What is God? (And why the 'creator' is a process not a being)
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 arise?
God
A collection of resources on the topic of God
Definition
Learn the definition of God, its etymology, common and essential meanings, along with its philosophical implications.
Core tenets
- Koan 40.1: Principal to existence
- Koan 40.2: Enabling everything
- Koan 40.3: God before everything
- Koan 40.4: God realizes all
- Koan 40.5: God's image
- Koan 40.6: God is perfect
- Koan 40.7: Universal endless genesis
Articles
On God: as first principle.
The first principle
Immanuel Kant: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Kant forbids cause in the noumenon, then smuggles in 'AFFECTIO' to explain sensation. The CoD needs no smuggled cause—the conference of difference is the causal process of existence.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Leibniz's 'Monadology' presents a rational system founded on creation from nothing. But in 'Principles of Nature and Grace' he admits: 'these are matters of faith, not reason'. The emperor has no clothes.
Baruch Spinoza: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Spinoza collapses all of reality into a single Substance—God or Nature—then derives everything else from it with geometric necessity. But for the CoD model, no relata precedes the relation.
John Duns Scotus: a comparative analysis with the CoD
For Scotus, God and creatures are the same kind of beings—one infinite, the other finite. For the CoD model of ontology, being (lit. 'action to be'), no matter how similar, differs by definition for every being. For Scotus, being is a noun; for the CoD it's a verb.
Thomas Aquinas: a comparative analysis with the CoD
A comparative analysis of Thomas Aquinas's ontology and the Conference of Difference (CoD), focusing on primacy, manner, and unity/multiplicity.
Theistic Vedanta: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Theistic Vedanta says: the many are real, but only in the One. The CoD says: the One is the conference of the many. One grounds unity as a prior substance. The other grounds unity as an ongoing process. Which ontology lets you watch unity happen in real time?
Theistic Vedanta: a CRUP-OMAF case study
CRUP-OMAF assessment of Theistic Vedanta's ontology: evaluates completeness, robustness, usefulness and potential.
Plotinus: a comparative analysis with the CoD
Plotinus saw unity as the source—a perfect One from which multiplicity flows downward as a kind of falling away. But what if unity isn’t the origin, but the achievement? What if multiplicity isn’t a fall, but the very condition for unity to emerge? This comparative analysis inverts the Neoplatonic hierarchy.
Classical Theism: a comparative analysis with the CoD
If relationship is the 'primitive' of existence, what does that mean for how we understand God, creation, or even ethics? A thought-provoking read.
On Religion
The imperialism of taste
Ontology And The Trinity
What work does the Trinity do that a triadic process structure does not?
God for atheists: Towards a rational construct of the Creator.
Towards a rational construct of the Creator.
Anselm - ontology and sophistry
A critique of Anselm’s ontological argument for God's existence.
Descartes - on God's existence
Was Descartes confirming or challenging God's existence.