God

"For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." - Matthew 18:20

I am not Christian or theist as it is commonly understood.

However, all people are theists, because God/god is a person's introverted reification of community expectations for behaviour and inter-subjective understanding of our world. If that doesn't make sense, let me explain:

- God does not need to be called "God", Allah, etc., or known through anthropocentric metaphor for it to exist. I use "God" only as shorthand. It does not need to be associated with any religion.
- God is a projection of the human brain, like numbers, space and shape. You can't help but believe in God. Everyone is a theist.
- God arises out of an individuals interaction with a community. The concept is used to explain the workings of the world and morality.

Am I equating 'nature' with God? Yes, absolutely. A so called 'athiest' would be unable to communicate about the material world and moral behaviour without referring to 'nature' - although they could call "nature" something else.

Athiest: "But I see nature as something materialistic, not some old man with a white beard in the sky".
Me: "Old man in the sky" is idolatry, so good on you. You are most pious, friend.

Christians and others have talked about knowing God through his creation. You may reject this dualism and the metaphor of God as a man/father. But you have to realise these are metaphors which people found to have great explanatory value in the past. They didn't have our science and empiricism to explain things, so it was perfectly reason them to use anthropocentric metaphors to explain things. My contention is that these metaphors are pointing to the same thing that 'nature' and science points to. Of course the metaphors aren't 'real', they're metaphors! However people have in the past reified these metaphors - which was actually a form of idolatry. Such reification cannot be maintained intellectually anymore, but that does not mean the metaphors and what they point to can't, because they can, just as people talk about 'nature' without being mocked as backward idiots.

So I've destroyed the fedora-wearing retards, but what about morality - how does God or nature fit into that? In the context of morality, God refers to community expectations which have been idealistically separated from the community in order to enhance their status and protect them from societal critique (in the past, that protection doesn't work much nowadays).