THE SPIRIT GOD AN INTOLERANT CONCEPT

God is spirit.  By definition the being that is the origin of all but itself would need to be.
 
A spirit is an entity that has no parts or shape. It is non-material. It is not like a gas for gas has molecules and parts and ingredients. When people think of spirits they think of something untouchable or undetectable like gas. This error leads to them failing to see how strange the notion of spirit is. It is totally unlike gas.

 

Particle physics talks about massless particles.  They are called massless not because they are spirits but because their invariant mass is zero.  But these particles are not spirits.  In fact that they look like nature's attempt to make spirits shows that spirits are nonsense.  They are still particles.  The photon is a particle and it carries electromagnetism.  The gluon is another example. If you want to call them spirits then do so but no longer pretend that science and religion are separate.  If physics finds spirits in nature and these spirits are more like things than ghosts or goblins or gods then that says something to religion.  It is not what religion wants to hear!
 
Keith Ward says we do not understand how mental or spiritual causes result in physical effects. We cannot understand how the mind moves an arm. We do not even understand how physical causes result in further physical causes and effects. Ward would say that if we cannot understand how a spirit can affect material and physical things, we must remember that we do not even know how physical can affect physical. But we know physical affects physical. We cannot know if the mind is non-physical and still able to affect the physical. We are only guessing that our minds are like spirits and can affect the physical.

Some of us think that our minds are not material things but like spirits. The first and main thing you will ever experience is your own mind. You cannot measure it or weigh it so it is like a ghost living in your skin. This causes the intuition that there are other immaterial or spiritual minds. But this intuition is caused by an error. If a primitive brain was made in a lab and had an eye it would think there was nothing to it but sight and would be unaware of being physical. It would experience existence as if there was sight but no eyes. It would feel like a ghost just because it cannot know or sense that it is a material being.

Believers in spirit look into their minds and think their thoughts are spirit. But we experience them as if they were not. For example, when you see a cube in your mind's eye it looks real. It is not an entity without parts and without shape. But where is it? There is no evidence that it exists except in your inner perception. Science says there is no cube inside your head so people conclude that it was some non-material force, your soul or spirit, that was able to create the image. You will notice that you need second-hand evidence that the cube is not "real". Even if you are spirit, you cannot know this by experience. You have no direct evidence that spirit exists. You deduct it from the fact that the cube you see in your head is scientifically unverifiable and nobody but you knows you see it. But it would be wiser to say that you don't know how you could see the cube in your head and leave it at that. Attributing it to the agency of your spirit is just making a guess. In fact, spiritual powers making a shape would be a contradiction. Spirit by definition is formless.

I can watch the activities of my mind without getting involved. In meditation, instead of emptying your mind you simply let the thoughts happen. You do not make them happen. You take the role of a spectator and not a participant. It is said that this proves that you must be a spiritual being. The believers say you are your mind and you take the role of spectator of your brain. You have your brain working by itself as you look on as a spectator! But this denies that the experience could be an illusion. Any experience can be. It may be that you turn off your perception that you are a participant.

 

You cannot know if you are spirit or a soul and so you cannot know if God, who is spirit, exists. You cannot even know if the concept of spirit makes sense because you cannot experience spirit. So why do you say spirit exists? It is all down to metaphysical speculation. But such a doctrine should be based on experience and nothing else. Spirit cannot be experienced so we should not waste time speculating about it or telling people that it exists.
 
Those who say they experience the Holy Spirit actually mean they feel good and feel an influence in their hearts. But their religion tells them that what they feel is the result of the Spirit's work and not the Spirit himself or itself.
 
The bottom line is that there is no reason at all to believe in spirit. There is no excuse even. It is people who pretend they know more than they do who go on about spirit. It sounds humble to say, "Spirit. Maybe it's possible. I don't know." But that is agnosticism. It means you cannot affirm if God exists or not as far as the concept of spirit is concerned. Spirit is the most basic and essential concept in relation to understanding what is meant by God. It is a waste of time trying to prove God when it cannot be proven or adequately verified. But is the I don't know as humble as it seems? You are still claiming that it might be possible. But you cannot know that. How do you know it might be? You are still claiming to know what you cannot know. The sensible view is that you have no reason to even consider spirit to be a possibility and so you don't accept it as such. You will then be accused of pretending you know that there is no might be as far as spirit is concerned when you cannot know that. But what is the least arrogant? A person who says there might be no magic is more rational than a person who says there might be magic simply because he has no reason to suspect magic exists in reality. When you take the default position which is to exclude the possibility of the supernatural you are in fact not arrogant at all for you have no other option.

