The Color of God
In the contemporary religious doctrine of the Jews, Christians, and Moslems, God is the omnipotent, omniscient creator and benefactor to humanity. The modern theological concept is that there is only one God, and each of the major religions claims to be the latest and greatest voice of that God. If we read carefully the historical claims of Jews, Christians, and Moslems, however, we can detect an evolution and divergence of the concept of God.
Early Hebrews accepted that many gods existed, but that their God was the lord-of-lords – the king of Gods to whom all others were subservient – and that they, Hebrews, were the chosen people of that God-King. Moreover, God was humanlike in form. This conceptual tradition has roots in other cultures, and continues on in Christianity, where God morphs into a “trinity” – God the father, God the son, and God the Holy Ghost, and adopts many Zoroastrian concepts such as the duality of good and evil, and the eternal struggle between the forces of good (God) and the Forces of Evil (Satan). In Islam, the concept of the trinity is rejected, the likeness of God is unknown, and God has appointed Mohammed to convey God’s final and unalterable instructions to mankind – which involves considerable prostration and head-bumping ritual.
The moral and ethical tenants of these major formalized religions are often lost in the ritual - such as magically chanting Gods name, prostrations, flagellations, and head-bumping. The moral and ethical messages are also often lost in the mythology and fantasy, such as devils, spirits, angels, beasts with seven heads, a utopia-like, euphoric heaven, and a hell of everlasting suffering and torment.
Modern western society has more or less rejected this fantastical presentation. Unfortunately, many have also “thrown the baby out with the bath water,” so to speak. Modern moral and ethical tenants are too often adrift without any foundation. Many of the more liberal legislators and government officials seem to think that ethics and morals are totally arbitrary, with no natural adverse consequences – that the warnings against “deviant” behavior by the ancients was unjust, intolerant, and illogical ranting.
Some of these so-called modern ‘liberated” cultures openly tolerate homosexuality – allowing homosexuals to “marry” and to adopt children. Bestiality[1] is tolerated.
Pregnant women are allowed to sell their full-term unborn babies – to be killed in the birth canal and their fetal cells harvested[2]. Some cultures allow old people to be “euthanized,” sometimes against their will. Shades of the ancient evils of Moloch[3], Sodom, and Gomorrah still exist in modern societies.
Transcendent Reality also rejects the mythologies and rituals of the established major religions. But the issue of a basis for morality and ethics remains a serious concern. The omniscient, omnipotent god concept is also rejected. Instead, god is defined for what it actually is – collective social consciousness – the embodiment of a common identity and cause for the culture or society. And the role of religion is more properly defined as what it should be – collective social conscience – the harbinger of what is the collective greater good for that culture or society.
Transcendent Reality names the collective social consciousness of the tribe – the sense imbued in each member of the tribe of its collective identity and collective cause, as “god,” with a little “g.” Transcendent Reality names the collective social consciousness of the state – the sense imbued in each citizen of the state of its collective identity and collective cause, as “God,” with a capital “G.”
One might ask, then, what is the sense of the ultimate creator – the omniscient, omnipotent being controlling the universe, which we all too often ascribe as uniquely devoted to humans? Does each individual human feel a kinship with every other human - a sense that we are all have a common identity as homo sapiens, a common culture, and a common cause?
The answer from Transcendent Reality is that the human species itself has divided into races and sub-races, and a variety of cultures and sub-cultures – some compatible and others incompatible with each other. In broader terms, homo sapiens, like all other species, continue to undergo genetic speciation and cultural differentiation. It is the grand plan to enhance the chance that some form of the human species, and some form of human culture, survives chaos and catastrophe.
The dream of some liberal humanists of a homogenized world where all humans are blended into a single race and culture is highly improbable. While some inter-racial and inter-cultural unions do take place, by and large races and cultures do not intermingle markedly. In fact, the majority of the population of Earth, still tribal in organization, practice some form of cousin or related-kin marriage.
As far as the concept of an omnipotent, omniscient being, we cannot know if such is a valid concept, or if such a being exist. We cannot even see to the edge of the universe, and we do not even know if our universe is unique. Perhaps our universe is but a tiny bubble in a greater sea of universes. Despite our collective delusions to the contrary, our knowledge of the universe remains quite small.
Even in our concept of the Seventh Transcendence, and the evolution of a greater societal level above that of a state, not all of the different cultures and societies will embrace it. Moreover, rival super-states will emerge to challenge each other for resources, territory and dominance. So even the in eventual emergence of GOD as the collective social consciousness of a super-state form yet to be named, there will be other rival GODS.
Concerning the existing religions which claim allegiance to an eternal, omniscient and omnipotent being, we are certain of one conclusion concerning these major religions – each and every one of them are quite ethnocentric – i.e., limited in scope and reach. Despite their claims to be universal, each of the major religions is narrowly limited in scope to favor a particular culture. Their sense of the “greater good” is limited to the greater good of the particular culture, and not the greater good of the broader humanity. It is this local identification that leads us to conclude that each strong tribe has its own “god” or sense of the greater good limited to the greater good of that particular tribe. Similarly, with states, “God” is the sense of a particular state’s sense of greater good – for that state.
