Who's Projecting What? Did God Create Man In His/Her Own Image? Or Did Man Create God In His Own Image?

Who is projecting what? Is God dead or alive? Male or
female? Black, white, or brown? Finite or infinite?
Abstract or concrete? Good or evil? Against the devil?
Or associated with the devil? Is God the whole? Or did
God create the whole? Is God nature? Or did God create
mature? Can religion be mixed with philosophy?
Science? Politics? Law? Or must religion be totally
separated from all of these more 'epistemological' as opposed to 'mystical', 'spiritual', and 'faith-oriented' domains?


This is perhaps the craziest, most convoluted essay I
will ever write. If you can follow this, you can
perhaps follow me to the most convoluted corners of my
mind. Or maybe it is not so crazy. I just finished
writing it and maybe I 'uncrazied' it. One way or the
other, this is what over 30 years of studying
psychology and philosophy can do to you. When
Anaxamander, Heraclitus, Confucious, the Han
Philosophers, Plato, Aristotle, St. Augistine,
Spinoza, Hegel, Darwin, Kierkegaarde, Schopenhauer,
Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre, Beckett, Freud, Jung, Adler,
Korzybski, Foucault, Derrida, Perls...are your
bedfellows, your mind goes to rather strange places.

Nietzsche wrote, 'God is Dead!' I write: 'God is very
much alive and working partly through all my strange
bedfellows.

Am I a religious person? Or an atheist? An agnostic? A
pantheist? A deist? All of the above? Or none of the
above? I'm still scratching my head. You read what is
to follow and you try to figure it out. For the moment
-- everything subject to change -- I think I feel most
comfortable calling myself an 'An
Anaxamanerian-Heraclitean-Platonic-Aristotlean-Spinozian-Hegelian-Darwinian
Pantheist'. You can quote me on that. I think I like
it. But if I was writing in Spinoza's time, I would
probably have to be a lot more careful about what I
was writing. Indeed, I probably wouldn't write it. I
don't have Spinoza's courage.

If you are a 'conservative, either/or person', then
you will probably not like what I have to write. If
you are a more liberal, flexible, integrative person,
then you may or may not like what I have to write. But
my odds are much better with you.

You cannot separate man from his/her egotism,
narcissism, and hedonism. And sometimes these three
factors make strange bedfellows as man tries to
wrestle between wanting to be an animal and wanting to
be God, wanting to be Apollo and wanting to be
Dionysius, wanting to be his/her 'Id' and wanting to
be his/her 'Superego'. Wanting to be his/her
'Personna' and wanting to be his/her 'Shadow', wanting
to be 'little' and wanting to be 'big', wanting to be
'inferior' and wanting to be 'superior', wanting to be
a 'topdog' and wanting to be an 'underdog', wanting to
be real and wanting to be manipulative, wanting to
'act in Good Faith and wanting to act in Bad Faith,
wanting to be associated with God and wanting to be
associated with the Devil...Need I go on?

The full embodiment of man's paradoxes are endless,
countless -- no philosopher could or can ever get to
them all. Man wants to be an animal. And man wants to
be God. Man wants to be powerful. And man wants to be
powerless. Man wants to pray to God. And man wants to
BE God.

I wrote a semi-poem a few years ago called, 'God is
the Bridge'. You can read it not far below. It was
very much a culmination -- and a spiritual embodiment
-- of my work, my philosophy up to the point that I
wrote it. It still is. And yet I look at my work, I
look at my philosophy, and I see that my philosophy --
and indirectly me through my philosophy -- is also
trying very much to be 'The Grandest of all Grand
Narratives', the 'Biggest of All Bridges'. I am trying
to take my philosophy closer to 'The Absolute' than
Hegel ever did, or ever was. Does that mean that Hegel
was 'right' in his 'dialectical theory' and in his
theory of 'The Absolute'. Or does it mean that I am a
bigger egotist than Hegel? Kierkegaard? Schopenhauer?
Marx? Nietzshe? Freud? Jung? Adler? Perls? Do you have
to write a great philosophy to be a great egotist? Or
do you have to be a great egotist to be a great
philosopher? Is philosophy any different than anything
else that man does -- or attempts to do. There are
priests and ministers who stand up at the pulpit every
Sunday morning -- indeed, I can find them on my tv in
the darkest hours of every night and the earliest
hours of every morning. They would like you and I to
think that they are the 'bridge to God'.

Look at my work and tell me that I am not trying to do
the same thing -- perhaps in a more 'secular' or
'semi-secular', 'spiritual pantheist' way. 'God is the
Bridge' is the spiritual embodiment of everything that
I have to say in my philosophy. I am writing that 'God
is the Bridge' but at the same time I am trying to
write a philosophy that 'creates a
multi-dialectic-wholistic bridge to and between man
and and man and woman and nature and God'. God is man
-- and man is partly God because man is an embodiment
of God's work. (Or is it the other way around? To be a
philosopher -- a good one anyway -- is always to be a
skeptic. Is God above Nature? Or are God and Nature
and Man all 'dialectically and wholistically
interconnected'? I opt for the latter approach. That
is what makes me a 'Hegelian-Spinozian pantheist' (to
shorten my spiritual title down a bit). I see man,
God, and Nature all spiritually, dialectically, and
wholistically connected. I see Creation and Evolution
both interconnected in an
Anaxamanerian-Heraclitean-Platonic-Aristitolean-Confucian-Spinozian-Hegelian
-Nietzshean
way.

