10/12/2005
Who is God really?
It's strange to realise what the impact has been of Paul Sars recommending me to read Levinas, during a Swedish dinner two or three years ago. It's strange to see how fundamental my turn back towards religion is. Last week I had an appointment with my possible second supervisor - Theo de Wit. We spoke about the meaning of Rudi Viskers' claim that it's impossible to leave religion out of Levinas' philosophy. I thought he meant it as criticism, that a philosophical theory is not very strong when it looses its meaning when you remove God from it. But Theo said that it was no criticism, but just something that has to be kept in mind. I said that I agreed. Then he said that he noticed that, although my dissertation is about Levinas, I don't mention God or religion anywhere in my own proposal. But if you look at this blog, you can see I talk a lot about religion.Much has changed in the period between now and when I wrote the proposal for my dissertation, 6 months ago. Today I had a discussion about religion in which I said things that I would never have said half a year ago. But what came back to me is not a traditional way of believing. I remained in the first place a philosopher, in that sense there didn't change much in my way of thinking. I have never been very sure about anything, when I called myself an atheist I wasn't sure that God didn't exist. Now that I call myself a religious humanist I am still not sure that God exists either. I just assume something and I first assumed that he didn't exist and now I assume that he exists. I do this because I try to put myself in Levinas' skin so that I can better understand his ideas: if I try to believe in God the way he does I can understand him better. For me it doesn't really matter what I believe, I don't think that there is an absolute truth that I could discover, I will always have my doubts towards anything that I have chosen to believe in. So why not believe in Levinas' God, then?
Anyway, here's the dialogue about God that I had today with my friend Roberta from the UK -Roberta had just asked in a discussion about the Islam: "So who is Allah really?"
Esther:
Who is Allah really? 10/12/2005 2:51 AM
This is how I see it: There can be only one God, there will be one infinite being. Even if a people, like the Dogon, believes in more gods, then I think that these gods are together part of the one God (I suppose that idea isn't possible from within the Islam).
But because of the nature of the divine being there can be only one (that idea can be Islamic).
In my view God/Allah is infinite, He is unlimited, almighty, He is infinite love, goodness and power. The question "who is he?" cannot be answered by humans. We cannot really know him because we are as humans too limited to understand Infinity.
God is the source of everything, the Creator. He was there before us, he already knew us before we were born. We remember him although we have never met him.
God is infinite goodness and he wants us to be good as humans. He wants us to create peace and justice on earth and that we treat each other right, that we are all sisters and brothers, that we love each other and help each other and respect each other.
God is a blinding infinite light of goodness. We have some of that light / goodness in ourselves as humans and we should let that light shine, we should support each other and make the light stronger in humans, so that the light can make the darkness of evil less dark.We should try to end wars, whe should help the poor, we should welcome strangers and offer them hospitality and we should respect all humans as humans, we shouldn't kill each other. This is how I see it, I hope it gives some answers and Muslims can say if this is correct as well from the perspective of the Islam.
Roberta [in red means Esther is quoted]:
10/12/2005 4:24 AM
Ok.. let me make a few comments on it:
There can be only one God, there will be one infinite being. Even if a people, like the Dogon, believes in more gods, then I think that these gods are together part of the one God (I suppose that idea isn't possible from within the Islam).
I am not so sure that there can be only one G-d. Or any G-d. But, for argument's sake let us call G-d the power which we do not know.The dogons believe that their g-ds are extraterrestrial beings. The same as the mesopotamiams, Mayans, Aztecs, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, etc...All these cultures refered to their g-ds as coming from Space, heaven, in heavenly chariots, splash landing, etc... (A very physical thing, one that people can SEE happening).
So, G-d (The unknown power) and the g-ds of the stories are NOT the same. They are totally different creatures.
But because of the nature of the divine being there can be only one (that idea can be Islamic).
Well, we don't really know anything about the nature of the divine being(s), or the almighty. But the idea was not Islamic, in fact it was Egyptian. Akhenaton was the first Monotheist in history. Abraham's stories have unfortunately, been corrupted to refer to ONE G-d as Elohim, instead of the very G-d Nannar, whom Abraham served. (Fortunately the true story is found in the Sumerian tablets of Nineveh).
In my view God/Allah is infinite, He is unlimited, almighty, He is infinite love, goodness and power.Well, this is also my view, but not Allah.
Allah is the name of Nannar. Like EL / Elohim are the g-ds of the scriptures.The G-D you and I refer to is something that no one has seen, heard or spoken to (physically).
The question "who is he?" cannot be answered by humans. We cannot really know him because we are as humans too limited to understand Infinity.
