Part 2 - God's Nature In Human Terms

Science, Speculation and Reason
CopyRight @ 2004

So what does God look like in human terms? What can we comprehend about a super being or immortality? It is a question of what do we understand about humans and more. What do humans know or can reason about God? What does science, speculation and reason tell us of God? This is a description of God in human terms.

Be aware. You are not looking at a meme about God. You are looking at a meme about humans that necessarily reveals something about God, because there is a relationship between them. That's OK, but it also means that you have to buy into what the meme say about humans. That is my other work and is not so speculative. In that book, it says that based on biological science, humans will have to control their own evolution for reasons of basic survival. It does discuss the amazing potentials that genetic control would offer beyond avoiding some predictable fatal disasters that humans face, but it says that there is little to use to make value judgements about different available paths to take with genetic potentials. It says how to manage the dangers from the past and then develop enough wisdom to make some smart decisions about the future of humans. This view here is completely different. What I wrote before is simply a process, while in this view that includes God, it clearly says that the amazing genetic potential of humans is there because God wants us to do far more than survive. He wants some serious development; genetic, physical, philosophical, intellectual, psychological and spiritual.

Only faith can temper intelligence. Only God can temper ego.

An emminent, elderly English Biologist was asked "from your many years of studying life, what is does this tell you about it's creator"? His thoughtful reply was that "He has an amazing liking for Beetles". (This is poorly paraphrased.) This was in responce to the 40,000 species of Beetles, identified at the time. (It turned out that there were even more species of worms.)

Really, what does all this knowledge that humanity has gained over the years, tell us of God? From our past come many things, but what does science and the other bodies of human knowledge, tell us about God? It is obviously a presumptious question and certainly has been asked before, but it should be a valid question.

People read their Bible that tells them about their God. A great deal can be learned about God by looking at His works as well. Look at a tree. Look at the stars. This has been referred to as the Scripture of Nature. If God created the universe, on could get the impression that he writes his signature quite large.

Religion

It is quite unfashionable for the Western theologens to speculate much on the nature of God, because this got overdone in the middle ages and they don't want to go down that road again. By nature, religions are extremely conservative. Any Western religious view of God is going to be quite ancient and include that there are many things about God that are simply mysteries not meant to be known by mortal humans.

Is our concept of God changing over time or is it our understanding and development?

The Western religious view of God is so nebulous, vast and contradictory as to represent a mystery to humans. His nature is not understood. He is completely spiritual, omnipresent and eternal. These are concepts that are not currently understood. At the same time, the God of the Old and New Testements have attributes of very distinct human appearance. These have been called the Demanding and Vengeful God of the Old Testement and the God of Peace and Love of the New Testement.

Science

By its own definition, science currently does not include God as part of the existing body of knowledge that is science.

Speculative Science

Science is a descriprive and organizational form as well as an existing body of knowledge. A good deal of speculation about God has been put in that form.

The science and speculative fiction writers usually don't say much about God. They are mostly interested in describing human problems and solutions. Fictional Gods tend to trancend physical laws and limitations, but the story is more about the physical law or human potential than spiritual laws. Some have described humans creating mechanical Gods, but that probably does not apply here.

The main difference between Gods of the past and present are in the nature of psychology. Earlier Gods have always been described as individualists. Some current models have speculated about pluralities of conciousness.

If you look at the philosophy that is speculative fiction, there are at least two classic stories of interest. Childhood's End by Isacc Isamov and the Gaia concept of 90's science fiction (I especially like David Brin's version). The first was a story about a super conciousness of all humans on earth and perhaps beyond. The second concept has been used in a number of books and is a description of a super conciousness that is composed of the entire planetary biosphere and minerals. The issue of plurality of conciousness is usually left open by different versions of this model.

Please note here that this is not intended to be about Michael Polanyi's description that human evolution will lead to humans becoming Gods. That always seemed odd to me and those are human images of God. Humans do not presently even have a very deep understanding of physical reality let alone some other topics that I would expect a God to understand. My descriptions of human genetic and psychological potentials may be pretty fantastic, but they are still extremely limited compared to Gods. Not that that matters that much anyway. There are many humans that already believe they are Gods.

