Monday, July 2, 2007

God The Noun

In my last blog post, I stated that I don't think highly of God-the-Noun, e.g. Theism, that nasty bit of obfuscation from Aquinas and the Scholastics, perpetuated by Descartes, Leibniz and Kant, slightly modified by Newton and still clung to by people around the world.

I stand by this, but feel I should elaborate. It's not that I don't believe in that God, it's that I know, for a fact, that God couched in those terms is logically impossible. But God-the-Noun does, in fact, exist in three senses:
  1. A placeholder word for the individual's interaction with the numinous/pleroma, genuine religious experiences.

  2. A collection of transpersonal cognitive and behavioral patterns across a given social system.

  3. A semi-sentient memetic organism, a cultural construct.

In these senses, God of course exists. I don't see how anyone could deny it, though reductionist materialists of course try their damndest to reduce everything to the God-the-Quark.

As the Universe's Final Ordering Principle? Disproven. Next.

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