January Journal: God
Jan. 22nd, 2014 05:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livjack asked me to write about God, knowing that the stereotype that Jewish people don't really like to talk about God too much is rather applicable to me. But I said I would fill prompts, so I'll give this a go.Most of my theological tradition is about a fairly philosophical concept of God. Following Maimonides who was influenced by Classical thought as transmitted via the Muslim world, and Spinoza who was very much a product of the Enlightenment. God who not only can't be pictured but can't even be described, which is part of why I'm a bit reluctant to talk about God. Any being that I can reasonably explain can't be God. But obviously people, including Maimonides, do talk about God, because otherwise I couldn't tell you that I generally accept the Rambam's views. I don't worry too much about things like whether God is really three-omni, because those are descriptions and comparisons and therefore by definition can't encompass what God is "really" like. At the same time I do, as I'm sure Maimonides did, basically accept the more standard Biblical view of God as the creator, a being who has a plan for how humans should behave, and a distinct entity one can have a relationship with; I suppose I primarily see those descriptions as metaphorical, but important.
I should try to talk about the consequences of holding these somewhat abstract views about God. If you go too far down the route of God being beyond description you end up with either deism, which I think Maimonides tends towards a bit in spite of himself, or panentheism, which is about where Spinoza ended up. I'm kind of ok with those; it's more important to me to accept that I can't actually understand or relate to God in a mundane way, than it is to lean very hard on "believing in" a personal, interventionist God. Most of Jewish practice works perfectly well whether you believe in God or not. I don't mean that only on a basic level, like the fact that it's possible to keep kosher whether or not you believe that God personally dictated the laws of kashrut to Moses. I mean that it's possible to have useful discussions of Jewish religious morality and act on those without literally believing that God is like a person who wants people to behave rightly and not commit sins.
Sometimes people try to pin me down and ask whether I believe that God, say, manipulates electrons or changes the outcome of quantum events or whatever. I can see the point of those questions but again, it feels like answering them is trying to describe God who can't be defined. I suppose I don't really take a view that the world mostly ticks along nicely according to the laws of physics and occasionally God miraculously intervenes to direct things more according to the Divine plan. It's more like, the whole system, the fact that there are consistent laws of physics, the fact that there's even existence at all is in some way down to God. Which is where it's easy to get Spinozan and panentheist, I suppose; I would deny that there's anything, material or informational or, call it spiritual if you like, not God.
I also believe that God has created humans to have some limited ability to understand some of this stuff and act on our interpretation of what we can learn about God through revelation and experience and reasoning. That's not something I can really justify, but it's what makes me not a deist or a panentheist. I have sometimes experienced something I perceived as a sense of God's presence, but I don't think that's even a tiny bit more reliable than anything else; it's extremely likely that my brain invented stuff in order to make sense of something where I didn't have complete data. I don't think that's any more or any less God acting in my life than any experience that has a more obviously material and physical explanation.
I most certainly don't believe in a bearded old white man sitting on a cloud and dispensing rewards and punishments. And it's not that I used to believe in something like that and found it incompatible with scientific knowledge so I altered my belief to be more abstract and harder to challenge. I've always though of God as existing in an entirely singular category, not like a super-powerful version of any being I'm familiar with. (I never believed in Santa, for that matter; I still find it a bit strange that it's culturally accepted to have a phase in children's development where all the adults in their lives are supposed to influence them to believe in something known by said adults to be completely made up.) This is why I find what the internet calls the "Great God debate" really frustrating; it feels like people are vehemently trying to convince me there's no good evidence for this old man in the sky, and many of the things that atheists infer from his non-existence are things I completely agree with anyway, like the fact that the planet is more than 6000 years old or speciation occurs through Darwinian evolution or pharmacology is more effective than prayer or homoeopathy.
I don't know if that actually gives you any new information about me, or if it's just a muddle, but it's an attempt, anyway.
[January Journal masterlist]
(no subject)
Date: 2014-01-23 02:13 am (UTC)(my general viewpoint on the operation of the universe, though living things have a bit more self-determination than the dishes, of course)
(no subject)
Date: 2014-01-24 10:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-01-25 01:19 am (UTC)Well, yes. I'm afraid I spend a lot of time making metaphors for 12 yr olds, though, so unfortunately I've acquired a habit of clarity above detail. :P
(no subject)
Date: 2014-01-23 09:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-01-24 10:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-01-24 12:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-01-27 12:34 pm (UTC)