Theology

In speaking of God or gods, religions are all talking about the same thing, but have different understandings of It.  Characteristics traditionally attributed to God are qualified truths. 

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People created the concept of gods in order to denote or personify what they were encountering.  They gave them names or imagined likenesses or associated them with other finite things.  Eventually some of them became so proud of their gods that in a supreme act of one-upsmanship they claimed the other gods didn't exist, theirs was the only God.  How right they were in a sense.   But making this God proprietary is just as idolatrous as confining It to a name or likeness.   To identify a vision of God and distinguish it from others, often ancients would reference what tradition their "God" came from, who they know of this God from.  But a better way is to reference characteristics.  Not likeness or  magic words, but ways of doing and being.  Some of the ideas that have commonly become associated with God are near the mark, so that's how we can know I'm talking about the same God, but I think I have a clearer vision of what those characteristics may entail.  

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God is all powerful, in that God creates all that can be as soon as it can be, so this is not just potential power but manifest power.  Yet God does not have the power to self-contradict.  

 

Modernly the consensus seems to be that God is omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent, and incorporeal.  In his book "God the Invisible King," H.G. Wells postulated that God can exist and be moral only by being less than omnipotent--the king of our hearts, not of the world.    That can't be God with the big G.  You can postulate such a thing, but let's keep terms straight.   The God I'm referring to as the commonly reported one is omnipotent.  But the omnipotence usually conceived of for God is not true omnipotence, just unlimited potential.  The power to do anything, but not the power to do everything.  To be truly all powerful, God must actually do everything.  One up.   God actually could self contradict and has, but that stuff wiped itself out.  So everything else is still around.  Everything.  

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God cannot refrain from creation, but that is true only because God, being both emergent from and identical with the primal infinitude of reality and the will to existence, naturally chooses not to refrain from creation.  Everything must be created, without reservation. 

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They say God has "infinite attributes" but that's not enough.  God is infinity itself.  God is infinity and the infinitude of infinity and the infinite implications of infinitude.   Not just a being with infinite attributes.  There is nothing beyond God and God is beyond nothing, for all possibility and God are one--but not really just that, for what God is really is the necessity for all to be.  So It doesn't "want" to stop, to put it in more anthropomorphic terms (for fear of being thought a heathen).  

 

This limitation means that God, despite having infinite power, must use that power efficiently because efficiency maximizes creation. 

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Infinity is never complete, so existence never stops growing.  God did not just create, past tense, God creates constantly, for God is creation, the necessity of creation.  Though the end of infinity is both unattainable and constantly being attained (for an infinitely small moment), God wants a faster rate of creation.  Even knowing the end will never be attained, only approached, ever greater rates of approach are compulsory.  Greater rates of creation are only achievable with greater efficiency of creation: with creation of that which creates.  Now to be clear, I'm talking about creation rates on huge scales of enormous batches of cosmoses in vast numbers of invisible dimensions.  So, it's empirical.  (<--joke).  Really this is just backstory so it doesn't matter.  But It does appear on our level.  Probability distortions nudge the flow of history toward more profound future transformations of our universe--which affects the cosmic plan, albeit minutely.

 

This is important to understanding God’s traditional benevolence.  God values purposeful intelligence because it transforms minor probability distortions into much greater works in the world. 

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God increases the rate of creation constantly by making synchronicity.  Organized intelligent beings with technology are like leverage.  We take tiny synchronicities and magnify them into great works.  A king can hear a whisper and move  a mountain.  Especially if his minions have tractor beams.  This is more efficient than deadlifting with innumerable  or highly unlikely miracles.  It takes less probability distortion, and that's good because  probability distortion has side effects that are a drag on the rate of creation.   

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God likes people, generally, because on the whole we tend to respond to God's nudging by doing things effectively. Use of us is efficient, and thus creates more creation. 

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So God likes people, or rather "sapient" beings.  I won't say "sentient" because that just means "sensing."  A thermostat is sentient.  Some people theorize everything is conscious,  but I think that's going too far.  Everything does sense.  There's nothing mystical about it.  Being affected is sensing.  A rock senses to the extent it is affected by being kicked, and it is affected a little.  But what is meaningful is the meaning.  How much more is made of that sensation?  It goes no farther than the direct effects, there's no chain reaction.  So let's use the term "sapient" as an adjective for beings that magnify input above some negotiable level of efficiency.   Sapient beings understand somehow, they take meaning from input and produce more output.   They are like a fusion power plant that exceeds break even.  God likes sapience and sapient beings and thus God tries to make them more powerful and more sensitive and more numerous and more widespread.  And more sapient.  Is that "love"?  It's a judgment call.  Let's call it "favor."  But we can work with it.  

