I don’t post on this forum very often. My friend Daniel is a moderator for it. However, I’ve been thinking so much that I felt like sharing this was necessary. Talking about this to people like my close family and friends hasn’t really helped too much so far.
Philosophy seems to be dated in at this point. There is contemporary advanced philosophy in various fields, and it does seem to help people understand at the core more about very specific situations or cases. Rather than the broad view of things.
My birth was premature; not literally, but the way my theology operates, evolves and grows with me has been nothing less than remarkable and honestly, I wished society would speed up to where I find myself now.
The fundamental understanding of my faith is rooted in the concept that God is not a being but rather a concept. If you look at religions’ past, polytheistic, or many Gods, societies imbodied this idea that beings were attached to concepts. The God of war, the goddess of love, and so on. Monotheistic, or one God, societies combined all the concepts of all the Gods that existed into one unitary God. The God of war is also the God of peace. The God of hate is also the God of love.
There is a new branch of thought forming. It’s still too early to tell exactly where it is heading. It will replace the monolith of monotheism eventually. This idea is to replace the being of God with a concept that is God. Instead of saying there is a God of war or a Goddess of love you would say that war or love itself is God. I see this often when people write silly things like Peace or Love in their religious bio on Facebook.
That begs the question. If God is a concept rather than a being, what is the concept? Love, peace and happiness are all great and wonderful things, but all three concepts are finite. For much of history those things didn’t exist in the way we know them today. On a very rudimental level, somethings have always seemed to exist. Concepts like time, space, maybe even the very idea of existence could be the basis of theological thought. I think therefore I am.
I have started to study and understand this core idea of a dystopian science fiction novel Parable of the Sower and its protagonist and her faith that she calls Earthseed. Earthseed may be the easiest concept to grasp, but it may be the most difficult to develop. In Earthseed the concept surrounding God is change. Simple, right? Change is a very simple concept however its implications on the history and future of our species is infinitely complex.
There is a pitfall in this. Change happens constantly. Everyday at every time. Change may the only constant in the entire Universe. However, we try to think of whatever caused the change as the God rather than change itself. Then we embody the Gods, or beings, of change rather than change itself. My pitfall is pantheism, or the idea that nature is God. My type of pantheism, which also leaves room for multiple universes and a deistic God, may be the physical embodiment of change.
I call God The Omniverse. I refer to it simply as Thee, which I know means “you” in Old English. Everybody is part of this journey we call life anyways, so I find it fitting to call it that. The Omniverse isn’t God though, as much as I would like it to be. My entire idea rests on the fact that change is possible. The Omniverse changed so it ultimately created human beings that are highly known for their wisdom and utility. We have our flaws, but we are currently eight billion strong on this planet.
So, how do we develop a small concept that a concept itself, like change, is God? Well, there are arguably positive and negative changes, even Earthseed touches on that. Transhumanism and futurism seem to be the sciences which try to perceive the best possible outcomes. Will they happen? Most of them don’t, or if they do it’s completely different from the way it was imagined.
There also seems to be a prevailing idea that many people take that nations and civilizations start small, grow larger, become wealthy and then fall. We may be experiencing the wealth of our prosperity right now just to begin the downfall of the nation, the civilization and possibly our species. That is daunting. Another problem may arise that it is possible that humans simply aren’t able to develop new technologies, become wiser than they already are or are in some way too limited as a multicellular being can do.
All kinds of pitfalls exist, some of them more serious while others less. There is a type of philosophy of transhumanism called extropianism. Extropianism is a field which values most the human condition and how far we can reach beyond our very basic needs. It values practicality and pragmatic ways to help us rather than blanket statements over how it will either end or not.
Let’s argue for a moment that we aren’t just in a wealthy period that will eventually collapse, and while I do see that as a very real possibility, let’s just argue for the moment that this ascension will continue to grow for at least another few hundred years. Earthseed is a rudimentary faith builder that sees change as God and as far as I can tell, positive change is accelerating faster as we get more comfortable with our TVs and cars.
A novel approach to these concepts has arisen a new theology. Syntheism. While there is a fledging faith called Syntheism, syntheism as I will discuss is a theology rather than a religion. The idea is a hybrid of syn – or to work for or create, and theism – pertaining to God. The theology sees God as a concept rather than a being, and that we are working, or creating, God rather than being ruled over it.
If change is the only consist than all possibilities will arise at some point. If syntheism is accurate then the change we create in the world and beyond is God. The Universe is a vessel for all of us to grow and comprehend more, to change. I term this change the pantheosis. All becoming God, or all becoming this change. And I am confident that no matter what happens to us here on Earth, this change will always exist, for extropy, for syntheism and for the pantheosis.