Dr. Velociraptor: November 2010

There is a minimalist concept of God which is more plausible and noble than the standard Judaic/Christian/Islamic concept of God. However, the existence of God remains improbable (given available evidence of all kinds) even under this minimalist concept. Furthermore, even this minimalist concept of God is not necessary for upholding worthy moral values or making life meaningful.

One can postulate the existence of a widespread, long-standing, almost indestructible, powerful force which responds to yearnings for higher values, and sustains these values and helps to promote and realize them. This force exists apart from the existence of various individual biological beings who have higher consciousness (have language, abstract thought, the capacity for appreciating higher values – moral thinking and feeling, art, intellectual attainment, open critical thinking, a sense of the putative transcendent), though it might cease to exist if all biological beings with higher consciousness are eliminated from the cosmos. Furthermore, this cosmic minimalist God force corresponding to higher values might have emerged (fully) only as higher consciousness developed/evolved in the cosmos. (Higher values are contrasted with more materialistic, animalistic pleasures of eating, alcohol, drugs, non-loving sex, procreating, status, fame, power, ego gratification.)

The higher values which the cosmic minimalist God force nurtures might include :
Kindness;
Regard for the well-being and suffering of other beings of higher consciousness as being of equal worth to one’s own (or to those of one’s own family, tribe, coreligionists, ethnic group, class, nation, gender, species);
Tolerance of disagreement and conflict in basic beliefs, values, priorities as being part of higher consciousness;
Equal opportunity to try to train for (compete for) more prestigious, personally rewarding, influential positions, e.g. lawyer, doctor, politician, senior civil servant, scientist, university professor, artist, spiritual leader, regardless of gender, ethnicity, parentage, sexual preference, religious or ideological belief – i.e. level the playing field, end discrimination;
Open critical thinking ( opposed to truth based on authority, sacred text, or personal conviction – see future blog);
Appreciation of beauty, art, literature, music, science, math;
Concern for all sentient beings;
Equitable distribution of wealth;
Right of all to higher education, artistic, intellectual, and spiritual development; Assumption of some personal responsibility for one’s own situation;
Assumption of some personal responsibility for social, global, and environmental problems;
Being able to admit/acknowledge one’s own benefits, privileges, and luck;
Willingness to give up some of one’s own benefits so that others can have the basics;
Right of all to some say in government;
Freedom to form different political parties;
Openness to non-materialistic/non-utilitarian modes of thinking (even putative non-logical or non-conceptual thinking or awareness) – awareness of thoughts, feelings, ‘perceptions’, ‘intuitions’, ‘insights’, mystical experiences which seem to ‘transcend’ the mundane and quantitative - go beyond ordinary, logical, factual, literal language, and not be capable of, or require, justification in logical terms – possibility of non-logical modes of justification, apprehension, and states of affairs;
Emotional awareness of self and others;
Curiousity, wonder, willingness to challenge oneself;
Ability to laugh at oneself, admit one’s own weaknesses, foibles, and biases.

The higher values which the cosmic minimalist God force nurtures might exclude :
Organized religion – especially the belief that conforming to a particular (or any) ritual or doctrine is a guarantee of salvation and a sign of spiritual superiority;
Buying into some ideology as beyond criticism;
Political correctness (knee-jerk liberalism) – idealization or romanticisation of the poor, the disadvantaged, drug addicts, criminals, etc., as having no personal responsibility for their own situation , just an inner goodness which has been thwarted by abuse, neglect, oppression, lack of educational opportunity, low income;
Cult of victimhood;
False sense of entitlement;
Unrealistic expectations;
Welfare dependency;
Ascribing all or most of the blame for social, environmental problems, injustice, war, famine, poverty, to big business (multinational executives not the millions of ordinary shareholders!), corrupt politicians, white imperialism or colonialism;
Running down, blaming Western societies, especially the USA, while idealising and exonerating non-Western societies;
Denying that some differences in ability may be due to genes;
Transmission of wealth or power through family dynasties, e.g. monarchy, aristocracy, castes, heiresses;
Romanticized, sanitized, Pollyanna view of human nature – ordinary human beings just given love, education, money, will be free from bad (baser, darker) qualities or flaws such as (apart from one’s already mentioned – unrealistic expectations, false sense of entitlement, etc.) greed, selfishness, self-centredness, wanting more money, power, or status than the next guy, being unable to admit that one already has significantly more than an average share, being unable to admit that one has significantly more than what is needed for basic security and inner satisfaction, personal bias, favouritism, nepotism, emotional investment, vested interest, prejudice, irrationality, unreasonableness, rationalizing, informal fallacies, defence mechanisms, smugness, hypocrisy, self-deception, projection, pretentious obfuscating language, exaggeration, distortion, ignoring counterevidence, resisting clarification and subjecting/opening one’s own cherished beliefs to criticism and examination, demonizing, idealizing hero worshipping, scapegoating, sentimental cant, snobbery, sour grapes, resentment, reactivity, fantasy or delusion;
Self-delusion (self-opinionated, tendency to egotistical megalomania) – not coming to terms with the fact that you are just one educated, intelligent, sensitive, articulate, well-read, talented person amongst millions many of whom have different opinions from yours about literature, politics, human nature, science, the nature of mind, what is best for society, what is fair, etc.
Belief that good qualities and attainments can be acquired without a lot of hard work and some pain – that good learning can just be fun and entertaining.