Descartes thought, "I think therefore I am." The argument is that I must exist because I can think and there must be somebody there to have the thoughts. In reality all I can know is that thinking is occurring. I have to reason, "There must be something to experience the thinking."  If I have to reason I could be wrong. The problem with reasoning is that I could be programmed to think wrongly. Maybe I am programmed to think 2 and 2 are 5? Descartes thought his argument indicated that I am a mind not a body. The argument fails.

 

"I think" is my most important and most basic activity. Thinking is the the thing that matters most. It is the ultimate value. It is not God who is the ultimate value. It is my own thinking and reasoning.
 
Belief in spirit is intolerant because -

It means that a person who knows there is no indication at all that spirit exists will not be accepted as a good Catholic for example. He will be dismissed if he teaches in a Catholic University.

 

It is intolerance to emphasise spirit as important when there is no evidence for it. It is bad enough to do that if the evidence is inadequate. But it is worse when there is none at all.

 

It is intolerant to try and use emotional highs as evidence for the presence of a spirit. An emotional high is just a pile of feelings and our feelings can lie all the time to us. It is intolerant of our right to know ourselves.

 

It is intolerant of believers to say there is an infinite spirit called God. He is infinite intelligence.

 

It is intolerant if spirit is a contradictory idea and being promoted. It opposes our right to avoid contradictions so that we can serve truth and help others through being realistic.

It is intolerant even to be agnostic about the existence of spirit. That means you don't know if it can exist or not.
 
The reason people believe in God is that he is spirit and did not need a creator so they think he is the only possible explanation for how things came to be. Spirit is the opposite of matter for it has no parts. It’s like a circle whose centre and circumference is everywhere. Spirit does not need to be made because there is no need for anybody to put it together. The first alarm bell regarding whether or not God is a good belief should have sounded by now for it is clear that God flouts the laws of mathematics. If God’s circumference is his centre then good can be evil and evil can be good.
 
If God was matter then there would be no need to believe in him for you might as well believe things came to be as they are by themselves.
 
So when God is spirit it follows that he is one entity without division which means that his powers of love and his justice and his intelligence are all one and the same power in him. It is like the Trinity, three persons and there still being only one God. The result of this belief is that God and goodness are regarded as the same thing. For the Atheist, goodness is not a being but for the religionist goodness is a being. God is a being who is also an abstract, goodness. This is totally incomprehensible and unintelligible. An abstract is not a thing. 1+1=2 is not a thing. If you say a being is an abstract then either it is not a being at all or it is. If it is not a being it cannot be worshipped for it is an abstract. If it is a being then the abstract of goodness is above it and separate from it. Then it is not God. The concept of the God spirit itself opposes the distinction we make between good and evil for it opposes reason and urges us to pretend that our contradicting ourselves is not contradicting ourselves. The concept is evil and should be abandoned. You will see a reply to the view that we need God to explain creation in my online books, There is No God and God is a Self-Contradictory Notion.
 
If God exists he must be good because he causes goodness for our existence would be worse than Hell if he were evil. A spirit can’t be both bad and good for it is one power without parts and that power is either bad or good. Only a perfectly sensible being can be supreme.
 
Now if God is goodness itself as the spirit theology states then it follows that Atheists and agnostics and those who don’t take their faith in God seriously are evil people. They don’t know or see what real goodness is, a person, and so they are bad news. They are turning their back on a person who is goodness and so they are totally wicked. If God is goodness then it follows that if you don’t see that he exists then you are blinding yourself on purpose for the good in you should make you see it. You are silencing and trying to pervert the good in you so you would be a thoroughly bad egg. People should be chosen for jobs only if their piety is strong for these are more sincere and trustworthy. Even if an unbeliever seems trustworthy this is only an act or he or she would love to do the dirty on you but can’t for some reason. It is accepted that genuine people should be preferred for jobs (even if the false person who does an excellent job at pulling the wool over the eyes of others will do as good a job) for it makes everybody more comfortable working with them. So believers cannot tolerate Atheists. Atheists who know their stuff should find the doctrine of God the Great Spirit to be very offensive and threatening. We will not stand by and let ourselves be insulted.
 