Reason

There is a bias here that should be mentioned. It turns out that in the end, this does not effect the conclusions of this book much. That is just the world view I have being raised to as a Western Christian. This will bias how I say and describe things, but not the conclusions because reason is mostly independant in this case.

Another point is that God created everything. It raises the point of why. If God has a purpose, does that increase God? The more the physicists study the universe, the more they see a place in it for conciousness. The universe is an unlikely place in that it seems designed for life. If the universe were much different, life would likely not exist.Time and space seem related to conciousness. Who knows what rules dominate the astrophysics of the universe and keep the stars aligned as they should be. It is said that God created the universe and life. These days it would not seem unlikely that the event that is called the Big Bang that created the universe, would be effected by the will of a conciousness.

That humans are created in 'his' image says that there is a relationship between Gods and humans. Up to this point, this has only looked at God and humans as a one way street, but it seems reasonable (reason is respected by most religions, including Christianity) that humans fulfill some intent of God. That is why God created everything. The question again is why.
So if humans were created in the image of God, Does God look like us? This question has been asked before, but not usually in a useful way. It usually goes like this. Does God look like John Wayne or Indira Ghandi? Humans have an incredible variation in physical appearance, so who does God look like? It's really a silly view of the question. What the question should really be is do humans resemble God physically, psychologically or spiritually?
Humans are a product of evolution. If God is anything like humans in a physical sense, then God is a product of evolution. Perhaps evolution long before this universe existed, but still evolution. That would be a fair amount of information.
Are humans psychologically related to God? Of what we know about human and non-human psychology, what characteristics might God have? Most importantly, is God a plurality of conciousness, like humans and are memes a language of God?
Are humans spiritually related to God? What is this spiritual for that matter? This is something humans have little useful knowledge of, but considering the limitations on human experience and knowledge, that might not be a big surprise. The spiritual is described as a non-physical aspect of conciousness and identity. In terms of human limitations, a knowedge of the spiritual and possibly a way to manipulate it would define someone as a super-being.
Another thing to consider in thinking about God is the small amount of modern conjecture that is available. Some writers have talked about machines that might as well be called Gods, but again, they are reflections of human Gods with great physical power as well as artificial wisdom. Compare those to the concept of Gaia, a planetary conciousness discussed in some speculative writing and we see thoughts about a psychologically advanced being. That is where a discussion of a super-being or super-conciousness seems to focus. Not surprisingly, it's mostly beyond current human knowledge and perhaps current understanding, but it is something.

What is currently known about human psychology and neuroscience that reflects on this topic? We know that the human brain is a bit like a computer and multitasks as well as multi-processes. Looking at the human mind in comparisson to a computer is interesting. We have echoic hearing and icoic vision. Basically this means that a lot of the data that comes into the eyes and ears are processed by nerves located there. The processed information is then passed on to the 'brain' for integration. This is why a person may hear something well after (perhaps 5 seconds) the sound reaches the ear. This is a great example of multi-processing.
Humans can multi-task, but are limited at it. You cannot focus on your hearing at the same time you are focusing on what you are seeing. You have to switch back and forth, but echoic (and icoic memory acts like buffers, so you can go back and look at what was heard while you were focusing on looking at something.
The more interesting part would be about the plurality of human conciousness. Researchers have found that the human personality and conciousness does not act like a singularity. We have opposing opinions. Humans may act with multiple goals and the goals may even be contradictory or conflictive. That can lead even to pathology if there is too much conflict, but that is unusual and apparently is the price of the diversity and adaptability required.
Note that with these characteristics, the human mind is more like a computer network with multiple processors than it is like a single computer. The interesting question is how is it organized and how are the different conciousnesses resolved?

So how does this reflect on God, is she is related to humans in these ways? A reasonable assumption made here is that God has a great knowledge of memes and an ability to manipulate them.

What would it look like if God were added as part of the meme that is this book about morality? God fits more than perfectly. God fills large holes in the morality that has been presented so far in this book. That tells something.

We are not as an ant to God. We are as a child to an adult. In a child is much of the parent.
Michael Polanyi said that we were evolving to become God. Knowing what I know of biological evolution, I didn't think much of the idea at the time, but what if we are evolving spiritually to God? We don't know any of the rules of spirituality let alone memes... let alone if spirituality exists.

