How should we understand what God is? Part 1

How should we understand what God is?

God is the voice I create in my head.

Overview

This long – long – theological reflection – coming in 9 parts – considers who God is from two points of view: the traditional one and a possible new understanding that God is a voice we create in our own minds. I personally consider that the traditional one is perfectly valid, but, of course, I’m aware of the challenges to belief in God in the modern age. So, I will consider what I think is a valid reason to believe in God, even within a secular, atheistic understanding of reality.

The different sections are:-

1. The nature of God as traditionally understood
2. 3 reasons why belief in God developed:-
   • Religious experience of God
   • As an explanatory device
   • Through philosophical exploration

Including an acknowledgement that modern ideas might undermine them, leaving belief in God as simply a psychological effect in our own minds

3) A modern defence of believing in God even within a framework of understanding that God is “just in our own minds”.

Part 1: God as he is understood to be

Traditionally:

God is a spiritual being who is the ultimate source of reality. Everything that exists, exists because God does. He is the creator. He is a personal being – not an impersonal force, such as electricity; he has a will; He is perfect in his moral nature. He is completely self-sufficient, in that he needs nothing to be complete because he is already complete. He experiences absolute fulfilment in himself. However, as a person, he has the capacity for relationship, and the essence of his nature is love. As a personal agent, he has the ability to act, and so, out of love, he has created other beings. We presume his intention is out of love – in order to be true to himself – so that others can also appreciate what it is to exist. However, God is also holy, which, in essence, means that he is completely unlike anything else and contains within himself absolute goodness, purity, truth and love – and every other good quality, to infinite and absolute degree.