- That of a God, or gods, who are personalisations of the collective will of all of those who have ever lived, and perhaps those of those who still live as well, who have ever worshipped the diety. The emotional connection of worship, forms a connection to a community that one takes part in. "Union with the divine", under this model, would not be a loss of individual identity, any more than would the event of someone becoming part of a community.
Is it necessarily the case that a spirit will consist of a unitary, indivisible consciousness? That is, a consciousness, no portion of which would properly be a consciousness in its own right?
The Hindus have spoken of merging with one's diety, which some have seen as being the disappearance of one's own identity and individual consciousness. Is a god, perhaps, a collective entity consisting of the community of all of its worshippers, who have "joined it", its consciousness arising from the interactions of those present? Much as ours arise from the interactions of our neurons, which, retaining their individual existence, nevertheless together support an entity (one's mind) with a life of its own, which, in a sense, those individually existing cells are a part of? (Really, it is the brain, the hardware, that they are part of, but the impulses within them are part of what creates the mind, which is a quality arising from the interrelations of those impulses).
If so, could more than one consciousness arise out of those interactions and given the free willed nature of those in the community, would the resulting consciousness enjoy a crisp, well defined reality, or would it exist in a dream like state, drifting into and out of existence, merging with other effective consciousnesses arising, or dividing into others, as associations form, split and merge within that community, that it arises out of? The distinctions between those different consciousnesses being as vague and imprecise, as those between different parts of the community, and a certain degree of overlap between them arising, much as different parts of the community will share members, and discussions?
- That of a God, or gods, who inhabit a virtual world created by a linking of our subconsciences, who make use of our abilities, perhaps without our even knowing it.
- That of a God, or gods, who exists in relatively static form in the subconscious mind of each of us, as a preprogrammed set of impulses. Perhaps inhabiting the virtual world of possibility seven, but not in such a dynamic form, able to change only through the slow change in the character of the species, and its subbranches. Or, perhaps only attaining some sort of life through the logical substructure of our personal interactions.
- That of a God, or gods, who aren't omnipotent. Perhaps they have to struggle with ill intentioned opponents. Perhaps there is so much going on, that they're struggling to keep up with it all, and are doing the best that they can.
- That of a God, or gods, who aren't omniscent. Perhaps, their experience of life is so alien to our own, that they have trouble understanding, or even imagining, what is right and wrong, for those of our internal make up. Perhaps, given the limits of their judgement, mistakes will be made, and unjust misfortunes will follow.
Question: Are those the only models possible ?
I seriously doubt it, nor, even if one or more of those models is applicable, would it be complete. There would be many questions left unanswered, and many more detailed models that would build on it.
However, at the moment, these are the ones that I will consider. What is sought here is not a final, all encompassing truth. We are unlikely to ever find that, even if the gods are so fully conscious, that a finite subcollection of them should be in possession of it. Rather, what we seek is a reasonable, educated guess, all that faith can ever really be - accepting that as our understanding grows, it may be elaborated on, or discredited, and replaced entirely. Certitude, even on an individual level, of the validity of the truths that we imagine to have found, is, at best, a relative thing. If we are not altogether in the dark, we never can never step out of the shadow of uncertainty.
On the matter of doctrine, we are agnostics. It is in the process by which our theological concepts arise, itself, that we place our faith. Shall we continue?