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Friday 23 January 2009

God II Introduction


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Title

God II: a God for atheists

Starting point

This book is called God II because it assumes that God I, the traditional God of the fundamental religious believer, and indeed the God of Richard Dawkins, has been unequivocally rejected. This discussion therefore starts more or less where Dawkins leaves off.
Am I splitting hairs? Are there really two types of God concept? Emphatically 'Yes!; there are two very different concepts of God'. God I is believed to interfere in the natural world, while God II does not. God I is the 'father in heaven' that many people hope to meet face to face after they die; God II is seen by the living only. God I made man in his own image, while God II is made by man. God I is supposed to exists, but of God II no such claim is made.
Why is this book necessary? It is necessary because there is widespread confusion over this word God. It must be clear to many people that the extraordinary disagreements that rage and have raged for centuries over the existence of God must mean that there is ambiguity in the terms used. Controversy has to reside in either the premises, or the logic, and the logic is simple enough. But the premises are not simple. Even the concept of existence is tricky, let alone the concept of God. It is to clarify the confusion that I am pointing out here that there are two (at least) different concepts of God.
This book is also called for by the vacuum left by the passing of God I. For thousands of years the majority of people were content to roll together the two concepts of God I and God II. God I was a doer. Not only did he create the universe and man in his image, but he supervised the miracle of the seasons, and conception, and thunder and lightening; even the daily rising and setting of the sun, moon and stars. So it was extremely natural to ascribe to God I also the creating of a purpose for man, a duty, a code of conduct, the concepts of love, justice, and forgiveness. However, over the last few centuries science has produced other explanations of thunder, conception, and the behaviour of the heavenly bodies. God I has lost most or all of his power, yet the language of religion has not been modified. Almost every religious statement reveals the complete intertwining of true and false thinking.
Many grown-up people cannot believe in the Sunday-school God of their childhood, which is for the most part the God of the Churches and of the media. There are, of course, some people who seem still to believe in life after death and in a personal God who monitors all our comings and goings, who listens to supplicant prayers and answers those He sees fit to answer; and there are for them some who still preach this type of religion. But they seem so clearly on the back foot, defending a lost cause, that I feel sorry and angry in equal measure. Something must be done. The silly messages must be acknowledged as such and cleared away, and replaced by a more sophisticated message, one that does not promise all that is desired, but only that which can be delivered.
Is it fair to speak of a vacuum? Society today is left with one over-riding reason for action – selfish gratification. That always was an important element, but until recently there used also to be considerations of 'doing the right thing', 'obeying God', following the teachings of a prophet who praised poverty, humility and love. The Stoics believed in 'The Good', without deriving it from a concept of God but that was precisely the fatal weakness of the Stoic school of philosophy. The Humanists argue that social virtues evolve by natural selection in social animals like man, and they are probably right. But that does not debar us from studying these social virtues, feeling them, sharing them, and celebrating them.
Primitive religion is, of course, abominable, and if it cannot evolve it is better dead. The elevating aspect of religion has in the past been grotesquely mixed with self-righteous revenge, honour killing, sacrifice of surrogates, and the burning of heretics. No sane person would advocate the return to a religion of belief, superstition, authority, and power. But I am not advocating such a religion. I am advocating a re-interpretation of God as a metaphor for natural morality, so that culture and instinct can re-enforce each other in erecting altruistic objectives, and non-material rewards. For most of the following text I shall argue that such a God (God II) can fulfill most of the 'spiritual' needs of the religious devotee, while at the same time possessing a sharply defined, undeniable, objective, reality that makes it possible to follow without the need for faith, and to teach without recourse to authority. In the last chapter I shall speculate that God II has always been the message taught by the sages, and that God I is a popular mistake, generated by the masses and foisted on the churches.
Table 1. Type I Religion teaches what is desired, however implausible

Proposition
Consoling power
Status in Religion I
Credibil-ity today
Status in Religion II
(On a scale of 0 [not at all] to 100 [completely])
Conscious life after death
80
100
0
0
External effects of prayer
100
100
0
0
Miracles (biblical)
80
80
0
0
Miracles (modern)
80
20
0
0
Communion of saints (bilateral)
60
60
0
0
Authority of holy book
80
100
10
10
Authority of priesthood
100
100
20
20
Forgiveness of sin
100
80
100
100
Internal effects of prayer
100
100
100
100
Cawstein,
12 Longhirst, MORPETH