The very first question is ... (Main Forum)

by Brian Coyne , LINDEN, NSW, Tuesday, June 05, 2012, 11:44 (348 days ago) @ Enda

Thanks to all of you for the contributions to what is a fabulous conversation.

My own sense is that "God is not dead" in the sense that Friedrich Nietzsche suggested he/she/it was, nor in the sense that can be inferred from Francis Fukuyama's suggestions in "The End of History". I think of the proposition via two windows...

Firstly I think fundamentalism is far from dead in the world. There will always be a remnant who need a concept of an "intervening God" they can pray to to cure their bunyons and cancers and who they believe will do their bidding in other ways just provided they continue to offer the correct sacrifices and incantations. In a sense God didn't invent God but humankind needed to invent God as a means of dealing with our human insecurities. That seems embedded deep down in the human psyche. We need security and certitude in our lives almost as much as we need food and water each day in order to survive. [See Abraham Maslow's "Hierarchy of Needs" Wikipedia.]

Secondly, and I'd argue more importantly, I sense there are other, and deeper (if that is possible), reasons why there is a need for "God" in the soul of humankind. I suspect this is the sort of "God" Carl Jung might be referring to or, for that matter, Gregory of Nyssa, in the quote I referred to a few times in this string.

The "fundamentalist God" is a God who, in a sense, is made in our image. The "Jungian/Gregory of Nyssa 'God'" is more the one who is an aspiration or manifestation [I'm not sure that is precisely the correct word] of the human dream of perfection. This "God" is not made in our image (especially our insecurities and need for certitude) but is some concept or visualisation of the "perfection" we aspire to in our behaviours, in the behaviours of humankind generally (our neighbours and enemies), and in the perfection of the whole of Creation itself — the perfection of the Cosmos. When in our theologies we speak of ourselves being made "in the image and likeness of God" I sense it is this "Jungian/Gregory of Nyssa 'God'" that we are referring to, not the "God" of religious fundamentalism.

When I hear atheists such as Richard Dawkins rail against religion and belief in a "God" my sense is that the "God" they are railing against is the "God" of fundamentalism not this sense of perfection, or wholeness, that humanity and Creation aspires to. My own sense, and despite the small statistical rise in the number of people in the world who would claim to be "atheistic", is that I don't expect in another four or five hundred year's time our world will be atheistic. Conversations like the one we are presently having will still be going on trying to discern what, or who, we aspire to be, and what form of ideal society humanity is trying to build.

Why I think this question I've posed — "If we had to start all over again, what would be our concept of 'God'?" — is important is that I think it would help if we identify the best sort of God we ought believe in.

Complicating everything I suspect is that lived life isn't quite as simple as I've outlined it here — basically into three categories of: a fundamentalist 'God'; this 'concept of perfection or an aspirational God' of what we aspire to be and what we aspire society and civilisation to be in its "perfect" state; and atheism. The reality we all have to contend with is that within each one of us there's a bit of the fundamentalist, the perfectionist and the atheist!

Brian Coyne
[Editor & Publisher]