Generally speaking, a term defining reality's supreme manifestation of itself, the word God has its roots in ancient Norse guttural linguistics, and means literally 'loud noise in the sky'. While some might deem it an irony that the roots of the word are based in an ancient pagan pantheistic tradition, it does seem fitting to note that the generally held notion of Divinity in Western thought tends towards a similarly superstitious - though not necessarily meaningless - cosmology.

God In Western Theology

In most modern Western theology, reality's supreme manifestation of itself is generally recognised to take the form of an invisible, super-powered, male hominid characterised by a vile temper and capriciousness such that He cannot make up His mind whether He is in fact loving or wrathful. Western religions hold that God created the universe ex-nihilo in seven days, created two witless people - in His own image, no less - to populate it, tempted them to exhibit some sign of shortcoming, immediately got mad at them, inflicted suffering on them to punish them for their shortcomings, and hereafter has plans to extend their descendants' punishment to eternity unless they sacrifice various animals, or each other, to sate His continual thirst for blood.

There are variations on this 'gaseous vertebrate' view of nature, such as Judaism, Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, and so forth. Orthodox (right-believing) members of these various faiths bicker amongst themselves about who has all the details right, but tend mainly to agree that religious life is about being close-minded and/or fanatical so that one may, by proving one's devotion to an institutionalised concept of divinity, avoid an afterlife of eternal torment.

This is all mildly ironic, because Judaism (which started it all) originally began as a mystical polytheistic practice very akin to Eastern religious thought, where supreme reality was embodied by the precept of self-awareness. Eventually, though, such notions began to lose their cohesion when the Deuteronimists¹ decided to revise religious practice by informing their subjects that they were going to be damned by this supreme reality if they ate shellfish or didn't cut off part of their penis. Apparently, the threat of anaphylactic shock, or of having one's penis constantly irritated by sand under the foreskin, was not quite enough of an incentive in and of itself to ensure adherence to basic standards of hygiene.

God In Eastern Theology

Eastern theologians hold that God is in fact one with creation, the 'ground of being' if you will. This is a generalisation, but more or less accurate, particularly in the case of Taoism.² Many religious practices in the East tend towards obeisance to pantheons of mystical entities. These two tenets are not as contradictory as they first sound, as each god of the pantheon is seen to be a face of the Ultimate. The wide variety of ways in which devotees of Eastern faiths have been found to express their worship for these entities is a testament to the fertility, depth, and profound weirdness of the human imagination. It has been noted that Eastern religions tend to be far more open and all-embracing than Western ones, at least in theory - although fanatics seem to exist everywhere.

Scholars of Eastern theology tend to recognise that their pantheons³ are representative symbols that embody universal forces or aspects of human struggle. These sorts of notions don't always catch on with the general populace, many of whom often tend to take their pantheism a bit more literally. Again, there are several variations and schools of thought in this vein, and a good deal of overlap, but the main players seem to be Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism.

In the scholarly Eastern traditions, all things that exist are considered to be fragmentary pluriform aspects of God. The purpose of God, or Brahmin or the Tao if you prefer, is to observe every possible aspect of Itself that It might know Itself better, and It seems to go about this by manifesting as an immense universe full of stuff capable of doing so.

Process Philosophy

According to process philosophers such as David Griffin and Alfred North Whitehead, God, sometimes termed 'The Real', is 'that than which nothing greater can be conceived of.' This definition originated with the works of St. Anselm, who used it as the basis for his ontological ⁴ argument for God's existence. That really puts the onus on God to be pretty spectacular, but makes the anthropic ⁵ assumption that human consciousness can actually encompass reality in such a way as to make God knowable. It is a useful definition to keep on hand when wading into a dispute with a fanatic of theological bent however; wave the definition in his or her face and point out that you can conceive of a God that is above vengeance, jealousy, and cruelty, and that your God is therefore by definition superior to his or her God.

Process philosophers are for the most part metaphysicians' ⁶ and critical rationalists who base much of their thinking about Divinity on Eastern scholarly concepts, but also accept that the Western model has some relevance and meaning in its proper context. For instance, a process philosopher might point out that it is sometimes useful to think of God as being a hominid, since humans are the only known religious animal that even bothers with trying to relate to it, and you can't relate very well to a giant squid-headed beast-thing god. In other words, humans are part of reality, so supreme reality must be at least part human.

