What Do You Believe God Is?

Q. Gary, what do you believe God is?

A. It can be very useful to look at some of the atheist discussions, particularly "The Atheist Tapes", which are all available on "video.google.com" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Atheism_Tapes), and several atheist books from Hitchens, Dennett and Dawkins, for example, to explore this question with some care and diligence.

The "atheistic biologists", notably Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, focus too much, IMHO, on Darwinism doing everything, without regard to non-biological physics and chemistry. Too many atheists focus on whether or not religion is useful, a.k.a. Christopher Hitchens' "God Is Not Great; How Religion Spoils Everything", and get deflected from the key issue. Many theists, myself included, believe that religion(s) is/are a disaster and a failed experiment.

The most useful was something that Richard Dawkins said, almost in passing, in his discussion (http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/the_atheism_tapes_richard_dawkins/). His opening to theism was the possibility of an "oversoul", or universal consciousness, which is where Advaita Vedanta goes, and where it works for "me". The fascinating comment was that he could possibly believe that it might exist and if so, that it was a LEARNING and EVOLVING consciousness or oversoul, something that is precisely where "i" have arrived.

So much is resolved in this unknowable sphere, if everything is Consciousness and She/It is constantly learning about Herself through "us" and exploring, evolving and extending Herself over apparent "time" through the understanding She gains through "us", Her learning probes.