The Concept of God

[Ben Dhyan]

Alright: in light of this, what would be your answer to the question in the OP? Taking the "concept of god" to be a generalization of all these labels that merely point at god, can a concept of god (in particular) really make sense?

Perhaps in the sense that at least it's a starting point for the journey towards true understanding, a journey that ultimately reveals that the starting point was one of the most fundamental of erroneous misunderstanding of mind function for dealing with the ineffable, and the journey itself is all about the correction of these errors of mind comprehension.

It is ironic that true understanding is not realized by gaining greater knowledge by conscious effort, but by losing the belief that one can actually know reality by dividing the inherent unity of reality into two parts, that which is me (subject), and that which is not me (object), and subsequently mistaking the resultant conceptual permutations as being true expressions of the one reality.

 

[Sunstone]

The "concept" was first outlined by John Locke as the "general idea" of a thing, for which we abstract a generalization from a large sampling of particulars. While equating things that are essentially different, we ignore the distinctions and abstract a greater whole. While no two leafs are the same, we can address a 'leaf' and communicate a necessary idea about the world.

Does a "concept of god" make sense? Does it make any less sense than the concept of a leaf?

An interesting question! It seems to me that concepts are no more the reality than a map is its terrain. Thus, if they make any sense at all, they might be said to make sense in so far as they correspond to something, much like a map could be said to make sense in so far as it corresponds to a terrain. At least, that's my rough impression. The devil is in the details.

 

[Vyruufin]

God is the universe, he's also the collective unconscious of human will. He's everything, and more.

 

[1137]

God is the universe, he's also the collective unconscious of human will. He's everything, and more.

Why say that and what reasoning supports it?