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But this caring for people generally is not infinite love for each individual.  Such a thing is impossible because people can be detrimental to each other and to God's plans for the future. 

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God doesn't love you.  I talked about that in the ad.  It has a mission for us, but It doesn't love you as an individual.  There are superior hypotheticals in which God does love you infinitely, and I can't compete with them, because all I've got is the ugly truth.  But it could be worse.  We've got a chance.  We've got a situation we can work with if we understand and address it correctly.

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Theoretically, God could love us by wanting us to create a situation in which our interests are not in zero sum conflict.  This  is usually seen as people loving each other and giving up ambition.  It can also be attained by us getting perspective and seeing we are all working on the same team.  Doing what's right for the common good is win win, so no altruism is necessary.  And in fact we can create such a situation and God wants us to.  So you could even say part of our mission is to do things a loving God would want us to do.  But that's a coincidental side effect.  God doesn't love you or me or want us to love each other.  God finds us useful and wants us to work together.  

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So, we see evil existing, despite an intelligent all powerful and humanity favoring creator, because due to the necessity of infinity the world perforce had to be created with initial imperfections which we exist to help with correcting. 

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Evil exists because the world is imperfect.  All possible worlds were created and many of them are very imperfect.  Mostly this takes the form of rocks in distant galaxies not being computers running artificial general intelligences.  The cure for that is human progress.  But also there are thwarts to human progress.   Overcoming those thwarts necessitates further lesser evils on God's part.  Since the present is finite and the future is infinite our results are all that matters, for God.  We don't matter at all except as a means.  And that's not even wrong.  Infinite future...people...benefit from our suffering now, no matter how huge.  But if we are smart suffering isn't necessary.  We can make this all very win-win if we stop trying to extract personal favors.  

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You might reject my whole theory on the basis that by its own standards it doesn't have the glorious track record of traditional religions.  After all, look at the successes of religious societies.  You may offer the example of the superior success of the Christian world.   It only took 1400 years from this superior doctrine to get absolutely nowhere.   Medieval Europe is what Christianity does.   Other religions have also had improving effects.  Hellenistic paganism was very successful for a time and played a catalyzing role in producing some advancement.  Same with Tengrilism and Islam.  The wild success of the European originated strain of civilization in recent centuries was not a product of the strength of Christianity but of its weakness--similar to the way the rapid economic growth of America was catalyzed by corrupt government.  What does this tell us?  That corruption is beneficial?  Only relatively.  It tells us that overly strong power concentrations such as religion or government can become thwarts to progress, and when they start to weaken progress appears--progress that may not have happened had the restraint not existed to begin with.  At any rate, larger processes, mostly unrecognized, are at work and the success of the west is down to science not Christianity.  Or genetics, I guess I have to make that clear too.  But looking at the initial effect of religions I propose it's worth speculating whether religions haven't largely been an attempt to extract concessions from God by thwarting the progress God wants.   This is of course a foolish endeavor.  God will always win and use you in the process.   But perhaps harm is really done.   That's a question of whether we have free will, which is a whole other topic.  Free of what?  Does a temporarily backward moving part of a progressing car have an independent direction?  Depends on what system boundary diagram you consider.  Perhaps wrong religion has played a role in the imperfection of the world that has demanded necessary evils.  Pure speculation of course.    System boundaries are hypothetical except where effective.   At the end of the day it just comes down to this: we can do better and we need to start.  We will now start.  That's a fact.  And fast.  Not just yesterday.  Long ago.  

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The reason we don't find ourselves surrounded by perfection is because we exist in time, serving as part of how God makes the world better.

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Did I mention that God doesn't love you?  If an omnipotent God loved you then you would be Heaven and since it would be perfect it would never change so time would end.  So either this God who loves you is not omnipotent or else It doesn't love you.  Clearly we are not in Heaven and time is real.  Perhaps we could grow up and not whine about how our parents hate us because we didn't get a pony for Christmas just stupid school supplies.  

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