In other words, being kind and compassionate, and believing in equal opportunity and justice do not mean denying differences in attainment and excusing all those who do not have the best start in life. Still less do they mean excusing even the now privileged members of an ethnic group which is or was on the whole disadvantaged.

The minimalist concept of God has some affinity to notions of God found in some sophisticated versions of the Upanisads, Buddhism, Taoism, and Zen. It also has some affinity to the God of Plato, Aristotle, Stoics, Epicureans, Spinoza, Shelley, Blake, Hegel, Nietzsche, Bergson (élan vital), D.H. Lawrence, and Einstein. According to the minimalist concept of God the standard God of most major religions is a psychopathic, male chauvinist, bullying, control freak, dogmatic bigot. ‘He’ exemplifies the worst hang-ups of human beings – those surrounding fear, insecurity, resentment, and jealousy concerning the sexual enjoyment and pleasure of others especially women (and fears concerning threats to one’s own power, wealth, and status). The standard God of major religions is far more concerned about sexual ‘purity’ and ‘correct’ ritual and dogma than ‘He’ is about ending war, poverty, injustice, and sexual discrimination.

A major function of standard religions is to provide comfort by feeding into and reinforcing deep-rooted fears and prejudices. Standard religion suppresses or represses a reasonable exploration of ignoble aspects of human nature by substituting a crude doctrine of sin (and taboos) against simplistic rules of sexual mores, ritual, and dogma. Instead, a clear, calm, honest examination of ignoble aspects of humanity (embedded in the basic psychology of all races, cultures, and societies, not just Western society – present in myself and those I like and agree with, not just in those I dislike and disagree with) would enable people to come to terms with (acknowledge, embrace, make friends with, let go of) the true nature of their fearful, selfish, greedy, self-centred, smug, ego-defending traits then transcend them in noble achievements and activity here on Earth.

The minimalist God is rather impersonal, serene, inscrutable, imperturbable, detached. There is a clear, lofty, sad, magnificent, mysterious beauty and wonder to It. A philosopher’s, poet’s, scientist’s, mathematician’s, composer’s, artist’s, skeptical humanist’s God. A God which ‘loves’ women, eros, romantic love, nurturing, vivacity, curiousity, hopefulness, atheists, racing cyclists, and intelligent humour. The minimalist God would count it an honour if you disbelieved in It – so long as you gave clear, calm reasons. It would like it if you made fun of It too – being a bit of a cosmic jester Itself. (Naturally, like everyone else, I fashion God in my own image, desires, or values!)

Belief in the minimalist God does not provide justification for any of the following common theological tenets: personal afterlife; resurrection; reincarnation; heaven; hell; the truth of any holy scriptures as being the revealed word of God (holy scriptures and religious edicts as unquestionable are heretical, blasphemous, and anathema to the minimalist God); efficacy of prayer; religious institutions as being guardians of morality; priests, imams, Popes, etc., as being spokespersons of God; God as omniscient; God as creator of the universe; God as omnipotent.
The minimalist God force is inimical to religious, political, and ideological dogma, the desire for simplistic, black and white answers. It is also inimical to homophobia, the subjugation of women (and, I would argue, to prohibiting birth control, abortion, assisted euthanasia, and use of alcohol and recreational drugs by adults).

The minimalist God force might not Itself be conscious per se. It just responds to and facilitates goodness in higher consciousness. Also, the minimalist God force might not be the basic, fundamental reality in the cosmos. God Itself might be an emergent non-basic force somehow developing out of basic (quantum) ‘mechanistic’ forces: electromagnetism, gravity, strong and weak nuclear forces, basic chemical processes, evolution by natural selection.

The minimalist God force is similar to other concepts of God in that it fosters hope for the eventual triumph of goodness (goodness naturally conceived in a certain way since different people have different ideas of what constitutes goodness – or what God’s law [or the ‘Natural Law’] is, if you put it that way). However, the eventual triumph of goodness is not pre-ordained or guaranteed under the minimalist God conception. Also, the unity (or Trinity) of God is not entailed by the minimalist conception. There might be more than one God force at one or various times – though individuation here would be a problem.