Biological evolution is the most elegant solution to a large probem. How to make a self maintaining system that also develops.

Love What is this love thing anyway? We call it an emotion, but we can also call it a learned behavior, a genetically based behavior, a meme, a strategy and a number of other terms refering to very different and important things.
Isn't it amazing that love has largely replaced the, to all appearances, efficient practice of arranged marriages. That is notable. Love seems to provide something important.
I have heard platitudes such as "God is Love" for a long time. It seems that every time I examine platitudes like that, I find a deep truth revealed. Is God partly the meme of love and what is it then and what is so special about it? Love has an amazing number of different, powerful meanings.

Part 3 - God From God's Point Of View

Science is used daily to kill God, but it really illustrates a weakness of science that goes with its strength. The strength of science is that science is the body of knowledge that the institution of science has examined by its tough standards for proof and judged to be truth. Up to now at least, those strict standards of proof have never been met. Science has nothing to say about God. Nothing that is science describes God, except perhaps human perceptions of God discussed in Anthropology. When someone says that they can use science to prove God doesn't exist, they are really saying that scientific methods including logic, cannot be used to prove that God exists.

It is easy to prove God doesn't esist, in many different ways, but that doesn't mean that you can't still feel God.

This is a study of humanity, written in a form to convey an idea. It talks all about science, evolution, technology, language, beliefs, institutions and whatnot to describe human survival. This book is not science, but it uses the methodologies and knowledge of science to organize the description, though its content is as much reason as science. Well, most of a human is amenible to a scientific description. What about describing God though? The anthropologists can give you a lot of meanings through history and cultures. What would God look like? A lot of people figure that the first problem is to prove the existance of God. That is what people used to say about ancient tales like the Illiad and the Oddysey. They were assumed to be false instead of examined for truth. What if you take the Holy Books of the world and look at them literally. Most of the Bible is considered by historians to be the historically accurate story of some of the history of the middle east. These ancient stories have staying power not just because of the sacred things in them, but also because they are a history of a people. Unfortunately, very little about God is known. By any standards, a God would qualify as a super being. That is something that science does not usually discuss except in human terms.
There is a fair amount of reasoning in this book, mostly based on good scientific work done by smart people. It explains most of what is needed for human survival in terms of science. This foundation looks complete, but there appears to be another subtle part that has not been described. That is God. There is a lot about the how of humans, how humans can survive, but little about the why. Why are we here? Why do we do what we do? In human psychological terms, the why is God.

God has always been defined in terms of people. God may or may not have an interest in people. We might be completely a by product of God's actions. It doesn't seem likely for a number of reasons.
So what do we know about God? You have to take into account a lot of things to describe God. Perhaps too many things.
I am more comfortable with science as a philosophy to use, but to describe this, it seems I will have to use other methods, primarily personal experience, reason, history and perhaps something else. I'm afraid that the only way to explain this is by describing it in order.
If you asked me where I got the ideas in this book, I'd have to say that I think they came from God.


I don't end up particularly religious, but I do remember what created this book. I would have still been 13 and I got quite annoyed at an event that I couldn't understand. I said to myself that I would give anything to understand. It was like somebody said "ok" and that was the start of this book. I've understood all of this since then. The problem was putting it into words. It was the core of a meme that needed flesh. This book is its flesh. Well, this has always left me in a quandry. How could I have come to know this? I have always studied science and relied on reason. Those are easy ways of knowing. I have learned other ways as well that offer things that science does not include. For me there is a fair reason to believe based on personal experience and logic that God gave me the core of this meme when I was 13. That raises a lot of questions and tends to leave the body of science behind, if not all the tools. So leaving science behind I must use new methods to describe what I learned.

