need is already yours. Self-realization, or I rather use the term self-actualization, is needed. Here and now is the moment. Once you desire God, search for God and you not find Him, it will be always in the future, hence you are moving away from what IT IS. Be aware of this and go for the moment. Then you will instantly be with God. This is an important occult truth. “The Power of Now” as many mystics and writers alluded to it. [2]

I will tell you the real reason for this. As transcendental God is infinity, this infinity permeated our own finite existence, but paradoxically our illusionary reality is finite and perishable. God (infinity) has no concept of time and space. When we dwell in concepts that require a future time such as desire then we are actually moving away from the true reality. Desire always includes the future. There is no future or past, it is only NOW.

You can look it at this way; reality is vertical, human thinking of time and space; the illusion of this world is horizontal. When you fall in to the falsehoods of this world you always think horizontally. Desire is horizontal thinking. Infinity is vertical. It is NOW! Do not move away from it by false thinking.

Meditation on God, infinity and oneness must always be vertical. This is the secret.

God is REAL, all else is an illusion…

When my daughter awakens from deep sleep she is usually unaware of her surroundings for quite some time. She still thinks the she is in the dream that she was having before waking. Dreaming and being awake is not distinguishable to this child. Her dream was very real and she might still think that in her awakened state this dream is continuing.

This is a simple illustration of what the Hindus call, Maya. Maya is a Sanskrit word and in the West it is mistakenly thought of as the illusion of the world, but the proper meaning of Maya is the confusion of what is real and what is not.

The explanation of Maya is also approachable from the subject/object relationship of perception based reality.

According to this school of thought; in the fabric of the universe, no event takes place unless someone is able to observe it. So, if a tree falls in the forest far away from any inhabitants did that event make a sound? This is a hypothetical question of course and there is no right or wrong answer to it. Of course if there is an event that nobody is able to perceive, a ripple in the ocean or felling of an old tree; while there is nobody to observe what happens, that event is a non-event. To make a sound there must be others around with sensory receptors. Sound is only created when one can listen.

This philosophical question can lead us further in understanding reality and why some would claim that we actually live in a word based on illusions. The movie “The Matrix” is an elegant and sophisticated metaphysical story based on an artificial reality fabricated by computers.

The world is in a constant state of flux. It is based on the ebb and flow of life and death. Time in this world is represented not as a horizontal or linear line but more as a spiral. It is cyclical.

One life ends and it becomes nourishment or substance to another. Nothing is wasted nothing is lost. This temporary nature of our existence is the other reason many consider it an illusion. Do you ever think of your childhood memories and all of a sudden they seem like a dream. They did happen in the past, you were witness to that, but after some time has passed these real events now seem unreal, they have became a dream, an illusion.

[2] Eckhart Tolle wrote this book but the concepts and ideas are not his. Others long before Tolle have written about the concept of NOW.

Infinity

The term “infinity” as it relates in the discussion of metaphysical and esoteric has to do with the fundamental nature of all existence.  Quite a broad concept, but a definition at the outset of this discussion is necessary so the reader understands in what context the term is used.  In this essay the aforementioned term may be interchanged with words like “the infinite,” or the “unknowable” or the “incomprehensible” but they are meant to describe the same idea: that knowing “infinity” implies understanding of the true nature of reality, with no truths hidden.  Understanding my meaning behind the concept helps the reader understand how the words are interchangeable and not just vague terms that can confuse.

Contemplating infinity implies contemplating the incomprehensible.  It passes through thoughts in fleeting grasps but the ultimate answers never become retained knowledge as knowing infinity is unattainable by definition.  Yet striving for hints or aspects on the nature of infinity can enrich one’s life by enhancing thought processes and contemplation techniques.  Understanding these advancing grasps puts one in a better frame of mind to function in everyday life by putting things into perspective no matter how limited the advancement in understanding may be.  Infinity can be conceptualized and approached from different angles – philosophically, scientifically, and religiously.

Those of us not able to approach infinity or are unable to be a part of the infinite, in other words, all of us, spend our spiritual lives striving towards attaining infinity.  If we do not strive towards it, what is there to strive for?  If we are not striving towards the infinite are we not marching blindly to our deaths?  It is within human nature as thinking beings to strive for knowledge and to know truths no matter how vague or vast the concepts may be.

We may spend our days working our day jobs day in and day out; largely living a compartmentalized existence yet somewhere within all of us we know that we are part of something greater, or that there is something greater, within us and around us – encompassing us.  We can sense it, and at certain times we are more perceptive of this infinite nature than at other times but if we never take the time away from our modern, mandated existence we can never attain knowledge of the infinite that we innately know to exist.  If we spend our lives going to work, returning home, and going back to work in a never-ending cycle with no time for contemplation we are ignoring that intuition within ourselves to attain higher knowledge. 