Well, he is not HE, but we can answer this question. In fact, our reply is much more logical than the "Religious" reply, as G-d is NOT a religious being. (By saying WE, I mean: THEOSOPHISTS)
God is the source of everything, the Creator. He was there before us, he already knew us before we were born.We remember him although we have never met him.
This is the part which theosophy can explain better. "G-d is the source of everything, He knew us before we were born".
God is infinite goodness and he wants us to be good as humans. He wants us to create peace and justice on earth and that we treat each other right, that we are all sisters and brothers, that we love each other and help each other and respect each other.
Unfortunately we don't know what this power wants. We can only assume. But as much as this power is infinite goodness, it is also infinite evil. For a balance is established.We must NOT confuse G-D (Power) with G-ds (beings). This is our mistake.
God is a blinding infinite light of goodness. We have some of that light / goodness in ourselves as humans and we should let that light shine, we should support each other and make the light stronger in humans, so that the light can make the darkness of evil less dark.
Beautiful and inspiring!! Really it is!!! But unfortunately G-d is not light. It is above it all.
We should try to end wars, whe should help the poor, we should welcome strangers and offer them hospitality and we should respect all humans as humans, we shouldn't kill each other.
I agree 100%. And we should also PROTECT animals and NOT slaughter them for no reason... and we should look after every child and human being that needs our help!!
This is how I see it, I hope it gives some answers and Muslims can say if this is correct as well from the perspective of the Islam.
Who cares if it's correct or not?? It is what is in your heart and in many people's hearts. It is the driving force that leads us to perform good deeds.
WE DON'T HAVE TO CONFORM TO ANY RELIGION, BECAUSE NO RELIGION IS HIGHER THAN TRUTH.
Beautiful words Esther!!! :-)
Esther:
10/12/2005 5:34 AM
Nice to have this talk.
So: If there is a God, this being, which is probably not a "he" in a human way, this being cannot directly tell us who he is. If the Dogon gods are extraterrestrial, this doesn't mean that they can't be part of the Infinite being, the one God. I think that the idea that the Divine is not from our world, that this idea matches well with the idea of Infinity, since the universe itself is infinite.
If God cannot talk to us directly, if he cannot explain to us who he is, it means by definition that there is very little that we can know about him. It also means that when we as humans try to imagine what he is like, when we describe him or make a drawing of him, that we will always make mistakes. The main mistake will be that we imagine him as a human being, because we know what humans are like but we don't know what an infinite non-human being will be like, so we can't make a drawing of that (by the way, to draw an infinite being you need an infinite piece of paper). We cannot know for certain if God exists or not. We can not prove it. We cannot take down an infinite being to the earth and show him on television or something. It is theoretically possible that we have invented him, that infinite goodness doesn't exist. (I don't believe in God as being infinite evil as well.)
But if we assume that he exists, then the way I described it so far is how I personally believe in him, it is just what seems to be logical for me and according to how I feel / experience it. I am supposed to be a 95% Muslim, so if that's true then my personal answer to "who is Allah" will have an overlap with the way a 100% Muslim would answer the question. It is said in many religions that God created us after his own image. If that is so, then we should be able to understand something of "who is God". He is a bit like us, but his power, love and goodness is infinitely more (or 70 times more according to the Islam I think) than ours.
So we cannot know God's nature, but the idea that God would be infinite is something that seems to be very logical for me.If he is infinite then there can be only one, because two separate infinite beings cannot exist next to each other, one day the infinity of the two would collide against each other, the infinity of the one would limit the infinity of the other.
The light of God is not a physical light. To describe him as light is a symbol. Because light is also infinite and light can conquer darkness without using violence. To let light as goodness shine in the darkness is a symbolic way to show how you can strive for justice without starting another war.
And to create a tradition of ending my blog posts with a song, this time I end with the Smashing Pumpkins:
If there is a God
I know he likes to rock
He likes his loud guitars
And his spiders from Mars
And if there is a God
I know she's watching me
She likes what she sees
But there's trouble on the breeze
And if there is a God
I know they're on TV
They’re the spies with bedroom eyes
Who cowers in our sky
Who are you this time?
Are you one of us flying blind?
Because I'm down here throwing stones
While you're so far from home
If there is a God...
I know he likes to rock
He likes his loud guitars
And his spiders from Mars
And if there is a God
I know she's watching me
She likes what she sees
But there's trouble on the breeze
And if there is a God
I know they're on TV
They’re the spies with bedroom eyes
Who cowers in our sky
Who are you this time?
Are you one of us flying blind?
Because I'm down here throwing stones
While you're so far from home
If there is a God...
