A description of God

I`ve been putting this off, put I think it is time to start to describe God as I see Him. In my contemplations around the devine, I have come to believe that there are certain words or principles which describe Gods basic nature. I shall try to write one article on each of them, but it should be said that this list will not be, nor could it ever be, neither comprehensive nor entirely presise, as God is unknowable and unexplainable through language.
First and foremost, God is good. I think this fact would be agreed upon by most religions, at least the larger ones (including Buddhism, if you count their impersonal first principle as "God", which I do in this case). The problem arises when we try to define what "good" means.

The ideal book

A book on philosophy is a book exploring ideas. Ideas are spiritual artifacts, and as such do not have beginnings or ends. Thus, a book on philosophy should not have a beginning nor an end either. Always when you start to explain a philosophical idea, you suddenly realize that there is some other idea which needs to be explained for the other person to understand what you are trying to explain, so in the end any starting point you choose will be more or less arbitrary, and not the actual beginning of the idea you are trying to explain.
Therefore, books on philosophy should be published as interactive electronic books, with a multitude of smaller articles arguing single points. Each of these articles should be furnished with a link to other articles which explain, supplement or expound upon the ideas presented in it. The book would in the end be more like a web, that the user could move through in any order he wished, its secrets revealed organically as questions arise within the reader, than a novel which starts at one point and ends in another. The book should open on a randomly selected page, or on a randomly selected one of several pages chosen as good starting points.
Such a book could also be infinitely expanded, which is also good because no idea ever actually ends.
As a matter of fact, it might be extremely interesting to read a novel published in this fashion as well, where the reader decides the order of the telling.

On priesthood

Ideally, a priest, or any other form of religious specialist, serves the role as a guide, not a preacher. A guide helps people reach their own understanding of God, rather than impose his own as a preacher would. All knowledge of God is stored deep within each and every one of us, but some people spend more time pondering on His excistence than others, and so gain a more intimate knowledge of His will. This does not mean that such an expert will allways be right in his views on the devine, but it puts him in a position where he can more easily pont people in the right direction, making it easier for them to figure things out on their own.

In the end

it does not matter which God you believe in. God stays the same no matter what you believe.

The moral choice

This post regards the origin of religion. Where does morality come from and why should we follow it? Most people take this for granted. An action is either right or wrong and thats that. Most of agree that under most circumstances, killing another person is wrong. The question I want to answer is why? Why is this wrong? Why is anything wrong?
I`ve only managed to come up with two possible answers to this question. The first is the scientific answer, rooted in biology, and states that we act morally because we have evolved to act morally. If killing people of your own tribe was allowed, then it would be impossible for the members of that tribe to cooperate, and as a result, the tribe would weaken. In other words, morality is a form of social control mechanism rooted in our biology, part of our nature as tribal animals.
So, in the end, if each of us behaves morally, it benifits all, including ourselves. This means that all morality can be traced back to self interest. Killing someone will have negative social repercussions both on society and the murderer himself. Even if he isn`t caught, he will always have to live his life with part of himself hidden, because society does not approve of his actions. In a broader sense, killing contributes to social instability which in the end would lead to a weaker society compared to more stable ones, making it and everyone in it weaker and poorer.
This kind of morality works for all moral statements I have heard. It can be infinitely extended to include more people and more species. Cutting too many trees harms the ecosystem which we all need to survive, for example. So, this is indeede a complete and sound basis for a moral construct, and is in fact the way most people today instinctively think about morality. But this kind of morality has many flaws.
First, it puts the burden of proof on the side of good. An unwanted but very real effect of this way of thinking is that all actions are right until proven to be wrong. Cutting down a tree is not wrong in itself, but is perfectly fine until someone can prove to you that cutting that tree harms the ecosystem in some way.
If we could think that cutting down a tree, any tree, is in itself a morally wrong action, then the one who wishes to cut that tree must be the one to prove that cutting the tree is really necessary to him, for his survival or some such reason. But this way of thinking cannot be grounded in evolution. It is indeed benificial to our evolution to cut down trees!
The other major flaw in this way of thinking is that it is frankly, cynical. Compassion and love, which is more or less uniformly agreed to be the emotional basis of morality, seem entirely absent from this rational weighing of arguments and facts. You might say it is open to discussion wether such a bloodless way of thinking truly is morality at all!
So the alternative to this way of thinking must be to say that some things, some actions, are just wrong in their very nature. Much of western society and morality is based upon such a notion in fact. Take the American declaration of indipendence, which states that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." We find similar ideas layed down in the UN`s declaration of human rights, and various other documents central to the shaping of euro-american civilization.
Through extention, these ideas could also come to include members of other species and societies, even plants. So, this also forms a complete and sound basis for an all-encompassing moral construct, while solving the problems connected to the biological approach sketched above. Problem solved, right?
No, we are left with our original question. Where do these rights come from? Why do we have those rights? It seems someone just decided we have them, and now we do. In our day, we take these rights for granted, we take morality for granted. If a moral statement cannot be explained through biology, then thats just the way it is. We learned that certain things were right and certain things were wrong as children, and it`s just always been like that.
That is not enough for me. I must ask why. And there can only be one answer. To those who wrote the american declaration of independence, the answer was self-evident, though people prefer to ignore that fact. Morality must, in the end, come from some non-physical source, some excistence that transcends the simple physical reality we see around us every day.
Morality must come from God.

