Conversations with Juan Part 3 Cont'd
Hey folks.
Sorry for the delay, but my Internet access at home has been down for some time now. Anyhow, here are my continued responses to your e-mail, Juan.
Juan: I'd say that our subjectivity is related to our individuality, we are always biased. So then to dissolve into God, we lose our individuality and our bias. We are no longer able to cognate. Perhaps we cognate in that we always choose not to smoke cigarettes, but to never ever falter is never to know, never to know why--becoming God is the same as resigning our will to that of God.
Patch: I would agree with that train of thought. See my thoughts on individuality and God in the previous part of this conversation.
Juan: So is God biased? (Maybe that is a more direct question, although maybe it sounds like a strange one.) Perhaps in that God favors/is biased towards good deeds, and does not look on with neutral judgement. But those other deeds, bad deeds, are still there and not disallowed though they may be punishable, perhaps we are the ones expected to use our subjectivity to reason on the side of right, and God maintains a state of objectivity.
Patch: I would say that this is entirely possible. The slightly terrifying thing about free will is that God wants us to encounter or dare I even say commit bad deeds in order to illustrate what is good.
Juan: I'm kind of glossing over a lot of the details of what has brought me to this idea, but to me, one reason I am agnostic is that if God is everything, not separable from things, but part of them, God IS these things... then God is not an "individual" (in the sense of being a member or part), and cannot see or concieve of what God is. God is trapped floating in space without a mirror to gain self-awareness, and yet the existence of a mirror, of something else, anything else, denies God from "everythingness"--from being the ultimate creator.
Patch: I can see why this would lead to your thoughts, Juan, and I confess that these thoughts often also run through my own mind; however, as I have mentioned before, I must always remember that God is beyond my cognition. While representation and the availability of a "mirror" in which to see myself are both ways that I personally understand self-awareness, I believe that these are finite forms of self-awareness; largely because I am a finite being. If God exists on an infinite level, then He may exist beyond our own understandings of self-awareness.
Juan: I'm imagining this all sounds a little strange or perhaps besides the point, as you said Patch, you're more focused on the present. Indeed, I believe I'm also focused on the present, and I'm very concerned with the way we live our lives, that there be a harmony. But to have a belief or philosophy about God and/or existence necessarily demands an opinion about the atemporal/eternal, a meaning that goes beyond our senses.
Patch: I wholeheartedly agree.
Juan: I've been thinking a lot about the idea of transcendence the last few years; it's a been recurring theme in things I've been writing. I keep coming to this conclusion that transcendence is about dissolution of the individual, but this perspective of all-seeingness or omnipresence cannot be achieved without also being blinded by it. Or blinded is not the right word, perhaps revealed the oneness that unifies everything and rejects its divisibility. I should think of an analogy for this.
Patch: I think that would be very helpful to both you and I.
Juan: I guess one kind of response for this is that God achieves precisely that which we cannot conceive. I honestly don't know, but I believe this is not about powers, or time, or energy, it is about perspective which is not something that is chosen but something that simply describes a state, it is the nature of something.But in this idea of transcendence I get confused when I try to deal with free will and the bridge between the material and immaterial-- transcendence is like crossing a mirror of that bridge.
Patch: Again, I wholeheartedly agree.
Juan: I hope this explains some of my thoughts and has kept this dialogue relevant. Ifeel like my thoughts are pretty mixed up, I've been trying to work out a way of organizing them. I've offered up more responses than questions this time, but maybe I will put forth a couple more in another message.
Patch: More questions would be much appreciated, Juan, and I also appreciate your willingness to hash out your "confused" thoughts with me. I am more than open to it. Perhaps I may present a question to you:
What do you find to be disappointing or perhaps wrong about a God who is not necessarily an individual in the way that we understand individuals?
4 Comments:
Juan: I'm kind of glossing over a lot of the details of what has brought me to this idea, but to me, one reason I am agnostic is that if God is everything, not separable from things, but part of them, God IS these things... then God is not an "individual" (in the sense of being a member or part), and cannot see or concieve of what God is. God is trapped floating in space without a mirror to gain self-awareness, and yet the existence of a mirror, of something else, anything else, denies God from "everythingness"--from being the ultimate creator.