If God is goodness and a person then he comes first not people. We should help people not because we want to help them or ourselves but to please God. If God comes first we should be glad to see Atheists dying tragically and prematurely because they do not honour him. We should put them at the back of hospital waiting lists. You might think that hospitals are for curing the sick not for judging but if God comes first and should be put first then everything should be done his way. After all the hospital would not exist without him and neither would the desire to help the sick.
 
God is said to answer all prayers that plead for the enlightenment of the Atheists and others for wisdom is one of the most important gifts. So prayer accuses Atheists and agnostics and believers who barely believe of resisting his light if they don’t convert to theism or to whatever faith the one doing the praying thinks is the true religion. This is insulting and arrogant.
 
Anybody that attracts people to faith by claiming miracles have happened is opposing our rights and our right to a sound reputation.
 
God for Christians is a being without parts - that is spirit. The danger is that we think of God as a gas that is not made up of atoms or parts. But then this gas would just consist of one part. It is its part. This part does not consist of any other parts. Do you see the implication of all that? A God without parts is no more existing than a square circle. He is a something that is a nothing. The idea that nothing consists of two or more nothings would make more sense than that for something can never be nothing to any degree. Christianity degrades everybody especially children by playing conjuring tricks with words. The idol worshipper adores a god of wood or stone or so the Christian says. They bemoan how demeaning that is. But how much more is it demeaning to adore nothing and call it God? At least the idol worshipper adores something real. And he adores something that is more understandable than a being that is supposed to be pure spirit. Christianity demeans all whom it gets to adore its God. To the mind of a child, God is just like pretending the naked emperor is wearing clothes as in the children's tale The Emperor's New Clothes. It's pretending that something that cannot be seen or examined or verified by the senses is real. The God concept is disrespectful and therefore an abuse of the mind of impressionable people.
 
To worship such a contradictory God in such a contradictory way means you are really just interested in what you feel and that is what you worship. In reality you worship what you want - you worship your desires. What God really is does not matter to you.
 
Belief in God is intolerant for it implies you believe he is Spirit. It is equally intolerant to insist that we have a spiritual component too - that you have or are a spiritual soul.

 

An ontological argument, like the one St Anselm seems to have developed, is one that is based on the study of existence (ontology) - it argues that God's existence is proven for God by definition is existence itself.  Such an argument is clearly an attempt to argue that thinking there is a God proves there is one!  The believers do use an ontological argument without realising it when they say an entity can exist and have no components.  Believers imagine it is possible for something to exist and have no parts or material composition.  But they only imagine.  There is no way of learning anything about spirit or if it is possible.  You cannot sense it.  And as a material being nobody could expect you to.  You cannot expect a being who only sees black and white to understand what pink is.  The believers are guilty of thinking, "I can imagine such an entity therefore it exists."  That is even worse than arguing that if God makes sense he exists.  Behind all ontological arguments or arguments for God based on Anselm is the dreadful and arrogant attempt to imagine God into existence!  If that is what you have to do to believe in God then the argument leads to you doing evil in order to believe and no seriously good God would accept worship from you!  No unbeliever could be expected to respect your belief in God for the belief does not respect God either!

 

Jews at the time of Jesus thought that the Old Testament should be taken at face value where it says God has some kind of body or form. Some thought he was incorporeal. Since the time of top Jewish influencer Maimonides, Jews have virtually all thought God has no body or form and the texts that say otherwise are in fact talking about God using images and visions to communicate so they are not to be taken too literally.  The spirit God comes from Greek philosophy not the Bible which is why Christianity with its spirit God should be considered a new faith and not merely as a spin-off from Judaism.

 

The notion of a non-physical God was not a core or standard Jewish doctrine even if some individual Jews held it. Benjamin D Sommer wrote The Bodies of God and the World and the World of Ancient Israel, Cambridge University Press, 2009 to document that. It became a standard Christian doctrine.  No it became THE standard Christian doctrine for creation from nothing and God as creator are the rocks theology is built on.  In time it was thought to allow for the notion of an immaterial being, God, being three persons.  This shows that Christianity is a new religion pretending to be in line with Judaism.

 

Spirit God does not have logic behind it.  Only a few really think God is spirit and the rest just say the words.  This does not inspire confidence in the concept.