Praise God! Deny Religion!

It is the nature of my faith to be critical towards religion whilst praising God. I shall try to explain why this is so.
Faith and religion are by many considered to be one and the same, and as a result, most religious people are blind, while most people critical of religion believe they must be atheists. I propose that faith and religion are two very different things, not to be confused.
While faith is the belief in God, and as such a spiritual matter, religion is the physical manifestation of this faith, just as a word is the physical manifestation of a thought. As all physical objects, religion will therefore be flawed. All religions are flawed, being people trying to express what cannot be expressed.
Any religious doctrine is in itself just a collection of words. Words are physical objects - attempts to express a thought which is, in essence, abstract. Our minds can percieve and understand perfection, but in the translation of abstract ideas into words something is lost.
This is the same as has been held by many philosophers through history, most notably (at least in european/western thought, which I am most familiar with) Plato and Wittgenstein, possibly Kant. As Wittgenstein held, any doctrine, including his own (and mine as well, for that matter), is nothing but a path towards understanding. True understanding can only come through surpassing the words of a doctrine, seeking the idea that the originator of that doctrine had in mind when creating it.
Thus, the doctrine itself, as written in a book or spoken by a priest, is not the actual truth, but, as I have already said, the physical manifestation of that truth and thus not entirely accurate.
All humans have access to the words of God through the innermost reaches of their minds, or the soul if you wish. This is a place where nothing is sharply defined, where there are no distinctions and no contradictions, no dichotomies. That is where the truth about God can be found.
Through the ages, many people, often called prophets or the like, have made it their speciality to venture into this world and try to bring back messages to their people from this place. The shamanic journey, the vision of the prophet, the meditative trance of the buddhist priest - all of these are expressions of the path inwards towards the understanding of the true essence of reality.
All of these people see the same truth! It is when they get back to the physical world that the confusion begins. Trying to make sense of what they have experienced, they will inevitably apply logic and reason, linguistic structures, the principles of time and space and the like to their experiences in trying to convey to the people around them what they have experienced.
As these categories do not apply in the spiritual world, there are bound to be inaccuracies. In addition, some might not have understood as well as others what they have seen, and some might not be as good at expressing what they have seen, as others. The greatest prophets are those who truly understand and have the gift of communicating their understanding in a simple and powerful way.
This is the origin of the difference between religions and the reason why religions, structures defined by their search for good, often end up causing suffering. No religious commandment or dogma should ever be read in its literal sense, no religion should ever be followed strictly.

Unity of paradox

One of my basic beliefs about God is that he (God has no sex, so I stick to the practice of using my own sex when referring to him, which is as good a practice as any other), embodies a principle I call the unity of paradox.
Our existence seems riddled with paradox, and paradox is a great source of annoyance, irritation and even suffering. In philosophy, whenever one tries to subject reality to logic, contradiction arises. Wherever there is a doctrine, a counterdoctrine which seems equally good both in quality and morality appears.
The common solution to this situation is the compromise between or the synthesis (in the Kirkegaardian sense) of the two. I posit the unity of paradox as not only an alternative solution, but in fact the true solution to these kinds of conflicts. The problem is that the unity of paradox might be impossible to fully understand or explain linguistically.
To clarify my meaning, I will give an example:
Adolf Hitler had a good goal with his doctrine of nazism. His goal was to seek purity, and purity is connected to good. So, seeking purity, Hitler sought to eradicate diversity, and indeed; these to principles will seem to most to be opposites, and so Hitler should have been right in trying to eradicate diversity on his way to purity.
When we look at the effects of the application of his doctrines however, it is immidiately apparent that this could not have been the morally correct path. On the other hand, there is still the fact that diversity unchecked will lead to chaos, as different forces pull in different directions.
What we are left with are two opposite doctrines, both leading to ruin. The solution to this seems to be the finding of a balance between these opposites - a comprimise, or synthesis. What I propose is that we drop the compromise and seek both purity and diversity at once, and that they are essentially, one and the same.
In God, dualities, and thus contradictions/paradoxes are cancelled out, becoming one and the same. This is the mindset one must seek to achieve if one is to find the morally highest course of action in any situation. It is part of the eradication of all suffering, as suffering stems from paradox.
This may seem impossible, and it is, but yet it is not. Our physical existence binds us to contradiction, but our spiritual self can overcome these difficulties and let us seek ideals that are higher than the physical reality that we percieve. For the latter is, in the end, an illusion.
To find God, to find good, seek both unity and diversity. Try to understand how they are one and the same.