Belief in a Minimalist God Force (full capitals to denote God concept qualitatively distinct from standard one, but just as worthy of respect) goes beyond the common naturalistic psychological fact that we derive comfort, consolation, inspiration from the thought of great artists, writers, composers, thinkers, moral teachers, etc. Their spirit lives on in their work and example. Belief in (the/a) Minimalist God Force (MGF for short) does not require that the individual consciousness of a great composer, say, actually survives death. But it does posit that the God force (into which part of the consciousness of a great composer may be absorbed) is somehow out there influencing events in the realm of higher consciousness apart from mental acts and states of biological creatures with higher consciousness. If there is a time when no biological (or electronic) creature with higher consciousness is thinking of a minimalist God force it does not follow that the God force thereby ceases to exist. The Minimalist God Force is supposed to be not just a subjective psychological phenomenon (or a whole collection of them) but something objectively in the cosmos, outside of human or similar mind/brain states, like cells, chemical elements, and electro-magnetism.

There is, though, insufficient evidence to warrant belief in even a minimalist God force actually out there apart from/over and above (though not independent of) yearnings, hopes, desires, feelings of human beings or similar biological or artificial consciousnesses. Such a God force would have to be a mysterious, occult force such as is supposed to be at work in astrology, telepathy, or psycho-kinesis (or possibly Jungian archetypes, the Enneagram, etc.). But there is little objective evidence to indicate that such putative psychoid, para-normal processes over and above known physico-chemical ones do occur. Such unusual phenomena as are observed seem susceptible of a naturalistic, ‘mechanistic’, non-psychic explanation.

Mystical yearnings and experiences, a sense of the ‘transcendent’, are indeed a basic part of human experience – important, enriching ones. However, this does not mean that there is something out there apart from the human mind corresponding to the mystical experience. It need not be that in mystical experience, say, the mind is actually ‘perceiving’ or intuiting some non-natural (or supra, or trans-natural) state of affairs – part of reality apart from the human brain. A mystical experience may be more like a dream or hallucination than an extra-sensory ‘perception’. It may be essentially subjective and human mind-dependent like sexual joy and romantic love even though deeply moving and transformative. Similarly, visions of the Virgin Mary etc. may be hallucinations brought on by religious fervour and indoctrination, not actual visitations by a divine spiritual being. Stigmata (and witch doctor spells) may be due to naturalistic human psychology (suggestibility) and brain chemistry, not to divine (or spirit) intervention or manifestation.

Even if you believe in an MGF – the objective existence of a merely minimalist God force (or something like it) – there is still room for (irresolvable?) disagreement about what qualities God is drawn to or opposed to, what is good, best social policy etc. For instance, my minimalist God force would foster upper limits on wealth, income, inheritance, procreation, and parents’ rights. Yours might not. Disagreement about what is good or what God wants, whether or not He, She, or It exists, what the heck the semantic content of “God” is, is perfectly healthy and legitimate. Why try to suppress such disagreement by religious (or ideological) dictatorship and brainwashing? If God really is ineffable then for God’s sake stop telling us what God does or doesn’t want! Be honest and say it is what you want or don’t want and often for very murky and ignoble motives.

Even if there is no God, not even an MGF, this does not divest the universe of beauty, kindness, sensitivity, love, joy, justice, forgiveness, art, clear thinking, serenity, wonder, and so on. All it means is that these noble qualities reside in the higher consciousness of creatures like human beings. The values we rightly treasure and which make life meaningful will disappear unless embodied in the actions and thoughts of human or similar beings. All the more reason for not destroying ourselves through religious (or ideological) intolerance, fanaticism, fundamentalism, dogma, and superstition (or through the desire for power and control, or through near universalized and rationalised greed). It is perhaps consoling to believe that even if the human species were eliminated kindness, love, etc. would not perish because they would still reside in a God force. But even with no God force there is still the possibility that the universe will again throw up some creatures with higher consciousness who have noble values. It is nice to think there is a God force at work in the cosmos helping us along to peace, justice, kindness, wisdom, and love. But surely we would not give up a valued, important journey because the loving mother or partner we set off with as guide has died.

You personally may never reach the Promised Land (maybe we never do, and the journey is the point, not arriving at some fictitious, fairy tale, fantasy, paradise, utopia, heaven). You may have no descendants who honour your memory. Perhaps you leave nothing which will survive for some members of future generations to value. (We can’t all be great writers, artists, musicians, philosophers, scientists, sports or entertainment stars, etc.). Yet you have still been an unknown warrior in a noble struggle, a participant in an heroic endeavour, a great adventure, even if you did not achieve anywhere near as much as you had hoped. You have done your bit to help bring about a better world, add to the store of goodness, make people nobler. Hopefully, you have some joy and fun too.

Dr. Velociraptor

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