I should say that what happened when I was 13 happened under memorable circumstances, but didn't impress me all that much. It had no portent, but I have unusual abilities and they were being turned and fed by the thought I had at that moment. That thought was complete. There was just no way to express or understand it at the time. That was the goal. What other people were doing made no sense to me. I was starting to focus inward. I was working on the project of answering the question I had asked. It was the time too. This was the 70's. A special period of great hopes and philosophical turbulance. A time of science and Apollo. It was an unhibited time, at its freshest point. It was a time that created much great thought, music and art. There was nothing to inhibit me and everything to push my thinking along. My large size made my distraction physically harmless. A couple of my teachers in High School, especially Lynn Ikoma, inspired me with fundemental knowledge, including genetics and astrophysics, that was just coming on line. I was looking for the parts that would fill in the basic meme I was working on. I had said to myself that I wanted to understand humans.

This becomes circular as these things do. I have always been skeptical. In adolescence I once asked a priest why I should believe in God. He did not answer well. Some of my friends were fundementalist Christians and their views didn't make much sense to me, but I liked one of their ideas. There is this powerful, wise, personal God that is aware of you and cares for you. He also embodies a higher purpose for humans. What a great thing. They were not enough to convince me of their beliefs though. I come from a family where talking to God is just considered an occasional bad habit some of the the guys mentioned. I was busy persuing knowledge that mostly came from science. There are two ideas of how problems get solved. Some are solved by figuring and calculating. The hard problems are solved heuristically. That is when one falls in love with the question or you can just call it fanaticism. I'm afraid I was there. I baffled people and drove them crazy with the energy of the fanatic. I had a great independant understanding of humans and could predict what genetic patterns would be before the quickly advancing field of genetics could, but I did it by reason based on evolutionary principles instead of experimentation. I learned a lot, but no one could quite figure what it was about. After about 25 years I was satisfied with the physical and genetic aspects of human ecology. It was time to tackle the psychological aspects of survival called morality. Then God becomes more of an issue.

I am an honest observer and as such I see things and am told things. I knew a lot about the physical aspects of humans, but knew that there were a lot of things that science had not questioned, let alone described. I had a long way to go to get an understanding of the significance and nature of morality. In this time, I repeatedly wondered about God as people do. There is a whole large spiritual issue that science has no information about.
Instead of trying to prove that God doesn't exist, as science superficially suggests, I tried to see if I could prove God exists some way. I didn't find that proof in religion. Religion has never bothered with proof for a number of reasons including that any proof they offered would be a lightning rod. Still, it is in the scriptures of Holy Books that there are some comments about God's and human nature.

I talked to a lot of people and was told a lot of things. While many things I was told had spiritual connotations, I could make little out of it that I could make sense of. My background is Catholic. When I think about it, the age boggles me. I understand religion. I understand why it is so overwhelmingly conservative. It doesn't make me any happier.
The One God of the Christians, Muslims and Jews.
Hinduism with it's variety of Gods.
Paganism where many or all things animate and inanimate have concious spiritual nature.
Buddhism, which I still have trouble understanding.

I really like some of the teachings of the Philosopher Michael Polanyi. He had brilliant discussions about Tacit Knowing and Heuristic Knowledge. Another point of his was that he was convinced that humans were evolving to become gods. Well, that point got me to scratching my head. I am very oriented towards biological evolution and didn't think that biological evolution led to a god of any kind. It was an interesting hypothesis, I guess, but it is not surprising that I saw no overlap between biology and religion. There are others that hypothesized that we were evolving towards something, rather from something, but that is not what biological evolution as a science suggests.
So with that thought, why could humans not work to learn something about spirituality that could allow humans to create a super conciousness? I don't mean now or something that you or I could concieve of, but something that our descendants can find. Is it something hidden in love?Is that part of an ecology that humans can develop? More importantly, is it a survival method, perhaps in some ecology of conciousness? It would allow for extreme cooperation. This almost becomes ideology, but there is reason to think it is more than that. It is also more than current knowledge suggests we will need for survival. So why persue this line of reasoning that goes beyond energetic, reproductive and moral strategies? Because careful examination suggests that this entire idea about genetics, morality, etc. that I have written about was based on a meme I was given by someone else back when I was 14. I think that was God, but that really complicates things. There is ample reason to persue that thought though. Then you can ask some really interesting questions and find some fascinating thoughts in ancient texts and elsewhere. There is a relationship between God and Humans. Is it Utilitarianism, but for God's purposes?But that gets complicated and is not part of this essay. That discussion is in the outer layers.

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