Hubert: Actually, what you describe when you say, "God is everything, not separable from things, but part of them, God IS these things," is closer to pantheism than it is to the Christian view of God. In the Christian view, God is separate from everything else in the exact same way that I am separate from everything that I have created.
Hey Patch, sorry I haven't gotten back to you yet. I've been overloaded with some stuff and I'm in the process of moving.
Hopefully I'll be able to give you a full response sometime in the next few weeks.
As a quick response to Hubert's comment, I present the following:
I think Hubert's comment probably exposes more of my ignorance of some facets of Christian philosophy. What I may be describing as a God who IS everything, does sound pantheistic to me, and yet I phrased it as such because that seemed to me the only way to explain some of the characteristics of the God in the Christian sense as I understand it (which very well may be flawed or incomplete).
Which is to say, that if God is both all-knowing (meaning all the time and everywhere sensing its creation) and all-effecting (meaning able to and often does influence that creation, certainly in any way that God imagines, and not necessarily what we as humans can imagine) then I don't see how this cannot describe a God that effectively IS everything, perhaps not by definition (as in pantheism) but perhaps just as a result of being what it is.
Perhaps an analogy is a single cell, which is able to sense parts of itself and control parts of itself. The more completely it senses and controls itself, and also has nothing else to act on or sense but itself, in turn the more it is at a loss for any reason to do anything, it becomes lost in itself. Being a whole organism, each part intertwined and interdependent, and unable to divide itself into separably understandable parts (it has no separate selves, only one self) it can derive no meaning from its otherwise apparent divisibility. Its self is only understood through its wholeness not through it divisibilty.
That probably has some holes in it, as usual I'm just making this up as i go along, but that's how I conceive of it.
So basically what I was trying to describe in the message is that precisely through this "all-knowingness" and "all-effectingness" that God effectively loses both. The mirror wraps around God.
While God is omnipotent and able to control everything, and He does sometimes, I think that He very often does not. Rather, He usually allows things to run their own course. For instance, He allows humans to make their own choices about whether to do "good" or "bad", and He allows us to face the consequences of our actions. If God did control us completely, there would be no evil in this world. And our actions and "choices" would also be completely meaningless, since it would not be our own actions, but God's actions through us.
I think that you may be right, that if God did control us completely, then we would, in a sense, be a part of God. Much like a skilled musician often considers their musical instrument to be an extension of their own body.
But I don't think that God does control us, or that He wants to control us.
When Christians say that God is all-powerful, we do not mean that God controls everything, but rather that there is no limit to what He can do. Much like the fact that I am capable of controlling a pet dog by, for example, forcibly moving its limbs, or dragging it where I want it to go, doesn't mean that I would actually do that.
Yes, God is able, if He wanted to, to control my every action. But He doesn't, because He wants to give us a choice. Because without choice, my actions can neither be "good" nor "bad", because they would not be my own actions. Just like you can't describe the actions of a doll or a puppet as being "good" or "bad", because they are not its own actions.
Of course, I should add my disclaimer that I don't claim to know everything about God, nor do I think I will ever be able to. God is infinite, and doesn't fit into my finite mind. Of course, that doesn't mean that I don't try to understand God as best I can. But no matter how hard I try, I know that there will always be some things about God that I just can't understand.
I love discussing these things with people, because it helps me to think through things more clearly, and it challenges me reexamine my beliefs. (Is this really what I believe? Why?) But I know that there will always be some things that I just won't be able to understand about God, because God is too big for me to be able to understand.
By the way, Patch himself is probably pretty busy with some major changes in his life too, which I'm sure he'll post on eventually...
Lol, yes, and I just certainly did post on those big changes.
I agree with much of what has been said and discussed here. I think you guys are hashing out the question in some great detail.
I might add some agreement with our ability to comprehend the ubiquitous and omniscient nature of God. We can only comprehend and observe reality within a finite scape. A consequence of our finite physical embodiment is our requirement to see ourselves through representation (the mirror, as Juan refers to it). I am fully prepared to accept the possibility that God exists beyond representation; that He is The Representation from which we all derive our being (ie. He created us in His image, etc.).
Therefore, it is theologically possible that God does not require representation in order to understand His own existence.
Post a Comment
<< Home