An Introduction to God

as principal to existence

What do we mean when we say 'God'? The word appears everywhere—in arguments, in prayers, in exclamations of surprise. But if someone asked you to define it clearly, could you? Is God a being among beings, the largest and most powerful? Or is God something else entirely—not a being at all, but the ground from which all things come to be.

This question is important. It shapes how we understand ourselves, our world, and what we are doing here. With over 4500 religions, It is also a question that has never received a final answer. But perhaps the view from process ontology may help to give some certainty to the construct of God.

A conversation across time

The question of God is not one question but many. The Hebrew scriptures present God as a person who speaks, creates, judges, and loves. Aristotle, centuries later, described the 'Unmoved Mover'—a cause of all motion that is itself unmoved, pure actuality, without desire or personality. In the Upanishads, we find Brahman: not a god but the single, non-dual reality from which all plurality emerges. For the Buddha, speculation about first causes was a distraction from the immediate problem of suffering.

These are not merely different answers. They are different kinds of answers. Is God a person to relate to? A principle to understand? A reality to experience? Or a question best left alone?

The modern period added new voices. Spinoza declared 'God or Nature'—not as a slogan but as a rigorous claim: there is only one substance, and we may call it God. Nietzsche famously announced the death of God, meaning not that people had stopped believing, but that the idea of God no longer functioned as the foundation for truth, meaning, or morality.

Notice something: each of these voices speaks from a different world, with different assumptions and different problems. What unites them is the recognition that the question matters. No one has successfully dismissed it.

Towards a definition of God

Here is a definition that may change how you read this entire conversation. The word 'God' is hypothesized to derive from the Proto-Indo-European root $g^hed^h$ meaning 'to join' or 'to unite'. This is not a moral claim. It is a relational one. God is that which joins, that which unites, that which brings together. In this sense God is the generative function of existence itself—God the creator: is 'that which creates'.

This shifts the definition of God from transcendental Being to transcendental process. In this sense, God is not a being with attributes—power, knowledge, love—but the process of joining itself: the conferencing of difference that makes power, knowledge, and love possible.

What would it mean to define God not as a noun but as a verb? Not as a person but as a principle? Not as something we believe in but as something whose process we observe operating every day everywhere?

What follows from this

If God is 'that which creates', several things change.

First, we are no longer looking for a supreme being within the universe. We are looking for the condition that makes the universe possible at all. This is not a being among beings but the process primitive that grounds all being.

Second, this removes the problem of a personal God intervening in a natural order. If God is the natural order's generative aspect, there is no intervention—there is only the ongoing process that is creation itself.

Third, it reframes the divine attributes. Omnipotence is not a mysterious property of a mind but the observable fact that the creative process enables every existence. Omnipresence is not a magical extension but the fact that the process is ontologically prior to every existence. Omniscience is not the possession of all facts but the condition of realizing—making real—every existence. Finally, all existence is in God's image to the extent that very being is a reflection of the process that is God.

This is not poetry. It is a precise claim: God is the constant expression that transforms existence: the 'condition of being'. Every transformation—whether in physics, biology, or thought—reveals itself as a conference of difference: a 'condition of bearing together' transforming the 'condition of bearing apart'. As Creator, God is literally the process of creating, joining, uniting. And not because of some divine revelation passed to one but a process directly observable by everyone.

What religion gets wrong about the ontology of existence

A God that transcends existence cannot be existing. The word existing literally means the 'action to exist'. And the word exist literally means 'one who is out of'. God, as transcendent, is not 'one who is out of' anything. God is not subject to the order of existence. God is principal to existence, not of it. Therefore God does not exist. God simply is.

This is not wordplay. It is a precise distinction. Existing is what beings do. Beings are within existence. They are subject to its conditions. They depend on other things. They are constantly transforming. God, as truly perfect—complete—does not do anything. God is not subject to existence or of it. God is the condition that makes existence possible. God is not a being. God is not existing. God is.

Abrahamic religion has never resolved this. It insists God is both transcendent and personal. It insists God is both beyond existence and a being who acts. It insists God is both incomprehensible and revealed. These are not paradoxes to be held in tension. They are contradictions. A person acts. A person wills. A person loves. These are actions of beings. If God is a person, God is a being. If God is a being, God exists. If God exists, God is within existence. If God is within existence, God is neither transcendent nor perfect.

Abrahamic religion resolves this contradiction by calling it a 'mystery'. But a mystery is not a solution. It is an admission of failure. It is the moment when logic gives up and imagination takes over.

This is not an attack on the message of Abrahamic religions. Abrahamic religions display remarkable insight on the fundamental truths (message) of existence. But the narrative it uses as the vehicle for those truths—the story of a personal God who acts, wills, and intervenes—cannot be reconciled with the claim that God is transcendent. The fundamental message of Abrahamic religions is for the most part unassailable, let down only by a narrative designed to appeal to its base demographic—children.

The Gospel of Being does not give up. It follows the logic to its conclusion. God does not exist. God is. God is the conference of difference, the process primitive, principal to existence. This is not a mystery. It is a precise claim. It can be examined. It can be tested. It can be understood. And it requires no contradiction.

What this means for everyone

This is the universality of God as the Conference of Difference (CoD). It does not discriminate. It does not require belief. It does not require membership. It operates on elementary particles, rocks, black holes, and human beings with impartiality. Everything is 'chosen' on creation. You cannot choose to be any more than you can choose not to be. You are because the conference of difference is the process primitive of all existence. The process is not your choice. What you do within the process is.

God as the CoD is not one who issues commandments. The conference of difference does not want anything. It does not prefer. It does not desire. It does not will. It simply is. And because it is, you are. The ethics are not imposed from outside. They are discovered from within. As an expression of the conference of difference, your flourishing consists in participating more fully in that process—in aligning with the relationality, the transformation, the creativity that constitutes you.

Whether you follow this as an ontology, philosophy or religion, the grounding principle is the same because the CoD is universal. It is not a matter of choosing between frameworks. It is a matter of recognizing that all frameworks are attempts to describe the same process. The Buddhist, the Catholic, the Muslim, the Shinto, the scientist, the philosopher—all are engaged in the same task: understanding the conference of difference that constitutes them.

This is not to say: I am religious, or philosophical, or scientific, or spiritual. It is to say: I am a conference of difference. And because I am that, I am all of these. The frameworks are not identities. They are lenses of reality but the process itself is the reality.

You cannot opt out of the conference of difference. The conference of difference is the brute fact of existence—there is no alternative—only how you confer your differences with others. This is the truly universal God, the one you have whether you choose to appreciate, believe in, follow or not.

A question to carry

So here we are. We have asked the question, summarized its history, and delivered an answer—one that spans ontology, philosophy, religion and science with equal proficiency.

The implications are undeniable. As the Conference of Difference (CoD), God is the process primitive, Principal to existence. This is the God that can be engaged philosophically, tested logically, meditated upon and crucially, as a process, can be observed throughout existence. It is not a demand for belief but an invitation to observe the conference of difference in everything for yourself.

As you read further, you'll discover how this constant expression—the conference of difference—reveals how atonement: the 'action to be at one' obtains forgiveness: a 'measure of giving away' that defines the cause-effect relationship of existence.

The Gospel of Being

by John Mackay

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