More Thoughts on God

A commenter on a post on the Orthosphere said that positing the reality of God did not really solve any mysteries or explain the origin of the universe since there was still the question of why God is there and why he should bother creating anything. This is a standard atheist challenge which goes along the lines of who designed the designer and, up to a point, it's a fair question.

But only up to a point. That's because it fundamentally misunderstands what God is, effectively putting him in the category of things or phenomena rather than what causes any things or phenomena to be in the first place. For the question to be in any way valid God would have to be part of creation rather than what he is which is that which makes creation. He is the basic cause from which all effects derive and to which everything eventually returns though in what form it returns depends on the thing itself. However, that, which is the story of self-consciousness, free will and spiritual evolution, is a question for another time.

I commented on the thread under the post that it’s no good asking why God is there. He is there. That is just the root fact and if it weren’t we wouldn’t even be able to ask the question. There would be no one to ask it. God is the fundamental I AM of the universe. If that I AM were not already there in him, it could never be in us. Nothing comes from nothing and things give birth to themselves. Human beings are free. Even those that deny it intellectually do not live as though they had no freedom. That freedom does not exist on a material level. It cannot. The material world by itself is determined. It must come from outside the system of cause/effect, action/reaction and it must come from something that has it in the first place. You could say the same about love and beauty which in their higher forms are totally different to their reflections in the material world and so cannot possibly derive from them. Their roots are in the sky not the earth, in spirit not matter, and they point inevitably to God, showing us something of his nature. 

As for creation, God creates because he is creative and wants to express and reveal himself. He is a dynamic God not a static one and for him not to create would be a limitation which means he would not be God.

However, one can go further than this and say that the real reason God creates is because of love which can only be fully known when one becomes many. Then the whole world process is to bring the many, or as many of the many as wish to since they have freedom, into conscious recognition of their identity with the one. Spirit or oneness is perfect but spirit and matter together, joined together, integrated and consciously made one, is better than perfection. So, God creates to become more than God which is a mystery but one we can start to understand by seeing that perfection that could not become more than it already was would not be perfect. The way for God to become more is to introduce more God or gods which in the fullness of time is what we shall be if we accept the call. This is accomplished through creation.

I would not say any of this proves the Christian God as such, that comes later,  but it does point to the fact that the universe is based on consciousness and freedom, and that these derive from I AM which we can call a person or The Person. If the foundation of the universe were not a Person then the universe would not be intelligible but this is really something we can only know on the level of intuition. No amount of intellectual philosophising can do more than point us in the right direction. For God does not reveal himself to the intellect but to the heart.