I’ve started reading Rene Descartes and I’m intrigued by his idea of “god”.
Descartes is famous for his " I think there for I am." He doubted everything in life to such a degree that he believed the only thing he knew for sure was that when he was thinking then he existed. However, the second thing he deduced is that he knew this world he existed in, real or demonic deception, was imperfect by virtue of the fact that he can doubt it exists. So he knows he exists while thinking and has a conception of imperfections therefore perfection exists and the idea was given to him.
This perfection is god.
God is perfect in all ways. They are beyond deception because a perfect being wouldn’t need to lie, their reason alone for you needing to believe something is enough.
And to me that’s an interesting conception of god. Its a lot more sterile than the normal Christian stance that god is Love which has a emotionally textured connotation. It positions god as having feelings with which we can relate as opposed to Descartes perfection that is simply beyond our reasoning but also (conveniently) not malicious.
As an atheist, god as love makes more sense. God is the feeling of communal love that comes with a religion. People who care for each other for no reason other than because they’re in the same community has always been beautiful to me. God as mislabeled inclusion and comradely behavior males perfect sense.
What is your god or gods like?
Whether or not god is real isn’t really what I’m asking about.
I don’t believe there is a literal god, but there is are real feelings that we have all mistaken for god.
For me god is both the sublime feeling I get while hiking or meditating and the feeling I get from being part of a community. It is a feeling of bliss and awe that I can clearly see how someone would mistake that for god. For Descartes, god was the elusive concept of perfection that enables him to doubt the imperfect. For many with a religion, god is simply love. Satanists focus on the higher self as a god. Alcoholics Anonymous view god as just something to strive for as well.
God is a concept with a lot of spiritual or emotional connotations, and I find how people interpret this “god” fascinating.
My answer is the concept itself is like a curse that forces humanity to follow a pathway where God is always a part of the history and conversation. Influences in a way that you have no idea. Always negatively consequential to the majority of humanity.
It’s one of our earliest ideas and has been proscribed so broadly that I think it’s an up-wall battle trying to abandon the concept as a whole.
“Always” and “the majority” are problematic word choices here. I know where you’re coming from, but I can’t agree with this. I’d even be wiling to say that a majority of humans who’ve ever lived have found some comfort in the ideas of a god than have suffered because of the concept. I’m not denying that attrocities have been committed in the name of a god, but they have been committed in the name of secular progress as well often while claiming it was for a god.