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?
Humans are inherently self-centered, it is a condition of the human psychological makeup that we feel we are the center of the universe. This is by necessity for survival; The human frailty/superpower of cognitive dissonance is what keeps us sane in this largely irrational world, where we effectively have no control over the conditions of our lives.
In order to survive, humans have to feel like they are special and there’s meaning in their lives when there it really isn’t. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
In other words, part of the human psychological makeup is to substitute a more soothing reality to replace the real but scary one, that we are nothing and the existence each of us is entirely random and without meaning.
I wonder what you think of my latest post here.
I’ve been thinking of the milk jug experiment and how rituals and god are coping mechanisms.
Ritual magic is something I practice along with meditation. But for me its just a habit trigger more so an actual ritual or devotion.