Hail Eris, Goddess Of Discord

Discordians think that God is a crazy woman named Eris. Discordianism also offers useful tactics for arguing theology, and their practice of such an art generally involves the obnoxious utterance of barnyard noises.

Lillith

There is some evidence that prior to the dawn of recorded history, a primitive agricultural civilisation spread across most of Asia thrived for millennia. They seem to have worshipped eggs and statues of a pregnant woman. Anyone who has ever lived with a pregnant woman will see an immediate correlation to the view of God espoused by the Discordians.

Yeshuah Ben Miriam

According to Yeshuah Ben Miriam,⁷ who walked the earth and was known as Jesus Christ, and who has been dead approximately 1972 years now, the Kingdom of Heaven is within you. In other words, finding God has nothing to do with going to church. He also said some stuff about being nice to people. This was bound to upset someone, as at the time getting people to go to church and follow laws was pretty much the foundation of the fabric of his society, and being nice to people meant letting them off the hook when they were caught stealing food and so forth.

Suffice to say it was a far cry from the kind of theology people were used to, as until then many people's concept of institutional religious practices tended to centre around rituals such as the hurling of nubile young virgins into flaming pits, the drinking of blood, and the practice of cannibalism This fellow's eventual summary execution was probably inevitable.

At some later point in time, he himself was elevated to the status of Deity by various special interest groups and self-appointed theologians with a propensity for missing the point entirely; since then His worshippers have gone to church regularly, killed and tortured heretics and infidels, believed fervently that His mother was a virgin, and practised ceremonies where they drink His blood and eat His flesh, for fear of being thrown into a flaming pit.

Azathoth The Blind Piper

According to fiction written by H P Lovecraft, God is an amorphous, mindless blob at the centre of the universe, flailing about with various tentacles and appendages and thus creating the random stirrings from which all things spring.

This would explain quite a bit, and is somewhat reminiscent of the Hindu deity Shiva - considered to be the prime incarnation (or symbol) of the Brahmin, whose cosmic dance of creation and destruction is the essence of all things material.

The notion that God is insane, random, blind, drunk, and/or has a malicious but inventive sense of humour is rather common amongst the disaffected.

Yahweh

God Himself ⁸ was once quoted as identifying Himself by the title 'I am that I am'. He revealed this from a burning bush, probably a marijuana plant, and speculation is that God had gotten into the spinach at the time.

Still, as an explanation for why things exist (just because) it is reminiscent of some of the theories coming out of 20th century physics, wherein the universe is seen to be a set of relationships whose context is defined by a 'bootstrap' comparison of things one to another with conscious observation providing the context.

Tiamat

Ancient Sumerians held that the universe was created from the blood shed by the chaos dragon Tiamat when Marduk slew her in battle and rent her body in twain.

This sort of death-and-rebirth thing, where God sheds his Godhead to become multiple finite pluriform mortal versions of Himself, is pretty common to many ancient religions, as is the motif of order springing from chaos. Even the creation myth in Genesis (borrowed by the Jews from the Babylonians, kissing cousins of the Sumerians, during the Jews' captivity there) uses similar imagery, describing a spirit of reason and principle joining with a sea of chaos to create everything, yin and yang.

An interesting correlation here is the study of chaos theory, of non-dynamic systems on the verge of becoming dynamic exhibiting looped mathematical patterns (such as Alan Turing postulated might be used as the basis for artificial sentience) when an external flow of energy is present to abet the process. Chaos theory is related closely to the study of the fractal geometry of nature, which describes the tendency of realities to contain infinite variant subsets of themselves.

Considering that there is ancient Hindu poetry dating back several millennia describing fractals, and Zen koans going back at least as far describing Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, one may find oneself wondering whether those ancient myth-makers knew more about the universe than they were letting on.

Thou Art God

According to Robert A Heinlein's book, Stranger in a Strange Land, thou art God. There was a sect of Christianity (the Gnostics) that went around believing in this notion of God's pluriform nature for a few hundred years before the Catholic church decided to turn the other cheek and annihilate them It is a rather empowering concept, even if it does carry a lot of attendant responsibility.