When I get to Nietzsche, you will read my
interpretation of Nietzsche as I write about the
'Abyss', the 'Tightrope', and Nietzshe's
'Superman-will to power-will-to-excel' philosophy.
Nietzsche can divorce himself as much as he wants from
Hegel -- but I bring Nietzsche back to Hegel. For me,
his first book, The Birth of Tragedy -- Nietzsche's
first book and totally Hegelian in its construction, a
foreshadowing, a precursor, to Psychoanalysis before
Freud built Psychoanalysis -- is as important to me
and to the overall evolution of Western philosophy as
Nietzsche's supposedly more 'mature anti-Hegelian
work' later on. Freud re-connected Hegel and
Nietzsche. Jung re-connected Hegel and Nietzsche.
Perls re-connected Hegel and Nietzsche. Gap-DGB
Philosophy re-connects Hegel and Nietzsche in a way
that has perhaps never been clearly articulated
before. What is Nietzsche's Superman Philosophy and
his 'Will to Power -- or Will to Self-Empowerment',
his 'abyss' and 'tightrope' philosophy other than a
'chemical union' between Hegel and Nietzsche --
arguably the greatest philosophical chemical union in
the history of Western Philosophy. A union of reason
and passion, structure and anti-structure, structure
and process, being and becoming -- through the
evolutionary process of the dialectic. If God created
this world, then He or She created it through the
principle of the dialectic and the priniciple of
'optimal and/or homeostatic and/or dialectical
balance' -- man and woman coming together in a
chemical union both sexually and spiritually, Hegel
and Nietzsche coming together in a philosophical union
between dialectical reason and dialectical passion.
God is the Bridge but He/She is the Bridge through the
embodiment of Man and Woman and Nature and their Union
all together, as well as the embodiment of every man
and woman in all of their individual and collective
creative achievements and potentialities, in the work
of every philosopher and psychologist, every
politician and economist out there that you or I could
ever read about. And meanwhile, while God is the
Bridge that links everything and everyone together,
both dialectically and wholistically, in war and
diplomacy, life and death, love and hate, Apollo and
Dionysius, Good and Evil -- but more harmoniously in
dialectical-democratic creative negotiation rather
than trying to kill, destroy, blow each other up...and
war-mongering people seemingly trying to find a faster
way to meet God. Meanwhile, I am trying to do it a
slower, more democratic, harmonious way.
Multi-Dialectical Unity and Wholism where the
dialectic is addressed peacefully and diplomatically
through debate -- not war. But it takes two people to
debate and negotiate, and to WANT to do this rather
than to want to kill and/or overpower each other -- in
contrast, it takes only one person, or one set of
people, to create a war...God is the Bridge -- and I
am trying to meet God, man, and Nature on the Bridge
of Life, through my philosophical work...


db, Feb. 12th, 2007

Email Feedback From My Dad

Gordon Bain" Add to Address Book Add Mobile Alert
To: dgbainsky@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: God is the Bridge
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 13:50:31 -0400

I am having some trying days of late, but today is bright and while it
is
cold, it is fun to think.

I go back a little and come to your God is a Bridge thinking, or is Man
the
Bridge?

It occurs to me that without question, God is the Bridge.

There are countless times in life when the load gets heavy, and you
must try
to understand the unthinkable...the questions for which there are no
logical
answers. It is then we can look to the stars and imagine beyond, as
your
mother does most every clear night. She is not crazy with man contrived
theological passions. She simply finds solace and calmness in the
belief of
a greater power ... God...and allows her uncertainties and unanswerable
questions ..indeed all of her hurts and despair .. and we all have
them.. to
ride the stars (read that crossing the bridge) through the vastness of
incalculable space to a place of perfection, serenity and
understanding. It
is a bright and happy place where a person can set their load down, and
find
solace. It allows her to have inner strength that is enviable. In other
words that which she cannot understand she gives to God.

It is said you rarely see an athiest in the heat of battle. In truth,
most
all of the world with its billions of people believe in a greater
power. We
are in a state of self love and me..ness right now. If those less
endowed
could not reach out to their God, how could they bridge the death and
destruction of world savagery, or explain their children dying of
hunger and
disease?

I think your Mom is right. I have thought about it a lot in my time,
tried
to be smart, said clever things to suggest I had an angle on the
religion
thing. I come back to the simple belief in a greater power. As Einstein
remarked in his later life, no matter how many answers are found, there
are
ten thousand times more that are unexplainable except to view and
explain it
as the work of a greater power. Paraphrased and pulled from my memory
of
what he said, but that is the gist of it.

So David, I was quite fascinated with your God is the Bridge poem, for
all
of the reasons given. I hold that the title is suggestive, soothing,
and
meaningful. It is worthy of a scholar's rendering. However, it would be
easy
to crash under the weight of needing to have this God-like state proven
beyond a shadow of doubt. Then it would be a bridge to nothingness,
literally.

Dad