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?
For me, I have always understood the catholic and protestant god as society. He defines rules that people live by expecting rewards in the form of miracles and purpose. If other people also follow god/society they are encouraged to perform miracles for others by acting irrationally selfless. Thus god is a self fulfilling prophecy. In real life something as complex as society is hard to grasp so god is an abstraction for it. People have different views on how society should work so there are different gods and the gods also evolve as their devotees views change.
That’s were I’m at in broader strokes. God as a normalizing force to keep a communal cohesion.
It is something that I wish could be replicated without the troubled history as a cohesive human society would objectively benefit everyone.
It’s a shame that repeatng “Hey just be nice to everyone and don’t judge!” Doesn’t work!