A bit of prose (and then back to the more creative stuff)

As a professing atheist, I may be asked, "Why still keep an idea of God around?’

Well first of all, it must be admitted up front that we atheists are unavoidably obsessed with God!  But two, it still makes sense to me to try to put forth a holistic, comprehendible, and unified paradigm of being and existence.  It just so happens that the term “God” is simple, common, available, and at least generically fitting to that task. 

Besides, to be a human is to acknowledge finitude in the face of the apparent infinite, in the face of what some would call ‘the transcendent’.  As 20^th century theologian Paul Tillich put it, “God is the object of our ultimate concern.”  And one does not have to believe in a guy in the sky to have ultimate concern about life and existence.

And so for me, pan-en-theism is about rejecting the untenable notions of a transcendental divine figure, and embracing instead a notion of the divine which lives much closer to the real existential problems of being, life, and consciousness at hand.

“Where did it all come from?”  “Why is there anything at all?”  “What is mind in relation to matter?”

Of course one can postulate an other-worldly explanation to these things.  But as other-worldly it is impossible to interrogate such a postulate by any common means of reality available to us.

Alternatively, one can choose to postulate a this-worldly explanation; an explanation  which in fact utilizes the very terms and means of reality which we encounter every day.

But, we still have to be careful.  This-worldly postulations yet have been shown to fail on two fronts:

1.  If the postulate is solely materially reductionist, then ultimately it seems to fail to address some really distinct and important mental phenomena, like faith, bliss, etc.

2.  But if the postulate is solely idealistically reductionist, then it seems conversely to fail to deal with matter as a real substantial thing worthy of its apparent physical soundness.

And so a this-worldly postulation of God must do both.  But how to theoretically encompass both all mental and all physical phenomena systematically and holistically?  Well, that’s exactly what 19^th century philosopher G.W.F. Hegel attempted to do.  And that’s what 20^th century Hegel scholar Dr. William Desmond points out is still ultimately the goal, even if not fully achievable to us humans.  For alas, it seems ultimately we alone are stuck with sorting out these murky waters of divine inquiry ourselves.

So how to think of God?  To put it frankly, it seems you can either just take somebody’s word for it, neglecting critical thought about how and why to test such ideas about God, never really leaving the confines of compounding inference.  Or, you can let the very reality we know draw out the precise limits of such investigation and at least have something tangible and reflective to work with.  As you can tell, I prefer the latter.

And so if God cannot be detached from the reality of our inquiry, and yet if God also cannot be merely contingent to our inquiry, then to me that seems to leave us only one choice.  God must be the absolute containment of everything; everything physical, everything mental, and everything which unifies, differentiates, and touches both.

God must be the ground of being [Tillich] (the common thread to everything), and yet God must also be the heart of difference (the otherwise differentiating measure to everything).  Everything must be in God, and hence (here’s the kicker!) everything in God must be able to be found of God, else its back to the drawing board.  For while containing all differing and negating things mutually IN itself, God (i.e. being) ultimately cannot be found to negate itself. (cannot have non-being with out being first)

And so it is this IN-God / OF-God dialectical perspective that I’m trying illustrate on this blog.  But I realize a bunch of brow furrowing talk like this just isn’t going to cut it.  So I’m taking a little inspiration, and perhaps a bit more liberty, and attempting to work with a style of simile and metaphor of which I hope most followers of Jesus might humor me to appreciate, at least on some level.

With that in mind, I’ll get off this already too brow-bent string and see if I can’t get back to communicating my thoughts and passions more creatively.  I hope you enjoy this blog!

-David