God as an electric field: No metaphor is perfect, of course. Say you have an electric field between two charged plates. If a positively charged particle is placed in this field, it will move to the negatively charged plate, and a negatively charged particle will move towards the postively charged plate. For this metaphor to work, you have to forget any emotional connotations with the words "positive" and "negative." Forget relativistic morality as well. It is assumed that moving in one direction in this field is morally preferable to moving in the other. Call the positvely charged plate "good" and the negatively charged plate "evil." If you yourself are negatively charged (a "good" person), you will move towards the positively charged plate. (See, this is why you can't call negative "good" or "bad" in this metaphor.)
Free will enters into this scenario this way: you can choose whether you're negatively charged or positively charged. Or rather, you choose your actions, and "good" actions will move you one way and "bad" actions will move you another. So with this metaphor, moving toward the positive plate is aligning your will with the Will of God. When you actually reach the positive plate, you would be in Heaven, or perhaps attained Nirvana or enlightenment, and when you reach the negative plate, you would be in Hell (figuratively, perhaps). (This is assuming there's an end to the journey.)
So in this metaphor, what exactly is God? God is assumed to be good, so you can't quite say simply that God is the field itself. God is the field, looking at it from the point of view that motion in the "good" direction is preferable to motion in the "bad" direction.
In this metaphor, God is not Omniscient, or Omnipotent. God is not defined here as being a Creator or First Cause (although It might be.) By pulling the universe in a ceratin direction, God would be perpetually creating, so God didn't just create the universe and then stop creating. "Intelligent Design" kind of fits in here, in that the God-field could also be responsible evolution, and yet it may not be intelligent. Whether the God-field actually has intelligence or sentience is not stated in the metaphor. Man [1] is not made in God's image in any literal sense, though you could say Man is figuratively in God's image in that Man has a conscience (hopefully, all of us do, though I wonder about sociopaths) that tell us when we're moving in the "right" direction or the "wrong" direction. [2] Why does God allow "bad" things to happen to "good" people? You'll have to be more specific. What bad things are you talking about? Natural disasters and diseases? God-as-a-field wouldn't stop these things, whether it has intelligence or not. What Man does to Man? God doesn't interfere with free will.
(I might add more to this later. Such as, "Why believe in such a God?" Those good old materialist atheists would say "Where's the proof any such field exists?")
[1] Yes, I'm all into semantics, and here I am saying "Man." Get over it, already. :P
[2] Yes, "conscience" and "guilt" might be "just" socially programmed into us. Or, it might not.

From the Kaballah: (coming soon. ish)

Philip Dick's Metaphor: (actual direct quote coming when I can find the book) If you're not familiar with the Kaballah, this won't make much sense. This comes from either "Valis" or "The Divine Invasion." In the Kaballah, the first and least dense sephira is Kether and the last and most dense is Malkuth. On a baseball field, Kether is the pitcher and Malkuth is the catcher. The ball is the universe. After Kether throws the ball (the Big Bang), He no longer has any control over what happens to the ball. Malkuth, the catcher, though, is telekinetically guiding the ball into Her mit. In my God-field metaphor, what I called the God-field is not the entirety of God, "just" the emanation/sephirah Malkuth.

From Vedanta (via Alan Watts): God is the Universe playing hide and seek with Itself. (more to come)

The Truth: Is some kind of combination of all the above. Maybe. (Which isn't finished yet.) Back to writings