Throughout history many great men have made vast strides on their own individual paths to knowing the nature of what is not finite.  Many of these men we know by name for their immense accomplishments in brightening the path for the rest of humankind.  It is important we observe some of these paths and understand the similarities of how some of the fundamental aspects of infinity are conceptualized.

One such man well along the path to understanding the incomprehensible was Isaac Newton.  Newton’s contributions to science and philosophy serve as bright paths for all of mankind and provided advancements for all of us.  One can speak for days in describing Newton’s contributions.  However, in this context Newton’s contributions to mathematics were the first to provide a symbol and a method for working with the innumerable.  As described in Newton’s calculus, infinity  can be expressed as an unbounded limit.  A limit that has no bounds can never be reached no matter how much is added to it.  Numbers can approach infinity, but never reach it.  Mathematicians in successive generations provided different methods for describing infinite numerations.  Another way mathematics describes infinity was first expressed by German mathematician Richard Dedekind in his Dedekind Infinite Set described as a relationship between a set of numbers and a subset of numbers where a relationship exists that is both injective (a one-to-one relationship) and surjective (onto relationship) or, more specifically, is described as the one-to-one (injective) relationship set of all natural numbers (positive integers) into a subset. This relationship would have to be infinite, or would it?

While Newton’s definition of infinity as a symbol in calculus and Dedekind’s definition of infinity in terms of number sets have served their purposes, they do not define infinity even in the mathematical sense as philosopher Bertrand Russell came to prove in 1901.  Defined as the “set of all sets that are not members of themselves” the statement implies that a subset is both a member of itself and not a member at the same time.  So, inherently, trying to describe infinity as a symbol or a set loses all meaning because infinity would have to include all members of the set that are not members.  Bertrand Russell provides proof that even describing never ending quantities is an impossible task.  Newton’s description admits this.

As we can see already, contemplating infinity is exhausting.  Any attempt to quantifying infinity is ultimately a losing battle, but obviously a worthwhile experience for all involved.  How can the infinite possibly be quantified?   It’s easy to see from these mathematical concepts that contemplating infinity requires a lot of work.  Nobody in all of history came up with even a mathematical symbol useful in equations to denote infinity before Isaac Newton did with his calculus and we are all in gratitude for him having done so.

Philosophy takes on different approaches to contemplating infinity from attempting to quantify it.  Philosophy really tries to define infinity by asking questions about it.  Since infinity is incomprehensible, that’s really all we can do.  One philosophical approach is to think of infinity in terms of causality or how cause relates to effects.  What was the first cause and what is the last effect?  Of course, there is no answer to this question but it does paint a picture, however faint, of the infinite.  Asking questions about causality also shows our finite minds the faint grasp of infinity we can understand by thinking about the causes and effects we can put together in a stream.  For example, if you thought Big Bang to be the first cause and your current breath to be the most recent effect, than that is your own personal grasp of the infinite, but definitely not all that is infinite.   

Perhaps the greatest milestone reached by philosophy concerning a conceptualization of the infinite was those penned by G.W. Leibniz in his Monadology in 1714.  Within Leibniz’s theorizations, which resemble a remarkable precursor to modern subatomic particle theory, a monad is defined as that simplest bit of reality that cannot be divided into parts.  It is the smallest amount of a substance that can be divided no further.  But, this simplest part that can be divided no further contains all potential of what that monad can become compounded with everything it had been in the past.  This statement brings the concept of causality into the nature of the infinite.  What was the first action?  What will be the last?  Understanding that there is no first action and will be no last provides a fundamental concept on the nature of the infinite.  These concepts present an excellent analogy of how all components of reality, including actions causing actions and reactions among other aspects within reality, are finite yet, as a whole, compose the infinite.  Leibniz, of course, states this best himself:

            “So if I were capable of considering distinctly everything which is happening or  appearing to me now, I would be able to see in it everything which will ever happen or  appear to me for all time. And it would not be prevented, and would still happen to me,  even if everything outside me were destroyed, so long as there remained only God and  me.” – G. W. Leibniz – Discourse on Metaphysics

According to Leibniz’ concepts, causality in the most broadest sense is unfounded and cannot be determined since potential and history are contained within the subject at the most fundamental level.  The fact that there is unity in the “action” of monads and order in the world can only be explained by the will of God (the Infinite) to create a harmonious universe, according to Leibniz.  As stated earlier that each of us (the finite) strive towards unity with the infinite, Leibniz expresses this concept within his monads as each having properties of the infinite whole.

