debunking God - a new theology

Now that entries have fallen to a rate of about one per month I guess each one has to be far more profound than the last. Since that's the case, tonight's discussion will be about God and the Bible and Christianity and all that good stuff.

Few things in this world are as divisive as Christianity and all the topics and issues falling under its blanket. Sure, Christianity is based on some principals that sound great: the 10 commandments generally make sense except for a few ones which are specific to the religion itself (ie, sabbath day holy, no Gods before me). On the other hand, once you delve into the Bible as a tenet of Christianity we enter a whole new realm of chaos where God is a walking contradiction. If God walked, that is.

So to start from the top, lets think of issues surrounding the Bible as a text. Obviously, there are lots of things happening in the Bible that simply can't happen in our world today, ruled by physics and other natural laws. So, the issue of interpretation rises to the surface immediately. Do we look at the Bible literally or do we look at it figuratively? Then comes the sub-issue: what if we look at it both ways? Which way do we choose for which passages?

Well lets start in Genesis. We open up the book and we get to the creation story. God makes the world and our tale is flowing linearly, when suddenly we rewind and there's a second creation story. Now, unless we want to open the door to all kinds of trans-dimensional, alternate reality, world-outside-of-time explanations for this, we need to pick a lens to read this through.

A literal reading is pretty much ruled out unless we open the door as I said before to all those crazy possibilities. So, I guess we're going figurative; this way we can accept both stories and boil them down to a small kernel of creativity that we can hold onto as we keep reading. Keep in mind though, we're officially starting to read the Bible off of the figurative foot, so to speak.

Most of the beginning plays out in a very rhetoric-heavy, open-to-figurative-analysis type fashion. But then we get to a couple biggies where many Christians take their view and revert it to a literal reading.

This switch comes about basically only for human sexuality and the bevy of issues under that umbrella. That, and any attempt to break away from a binary morality, and a monotheistic theology.

At this point, I think it's time to make a hit-list of points and questions that serious Christians need to evaluate and come to terms with before they call themselves Christians:

1. The Bible was written by a group of men in a civilization that barely bears resemblance to our own. What does this say about the 'Word of God' contained within it? How much of what is written was subjectively shaped and changed, if it did in fact come from God?

2. Everyone thinks of God automatically as an old wise man sitting on a cloud. Those who resist this idea are just being playful usually- this is probably because old wise men are by and large the protagonists in the Bible. When in the Bible it says that God fashioned us in His own image, did that come from God or from a person who wanted to be like God while writing? Most people would agree that people are nothing like God, so how can we be in his image?

3. Is everything God creates perfect? If so, what does perfection mean here? If it means that it fits into a plan, we come to question 4...

4. Does God in fact have an ultimate plan? If God has a plan, how do we have any way of perceiving what his intentions are? Obviously, we can't because no human could ever understand God's intentions. So, what does this mean for the circular logic saying that we shouldn't do things because "God wouldn't want them." For example, there are two ways of looking at a transsexual moral issue in the Biblical concept which are both equally viable by the underlying logic at least. In terms of the transsexuality itself, let's just assume we're ignoring the sexual mores written into the Bible. So, the two ways are as follows:

-Everything God creates is perfect. As a corollary, He doesn't want us to change his creation. God would rule that transsexuals should stay in their bodies and deal with their challenges because that is God's plan for us.
-Everything God creates is perfect in the sense that it fits into an ultimate plan. However, we play a part in this plan- the things we do on Earth are part of God's plan. This involves overcoming obstacles and solving problems. God would want a person to be strong and brave enough to overcome the issue by having a sex change operation.

I could go on with the list, but the point is becoming clear I think. God's will can literally be used to justify anything from an abstract point of view. Most Christians would agree that God's will is ultimate and above everything else- this is essentially saying that a force of nature that we know nothing about is the most important thing in the world. How can we make good decisions based on that?

On the other hand, most people will also accept that emotions and spirituality do exist in the world, and we are more than a sum of chemical reactions. So, we need to come up with a realistic conception of God if we are expected to evolve.

Science can explain a lot, sure, but it operates within a fixed set of rules. These rules exist and are observable, but they aren't creatable. They came from somewhere, or they were always there. Rational people will agree that these are the two options. Obviously there's no way to logically jump to one of these decisions, so it takes a leap of faith at this point. Let's go with the idea that there is a creator, and let's define what it is.

Let's use some of God's qualities from the Bible to come up with a more realistic picture of what God is. So boiling it way down, God is:
-omniscient
-omnipotent
-loving, caring, accepting, etc.

Ignoring the parts where God acts like a human, lets focus on these qualities. Omniscience means that God knows everything. What does everything consist of? I'd say this means everything material, chronological, and spiritual or emotional. No person or singularity can do that, so we have to rule out an individual conception. Moving on.

Omnipotence means that he has an incredible amount of power, power to shape or change anything. Obviously as an extension of the first, that means God can manipulate any of the above qualities which he has knowledge of.

Finally, He's loving and caring and infinitely forgiving. So, we're beginning to get a picture here of consciousness, albeit a utopian-leaning one.

So lets put it all together. God is individual since he's conscious but he's collective because of his omnipresence. So he's simultaneously not an individual and an individual. Excluding the last quality on our list, we do know of some things which closely resemble the first two qualities: forces of nature. Gravity "knows" every event pertaining to it at any moment. It's everywhere, and it operates both individually and collectively. It also has an ultimate set of rules it follows, similar to our hypothesized God.

Spinning these together, God is both a force of nature and an individual. When we look at a single human body, we see some strong similarities. A human being is made of trillions of small interconnecting parts- these are individual. When we think about human beings we think of them as individual despite this - this is collective. All of our functions and behaviors are ostensibly governed by rules - this is a sort of mini-omniscience.

When we boil it down, it makes more sense to think of humanity as the God of the Bible rather than as a single man. If together we make up God, then we can indeed all be perfect no matter what we do, because the only rule involved with being a part of God is simply that we can't stop being a part of God. Like a single cell, an individual has no omniscience or power on its own. Together, humanity approachs a kind of omnipotence similar to that described in the Bible (remember, we started reading the Bible on the figurative foot, so stay with me).

We need to get rid of our archaic images of God and start looking for God where it makes sense to look for him: everywhere and nowhere. The Bible is either trying to justify humanity as God as a collective delusion, or through it's search for supreme sovereignty it has unknowingly unearthed a more truthful representation of God. Many questions remained unanswered, but it can't hurt to take the discussion in a different direction.