The Question

The question, for me, is not "Is there a God?", but rather "What is God?".

Keeping the net cast as widely as possible for an answer, I think I am now comfortable with the idea that God is most likely not a person with impressive whiskers perched upon a cloud. The sky is vast, but rather busy these days. Nor is God "owned" by any particular group, nation, or doctrine.

God, from my own observation, has little, if anything, to do with religion. All religion is earthly and manufactured often to very earthly ends, be they good or bad. God, indeed, may be good or bad, but is probably neither. Or both.

God, as the energy of life, may reside beyond and before human existence. Or, as consciousness or spirit, may live only in each of us.

I have felt, been aware of, and noted the absence of something in myself and others. Perhaps that thing could be explained as madness, the little voice that speaks rarely, but with usually impeccable timing. I would probably fit the same diagnosis as applied in recent years to an Archbishop of Canterbury. Though I wouldn't like to be at the back of the queue for a lifeboat behind everyone who has heard that voice.

There is something beyond what we know, and scientists are becoming as arrogant as was the church in defending their claim to the universal truth. Humans will probably never reach a universal truth if one existed. We haven't been around long enough to hold the facts other than those we can postulate through conjecture.

The idea of spirit may be easily deniable in a framework that humans understand, but that framework was not built to understand the spirit. It tends to leave out of scope those things that cannot be rationalized. It is then a leap (of faith) to state that such things do not exist.

Finally, I am probably agnostic (or maybe even that doesn't fit as its meaning applies to a specific belief), but I think much atheism is directed at freeing one's self from living under a tyranny (of The Church). Whilst recognising this tyranny and others like it, my own position moves in the direction of a spirituality that is outside the notion of religion and takes a view, based on my own experience, that the question is not "Does something (call it God if you want to) exist?", but "What is that something?".

Footnotes:
1. I find it odd that pretty much all civilisations have felt the need to worship something. Probably independently.

2. I am lost to justify the time I have wasted thinking about this question.

3. Actually, the beauty of this position is that there's no need at all to have this discussion with anyone. If someone tried to subject me to religious tyranny it would be a matter to take up arms for, rather than reason, as the issue lies beyond the limits of reason.