Back to the world of science, as briefly mentioned previously modern particle theories also fit in nicely with Leibniz and provide good conceptualization as to the complexity of the infinite.  Particle theory remains a long way from fully explaining the infinite and the relationship between the finite and the infinite and leaves a whole lot of unanswered questions.  Particle theory leaves a lot of questions unanswered within the context of the theory.  That is what theories are, by definition they are backed with facts but not all the facts.  According to particle theory, subatomic particles are thought to be the simplest bits of matter, and behave very oddly at the miniscule spectrum of quantum mechanics.  Perhaps they behave so oddly at these miniscule levels because they contain fundamental causality, as Leibniz described in his monads.  According to the standard particle model, all of reality is composed of six types of quarks and six types of leptons which will interact differently with each other according to how the four types of forces are applied.  The four forces are strong, electromagnetic, weak, and gravity.  However, as said, these four forces do not explain the extremely odd behaviors of the particles.  For example, the lepton type known as a muon “spontaneously disintegrates” into an electron.  Exactly what forces are at work here are obviously unknown.  Yet nuclear physicists remain unfazed and continue along the trailblazing path created by previous generations of nuclear physicists in an attempt to understand the incomprehensible. 

Causality again comes up within quantum physics.  According to particle theory, for every tiniest bit of matter or particle, there is an opposite bit called antimatter or an antiparticle.  Within this concept we can contemplate causality once again and see there is no ultimate causality – matter does not cause antimatter and neither does antimatter cause matter.  Yet, somehow all these tiniest bits of matter, and tiniest bits of antimatter, make up a whole, the infinite…and somehow all these tiny bits, with their interactions and interrelationships have aspects of the whole, the infinite.  Once again, we can see that even on the most fundamental level, there is a striving towards the infinite. 

Interesting concepts about the infinite have also been expressed by commentators within a religious context.  Blaise Pascal, the French physicist and philosopher, also had some interesting ideas about God implying the infinite and we, in our finite nature, cannot possibly comprehend the infinite nature of God, yet we strive to do so.   

            “If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having neither parts nor  limits,   He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is” – Blaise Pascal – Pensées

It is quite interesting to see science, philosophy, and religion conceptualizing so similarly on such a fundamental level.  It’s not only religious thinkers from the Western world with these conceptualizations, either.  Even more remarkably some 2500 years ago the Indian teacher Pakudha Kaccāyana taught that there were fundamental bits of matter and fundamental forces that influenced matter.  For Kaccāyana, the most fundamental bits of finite matter were seven “substances” – earth, water, fire, air, joy, sorrow, and life.  Interestingly enough, relating these ancient teachings to modern particle theory, Kaccāyana’s “substances” could be grouped as bits of matter – earth, water, fire, air, and as “forces” – joy, sorrow, and life.  Kaccāyana did state that these seven states of matter never alter, never change and are incapable of causality – once again we have the concept of no beginning and no end and we have a record of mankind striving to contemplate the infinite over 2500 years ago.

No matter the path taken towards the infinite, it seems the goal is uniform in its nature somehow.  Mathematical solutions, philosophical solutions, scientific solutions all are congruent on the most fundamental level.  Individuals must find their own paths towards the infinite, and those paths vary greatly, as we can see. Individuals on the path to understand the infinite may not work through detailed mathematical equations or contemplate broad philosophical concepts or study quantum physics but, in each their own way aspects of the infinite are grasped.

Inspiration can come from many sources.  Perhaps it can come from a camping trip in a solitary location or from words spoken by one who has a higher understanding of the infinite like a pastor or a yogi or a wise elder relative.  Perhaps encouragement along the individual path can come from the situation of another – a near death experience, or a triumph in the face of adversity, for example.  Inspiration to know the unknowable can come from many sources and this inspiration, in itself, furthers one along the individual path.  Understanding comes in small steps that are immense advancements.  All steps taken are quantum leaps forward from where the individual had been in their quest before.  Seeking out these sources of inspiration and staying on the path to wisdom and knowledge will keep one on the path to the unattainable in an interminable quest.

It is obvious this separation from the infinite makes us strive towards it.  As thinking, rational, aware beings striving towards the infinite nature that is within us all is a natural tendency.  We can sense it within ourselves, yet we can never know the true meaning within our limited capability to understand.  Since we all work individually to grasp the unknowable as a whole the human race makes a collective effort to understand the infinite.  Proof of this lies in the steps mankind has made throughout history in his ability to understand the nature of things that were previously incomprehensible.  Newton, Dedekind, Leibniz, and the quantum theorists all provide human examples of these immeasurable leaps in knowledge for the collective human race. 

You can see an expanded lens on Infinity at my squiddo page.