Question:

What other models can you think of, that seem to answer the objection that you raised to the standard model of divinity found in Christendom?

3. That of a God, or gods, whose existence, while a matter of objective reality, independent of the thoughts and feelings of any worshippers, exist in a semiformed, dreamlike state, brought to full consciousness through the emotional connection to the worshipper, of prayer.
   
   This might offer one possible answer to the question of evil.
   
   The question is this : how can caring dieties allow harm to be done, to those who don't deserve it? And yet, if such dieties do not exist, why the common experience of seeing prayers answered?
   
   For that matter, why do dieties even need to have you pray to them, in the first place? Presumably, they already know, what you are going to ask for, right?
   
   One possible answer to these questions might be this. Suppose, for the sake of discussion, that the world we entered, when we dreamed, was a real one, of our own creation, with thinking, feeling inhabitants, who we could know, only from the images, and sensations, in the dreams. In one's dreams, much of one's character will go away, and people will often do things, that they would never do in a waking state, sometimes even forgetting who they are.
   
   Entire fictitious backgrounds can be part of the dream, and fully believed, for the moment. If harm is done to the characters in a dream, by the dreamer, noone imagines that this means that the dreamer is a bad person. Much of the dreamer's personality was disengaged at the time.
   
   If the inhabitants of that dream world wished to gain the assistance of the dreamer, the god of their world, they would have to make him a little more conscious, so he would be emotionally aware of the impact of his actions, and of his own place in that world. If, indeed, not of his own separate existence, depending on the nature of the dream.
   
   Perhaps the diety must be brought, ever so slightly, into a more focused consciousness, as that dreamer would have to be, in our previous example, for the will to act to arise? Or even the awareness that there was something to be willed? And that it is our continued petitions (and attention) that creates the well defined pocket of consciousness that we think of as the god, acting as the eyes and ears of this little piece of the divinity, tying it to the world, much as our own senses bind us to external reality?
   
   
   
   Maybe the gods exist separately of us, in the dreamlike state described above, and that metaphor presented before is a description of our existence. That our world is such a dream world, created through the collective action of the dieties who take part in its functioning, real in the sense that the images that form its substance, behave in a consistent fashion. Maybe, the dieties themselves are real, on a level which we aren't. (Much as if we were to create a virtual world inside a computer simulation,we would be real, on a level that the virtual objects in that world would not be). Perhaps, they are half formed beings, far more complex than us, but in their infancy, their consciousnesses still forming, in response to the input coming in, from that common dream, if nowhere else. We, ourselves, and the universe we know, being part of that dream.





4. That of a God, or gods who are fully conscious, but connect to our reality, in some sense, through us. Perhaps they need to hear from us, in order to know what is happening here, and what its impact on those living here is, not being able to peer into our minds until we open those minds up to them. Or, perhaps, they are unable to act in this world, until we open a door for them, of a sort, through prayer.





5. That of a God, or gods, who exist as a result of our belief in them, and are merely a personalisation of our collective will, drawing their strength from the power that we invest in them.
   
   One version of this would hold that the power that the diety wields comes from the worshippers themselves.
   
   
   
   Another might posit the existence of a divine spirit, its thoughts unformed, which the act of our worship impacts on.
   
   Let us consider the formation of a human personality, out of the relatively unstructured potentiality of the newborn human brain. Perhaps, there are some preset pathways in the brain, that allow the sensory impressions coming in to be processed, and help shape the mind forming within the network of neural pathways in the brain. But it is the response to those experiences, that help to form the mind. Now, suppose that something analagous to this process described the formation of the divine consciousness, with the influence of our emotional connection to the divinity functioning as a sort of sensory experience for the divine spirit. Influence from the outside.
   
   To use a technological analogy, the human brain is like the hardware of a computer, and the human mind the operating system of that computer. Now consider the infinite intellect of the divine spirit, postulated here. The programming of the 'divine hardware', if you will, that our influence would represent, would create a mind, but it could only be a finite mind, that would not make use of the entirety of the divine potential. A dream in the only partially formed mind of God, the totality that the god that this mind would be percieved by us as being.
   
   But would it be a given that only one such dream might form? Or might there be many, each holding the hopeless but inevitable wish to grow and expand the portion of the divine potential under its control, until it became, not merely a god, but the mind of God, the totality, itself? Wishing this, much as we might wish to achieve our full potential, but unable, because its potential is too vast. Also, realising that only in doing so, could it be sure that one day, it might not be absorbed by a more powerful dream, a dominant personality, and fade away.
   
   Under this model of reality, which I offer merely as a possibility, would the identity of an "individual" deity be something that would be precisely definable? As in, "I can specify that I am worshipping THIS spirit, because I worship THE spirit I contacted in a shamanic trance"? Perhaps the "one" spirit that one contacted included and overlapped many, its crystal clear existence an illusion, held into solidity by one's focus on part of the shifting totality that makes up the diety, dissolving back into the psychic sea as soon as attention shifts away?
   
   That in prayer, by arousing part of the diety's consciousness, we give temporary solidity to that which is, of itself, fluid, and partially awaken that part which we have grabbed a hold on, to a less dream like state? If such a portion maintained a more solid existence for a while, might it gain a sense of itself, and experience the dissolution back into the psychic sea, that a cessation of attention would bring, as a sort of death, that it might wish to avoid, leading it to seek continued worship?
   
   If one's eyes never open and one's ears never hear, and the outside world never makes its presence known, what else can be hoped for but a stupor, after a while, and a drift into oblivion?






We continue ...