Regarding Them Commentary: What About God?

Inference from Limitations on Truth from Regarding Them Commentary: What About Objective Reality?: Because of the universal religious claim that God is inherently beyond human conception, conceptions of God are neither right nor wrong, only different. And those conceptions are entirely exhausted by the four possibilities created by the fact that God has to be conceived of as either personal (having qualities that embodied humans also have) or impersonal (not having human qualities) and either immanent (within the universe) or transcendent (outside of the universe). (In reference to the work of Rev. Fred Campbell.) Thus there are only four possible ways to conceive of god:

1. A personal/ immanent God, (Deism, human qualities within the universe)

2. A personal/ transcendent God, (Mysticism, human qualities outside the universe)

3. An impersonal/ immanent God, (Naturalism, non-human qualities inside the universe) or

4. An impersonal/ transcendent God, (Humanism, non-human qualities outside the universe)

Therefore all conceptions of God are all correct and incorrect exactly to the degree that they constrain God within human body-based conceptions, which are the only kinds of conceptions that we have available. And they are not incompatible with each other, just different ways of getting at different aspects of what God must be since we have consistently postulated that God is beyond human comprehension. Any one person can use any or all of them at their discretion in any combination. Another option is simply not to consider God at all, there is no requirement that one must attempt to conceive of that which is beyond them.

Asserting the completeness of these four options of God concepts is an assertion that is empirically testable, thus it is a question that science can verify or perhaps falsify. Specifically, cognitive linguists can collect data on conceptions of God and figure out if there are any other actual conceptual structures that occur.

Corollary to Inference #1: Conceptions of “objective” reality are constrained by exactly the same limitations as those of our conceptions of God, but are not contained by an equally simple conceptual structure. Every conception that can be generated by science occurs within a cultural and historical context that strongly influences its content. Thus science as a process of on-going conceptual development has far a greater potential capability to thoroughly explain complex phenomena. (reference: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn)

Regarding Them Commentaries:

Regarding Them Commentary: What About Objective Reality?

Regarding Them Commentary: What About God?

Regarding Them Commentary: What About Morality?