I’ve started reading Rene Descartes and I’m intrigued by his idea of “god”.
Descartes is famous for his " I think there for I am." He doubted everything in life to such a degree that he believed the only thing he knew for sure was that when he was thinking then he existed. However, the second thing he deduced is that he knew this world he existed in, real or demonic deception, was imperfect by virtue of the fact that he can doubt it exists. So he knows he exists while thinking and has a conception of imperfections therefore perfection exists and the idea was given to him.
This perfection is god.
God is perfect in all ways. They are beyond deception because a perfect being wouldn’t need to lie, their reason alone for you needing to believe something is enough.
And to me that’s an interesting conception of god. Its a lot more sterile than the normal Christian stance that god is Love which has a emotionally textured connotation. It positions god as having feelings with which we can relate as opposed to Descartes perfection that is simply beyond our reasoning but also (conveniently) not malicious.
As an atheist, god as love makes more sense. God is the feeling of communal love that comes with a religion. People who care for each other for no reason other than because they’re in the same community has always been beautiful to me. God as mislabeled inclusion and comradely behavior males perfect sense.
What is your god or gods like?
Right, but religious people mostly aren’t equivalent to Alzheimer’s patients. Most are so engrained in their belief because it IS reinforced by others’ feeding literal delusion.
If that were to change, you wouldn’t have nearly as many literally deluded people.
That’s a fair read.
But consider, theres obviously something more to religions than simply being deluded and in a feed back loop. We will never successfully replace religion without understanding what that something more is.
Can we recreate a sense of community like the religious have but more inclusive and more resilient to say political agendas?
What other emotions are encapsulated by religion? Can they be secularized?
I’m personally just fascinated by religions because its not something I had and I don’t believe in them.
But I think people interested in de-programming need to think of religion more empathetically.
I would say community. Though with the death of the Third Place, it’s very much an up hill battle on that front. I think many interests have groups that still have good communities, but many aren’t in person any more. We just need to bring back the Third Place and get the non-specific communities rolling again … somehow.