Updating the GOD model, in PANTHEISM @ Victor's Way in Ireland

Updating the GOD model

In popular imagination the verbal icon GOD (Greek: theos) is generally taken to mean ‘a superior¹ power or force.’² That’s the basic GOD model.³

Primitive⁴ humans experienced individual natural powers/forces, such as wind, fire, water, the sun, the moon, father, mother, particular animals and so on as superior powers, hence Gods.⁵ They were worshipped, placated and sacrificed to as tactic to increase personal survival capacity.

When secondary phase⁶ humans began to self-organise into hordes, groups, tribes, nations, that is to say, into complex eco-systems, they invented artificial constraints sets(i.e. orders) to improve the survival capacity of the individual within the group and of the group itself.⁷ These artificial constraints sets served as advanced, because conducive to increased survival capacity) God models.^8,9,10

Phase 3 begins with the emergence of science as discrete observation and analysis of the whole (Greek: pan) natural world. That should have created a natural explanation of the powers that create nature, thus of a natural GOD model, but did not.¹¹

The tertiary GOD model¹² now emerging is abstracted from nature itself,¹³ that is to say, from the phenomena of the whole cognizable universe.¹⁴ By abstracting out the seemingly endless variability of the more or less complex eco-systems that comprise the whole cognizable universe,¹⁵ the GOD model arrived at proposes that

ORDER (‘as such’) is GOD

In other words, order¹⁶ itself, more specifically, the capacity to generate and enforce order, is GOD.In short, whenever or wherever order emerges, that is GOD.¹⁷ Moreover, order/GOD emerges as response¹⁸ to dis-order.

1. ‘Superior’ (i.e. the henotheist (secondary phase) observer’s superimposition) because pre-existing, i.e. as ground or basic order generating operation. If the ground/basic operating system of ordering (i.e. GOD) is considered (i.e. modelled as) ‘superior’, then the emergent order elaborations of that system (i.e. the human or any other phenomenon) is considered (i.e. modelled as) ‘inferior’, i.e. as a sub-systems. Pantheists believe that the basic order generating system (i.e. GOD) is simple/common, albeit with almost unlimited wholly recursive self-differentiation flexibility, hence without definable qualities (named as the nirguna Brahman in the Upanishads). All its (n) localised (hence ecological) elaborations (to wit, named the saguna Brahman) emerge as (ever more) complex (albeit local, reduced flexibility) ordering systems that display local properties/capacities.

2. A ‘power or force’ happens as application of a set (or platform) of constraints, variously called rules, laws, codes and so on. Application of a power or force is always violent. A constraints set operates as order. Such constraints sets (possibly grids or lattices operating as orders) when activated force adaptation, thereby sustaining and/or increasing survival (i.e. continuance). Hence constrains sets (.e. orders) are intelligent. Constraints sets (i.e. orders) come in two forms (with seemingly endless variations, i.e. differential iterations), namely natural and artificial (i.e. man-made tools).

3. A God (i.e. as ordering, hence constraints system) model serves as individual and group role model. The model, an artificial, hence cultural social and personal engineering construct is designed (by priests/elders) to increase the survival capacity of a group and its members. Man designed God models serve as Artificial Intelligence tools.

4. i.e. primary, i.e. naïve, infantile, immature, (archaic).

5. The natural powers/gods, just like the basic order generating platform, i.e. GOD, were apolitical.

6. Transitional, i.e. adolescent (mid-life) i.e. survival oriented, hence political.

7. Compliance with an order, i.e. constraints set, natural or artificial, meaning submitting to a God’s power, be that the power of the sun, moon or the great white buffalo, or, the Traffic Code, the Ten Commandments or ‘The Noble 8-fold Path’, is rewarded (with selection and survival), non-compliance punished (with de-selection and extinction).

8. Depending on local (i.e. eco-) circumstances, each group, for instance an Israelite tribe or Hindu caste as unique eco-system invented and then submitted to its own (singular) constraints set, i.e. it’s one GOD, and designed and then (often) personalised IT (as a sort of superman) to optimise group internal harmony (as anti-entropy) + comfort, consolation and salvation, thereby providing maximum defence and attack (i.e. eco-) work capacity.

9. The secondary model usually included, for comfort, reassurance and vanity’s (i.e. identity’s) sake, a fake, hence fraudulent creation + salvation story, such as Genesis and Exodus in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and the speculations surrounding the origins and functions of Prajapati, Atman and Brahman in the Upanishads.

10. The changes from natural to artificial then back to natural (creation) powers/Gods happen as paradigm shifts, each shift being violently resisted by the local order enforcers and primary beneficiaries, i.e. the priests, and most academic theologians too.

11. The secondary GOD models were either denied or ridiculed by scientists (as observers of nature). But they were not replaced. That’s because of the overriding political expediency of the secondary GOD models.

12. The tertiary GOD model, like the primary one, is apolitical in that it applies indiscriminately (and indifferently and blindly) to all recursively generated order systems.

13. Rather than from human, indeed social need. The Gods of the many great and lesser religions, such as Jehova, Shiva, Ganesh and so on, were invented as survival enhancement tools, hence as bits of artificial intelligence.

14. i.e. as in pantheism.

15. Thus arriving at what is common to all natural phenomena, so to speak the common denominator or ‘ground.’ In short, the pantheist’s GOD is not cognizable because absolutely common because prior to all, the latter emerging as uncommon (i.e. unique, hence cognizable) applications-as-one-up-order-generating-platforms of the common order generating platform.

16. So far no-one knows how or why order (indeed sequence) emerges from seeming chaos (i.e. disorder, randomness ≈ entropy). That it does could be deemed the original and awesome miracle. Why the Big Bang should have produced, evolved nano-order systems such as sub-atomic particles/vortices/waves and later on chemical molecules is a complete mystery.

17. Hence the Upanishad conclusion: tat-tvam-asi, meaning: ‘Thou art that,’ whereby ‘thou’ refers to an emerged, thus cognizable because formal order (for instance the saguna Brahman) and ‘that’ refers to the pre-form or formless basic order generating platform (or principle), i.e. God or (nirguna) Brahman. Thus: ‘Aham Brahman asmi’, i.e., ‘I (all this, the whole world) am Brahman.’

18. The response is ubiquitous because of the arrangement of the ground (possibly as quantum concentrate) of un-emerged, i.e. ‘in waiting’ state of what will emerge when random motion, i.e. turbulence (such as sheer violence of the Big Bang) is applied, as the cognizable universe.