While we associate the term god with a tribal evolutionary level, and God with a state evolutionary level, not all coherent cultures fit so neatly into these categories. Many countries with internationally recognized borders are not true states.[4] Transcendent Reality uses the term state as a stage of social evolution, while the term statehood is a political statement that the international community has recognized fixed borders and a single governing unit within those borders, even if some of those governing units are incompetent to administer and govern within those borders.
Not all cultures are contained within internationally recognized borders.[5] Many recognized countries have borders enclosing more than one culture.[6] Conflicts between multiple cultures contained within a single political border can cause serious ethnic conflict, as the various ethnic groups and/or cultures vie for control of the territory.[7] What were former colonies in many cases, or part of a colonial territory, are now dependencies, despite being awarded statehood status by the larger community of nations.[8]
The point of this digression is that though in theory the evolutionary progress is from family to clan to tribe to state, in practice there are many elaborations on this theme due to a myriad of intervening circumstances.
If god is tribal collective social consciousness, and the tribal religion the tribal collective social conscience defining the greater collective good of the tribe, and, if God is state collective social consciousness, and the state religion the state’s collective social conscience defining the greater good of the state, then why do major religions claim that their God to be omniscient and omnipotent? The answer, metaphorically, lies in the eyes of a certain species of caterpillar. Not its real eyes, which are just tiny perturbations on its tiny head, but the large fake eyes on its body – intended to deceive potential predators that the caterpillar’s body is its head – and that it is much larger than what it really is – too big to eat.
Like the caterpillar’s fake eyes, there to deceive predators, all life forms appear to engage in deception as a tool of defense, and offense. What better psychological weapon in offense or defense for a culture than to claim their god is omnipotent and omniscient? It can and has rallied the faithful and routed the fearful.
And this then is the color of God – the color of deception.
That God has color (deception) does not diminish the importance of the collective social consciousness and its derivative, the collective social conscience – the sense of the greater collective good of the culture or society. In fact, such revelation makes it even more imperative that some conscience and rational mechanism be created to evaluate the efficacy of the collective greater good – so that we can identify it, measure it, judge it, and adjust it to increase our collective chance for survival, continuance-in-kind, and prosperity.
Transcendent Reality endeavors to actually measure the efficacy of the collective greater good because doing so will greatly aid us to discover the path to an even greater social good by embracing moral and ethical constructs that maximize and measurably promote our collective survival, continuance-in-kind, and prosperity in the next evolutionary transcendence level – so that the adherents of Transcendent Reality are an essential controlling component of that transcended level. If a moral or ethical tenet we examine does not meet promote this goal, it must be modified so that it does, or discarded and abandoned.
Footnotes:
[1] Sexual intercourse between humans and animals.
[2] The so-called partial birth abortion allows the partial birth of a baby, and before the head is free, the attending doctor pierces the baby’s brain with a pair of surgical scissors, killing the baby. The claim is that since the baby was not fully born, it was not murder, and since the baby is now dead, its cells are available for harvesting.
[3] Moloch (or Molech) was a fire god to whom the citizens of the city-state of Ur, the biblical Abraham’s ancestral home, offered their first-born children in sacrifice by burning them alive in clay jars, or directly on an alter. Abraham broke with this tradition by substituting an animal for his first-born child. Thereafter, the descendants of Abraham, in particular the Hebrew, were forbidden to sacrifice their children to Moloch, although some continued the practice.
[4] The kingdoms of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Oman, Qatar, United Emirates, and even Israel, just to name a few, have “statehood,” conferred upon them, but are more tribal in evolution. None of these countries, with the possible exception of Israel, could defend their own borders without the patronage of American or European powers.
[5] The Kurds are a fairly cohesive ethnic group whose members lie across Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. Kurds agitate for self-rule, but none of the host countries want to yield sovereignty to them.
[6] Most of the Middle East’s present borders do nor represent cultural or tribal boundaries, but were arbitrarily drawn up by Great Britain in accordance with how the organization of its bureau of foreign affairs was divided up to administer it colonial territories. When Great Britain gave up its colonies, the western powers accepted these departmental boundaries as state boundaries and conferred “statehood” upon the territory within.
[7] Most African countries have borders that enclose several tribes. Ethnic tension between tribes often erupts into open civil war because the tribes will not share political power.
[8] East Timor comes to mind as a recent example of a territory that has given state status, but in no way could it be considered a true state. East Timor came about because its small Christian population was perceived as being mistreated by the Muslim-dominated Indonesia of which it was a part. It was Christian Australia that pushed for East Timor to be removed from Indonesia’s control.