God

Since my postings of last year, I've finally resolved — to my satisfaction — the answers to the ancient questions about God.

It wasn't an easy task. In fact, it was akin to peeling an onion of its many layers of skin, each layer being one of the many things I had been "taught" about God since my birth. The task was further compounded by living in a social system dominated by a single set of beliefs — Christianity — acquired largely by rote and driven largely by fear.

So what did I find in the middle of the onion that could explain everything I have experienced and can imagine?

The answer was infinitely more simple than I had imagined it would be: an unknowable supreme entity. I would prefer to not call this entity anything because it is, in effect, everything.


The best "technical" term I can find for my answer is something called pantheism. If it will help your understanding any, the word "pantheism" derives from the ancient Greek words πᾶν (pan) and θεός (theos) meaning something along the lines of "God is everything".

More precisely, this "everything" encompasses not only the things we know but also, more importantly, the things we don't know, including, of course, those things we can never know.

The closest visualization of this concept, to me, is the Möbius band representing "everything". If we pick any point "A" on the surface of the band, a corresponding point "B" exist on the opposite side of the band directly below point "A". In our example, we know Point "A" exists because we can observe it. We cannot see Point "B" at the same time we see Point "A" and, as such, we cannot know a priori that Point "B" actually exits. Only a supreme entity can ever "know" with absolute certainty that both Point "A" and Point "B" exist concurrently!

Now in the supreme entity's language — mathematics — both Point "A" and Point "B" are located on the same surface, equidistant along the surface from one another. (If you don't believe this, trace along the center of the band from Point "A" and you will eventually arrive at Point "B". Continue your journey in the same direction and you will eventually arrive back at Point "A" without ever having gone "through" the band.) The surface of a Möbius band — the surface on which "everything" is located — is a single surface, a continuum that cannot be uniquely oriented in any direction. Yet, we are limited to what we can see from where we happen to be along this Möbius band of everything. (Mathematically speaking, it has an Euler characteristic of zero). Only a supreme entity cab be everywhere along the band simultaneously and thus know everything.

An ouroboros, a serpent or dragon devouring itself, has long been associated with the concept of pantheism.

Like the Möbius band, the circle formed by the creature has
no beginning and no end and expresses the idea of everything as one. (A circle also has an Euler characteristic of zero.)

Turns out that history has produced quite a distinguished list of pantheist. These include (among others):

• Albert Einstein
• Mikhail Gorbachev
• Sitting Bull
• Stephen Hawking
• Henry David Thoreau
• Marcus Aurelius
• Frank Lloyd Wright
• Baruch Spinoza
• D. H. Lawrence
• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
• Arnold Toynbee
• Vincent van Gogh

My favorite of all, however, is Giordano Bruno, an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer, who was burned as a heritic in 1600 by the Roman Catholic Church (with Pope Clement VIII's personal approval) for his pantheistic views.

You have to love a guy willing to die for what he thinks!