Sharing God

We have looked at some of the ways that the nature of God, and the ways that God can be worshipped, are compatible with an Internet God. This section is more concerned with the ways that The Internet enables any such God to be shared amongst individuals and communally.

 

Most religions would view Godly behaviour as having something to do with the extent to which we are neighbourly to others, particularly those in difficulty. The Internet is not a soup kitchen but it can enable suffering to be shared, injustice to be rooted out and consolation to be provided. When we log on, we become to some extent a part of The Internet community, a part of the whole sometimes referred to as cyberspace. We may feel a belonging and responsibility to at least some sections of this community. This may not fulfil the Sūfūs condition of baqā or perfection, whereby our existence is merged with an Absolute Being but there is something akin to this idea in some cyberspace communities.

The connections made in cyberspace can also help us to see our common humanity. The Sikh prophet contends that 'there is no difference between a temple and a mosque, nor between the prayers of a Hindu or a Muslim. Though differences seem to mark them, all men are in reality the same.[1] The Internet crosses all boundaries and potentially enables us to perceive the world from alternative perspectives. There is certainly a refreshing sense in which The Internet society values individuals for the contributions they make rather than for any other social hierarchy. Cyberspace can enable us to treat everyone equally; chiming with Muhammad's egalitarian message and his rejection of any kind of family nobility.

One can also see on The Internet something akin to what Jonathan Sacks describes as The Israel of Moses and the prophets, an 'historically unprecedented attempt to envisage and create a society as a covenant of equal citizens freely bound to one another and to God.[2] Such a democratization of knowledge and society has the potential to enfranchise each of us under God rather than under religious or state institutions. This arguably makes us less dependent on doctors, priests and lawyers to exercise power over us. If knowledge is power and knowledge is freely available then the previous controllers of that power have less influence over us; leaving us perhaps to build a relationship with our true God rather than the institutionally sanctioned Gods that have controlled our lives previously.

Spinoza says, as if from an Internet age, 'so far as in me lies, I value, above all other things out of my control, the joining hands of friendship with men who are lovers of truth.[3] The gist of Spinoza's theology, is that as our understanding becomes more enlightened, we become nearer to God. And applying this reasoning to The Internet, we can argue that it at least has the potential to make our understanding more enlightened and to this extent we will be nearer to God. Spinoza sees God as having adequate ideas and therefore the more our ideas are adequate too, the more God-like we are. From this radical position, then, it can be argued that The Internet, insofar as it leads us away from an institutional religion based on passion and love towards a more objective knowledge, brings us nearer to God.

One element of a holy relationship with God seems to be how well we share our God with others. The Internet makes the conjoining of knowledge seekers in different locations possible so that ideas rather than location or atmosphere can be the focus of attention. That our relationship with God can be enhanced by interaction with others is certainly a working assumption of much religious practice. Building a tapestry of shared belief or scepticism with others across the globe is something that seems to happen naturally on The Internet. And even if there is no God, and what we take to be God is in fact no more than sharing experiences with others of a similar or different mind, then at least The Internet can help us to share experiences that can be taken to be God! The Internet can be very precise in its group culture: we can mould our belief to a particular world view. And whether or not our God is intellectually valid, we can find solace and reinforcement for our particular attitude by association with others for whom a similar set of assumptions hold good. And if, as Peter Berger suggests, religious ideas are born out of ordinary social life,[4] we might expect religious ideas to grow out of every Internet community too. John Bowker and others have argued that these ideas of God are not purely inventions but picked up from God. If we accept that there might be such indications left for us to discern, then it seems unlikely that these clues about the nature of God and other metaphysical concerns should not be provided in Internet communities as everywhere else; unless God has trouble in getting on line!

Another way in which a sharing of God might be found on The Internet results from a tradition of selfless contribution to others that has been an element in computing from the days of the early pioneers. From the beginnings of computing and networking, there has been a strand of idealism and selfless service that survives in many forms today; not least in the Open Source movement. These hippy values of cooperation with and contribution to others were present in many of the Internet pioneers, and are a feature of many Internet communities still. This altruism could be said to be informed to some extent by the traditions of service to the community found in all the main religions. The generosity, support, and willingness to share knowledge and ideas may have emerged from a California hippy culture but is now a feature of Internet communities worldwide. Of course, many of those who share this idealism would have no time for God. But the main religions might sometimes wish that this commitment to help others was seen as often within their own walls!

Nor is behaviour usually anarchic on The Internet as some have claimed. There are usually clear demarcations between right and wrong behaviours in Internet communities, much as in ordinary life. There are codes of behaviour that are policed in all sorts of subtle and less subtle ways by members of the community – one does not send uninvited emails, one does not advertise too blatantly in newsgroups and so on. Of course, there are always infringements and at the extreme spammers who are anathema to the Internet project. Such bad behaviour is never endorsed, approved or condoned. The point I'm making here is that Internet society is far from being a free for all. It too has a moral structure. The Internet as a social system has ways to rein in transgressors. It is also far more of a meritocracy than conventional society. Individuals are judged on what they can contribute rather than on their real world status or the family that they were born into.

The strong feeling of interrelatedness on the Internet is partly owing to the fact that our every action has a bearing on the whole. This is rather like Spinoza's argument for man's immortality that the human mind cannot be destroyed with the human body; something of it remains. In the same way, the whole Internet is influenced to some degree by our every action. This is all that the Internet body is – a series of individual actions that make up the whole. This sense that every action has a bearing on the whole makes for its religious dimension – We influence the future and shape the past in some way by every Internet action – The Internet is both subject to us and has meaning beyond ourselves.

fn1. Dossett, Wendy, 'Japanese Religions' in Picturing God (London, 1994), pp. 208-219, p.212. fn2. The Dignity of Difference (London, 2002) p.135 fn3. Scruton, Roger, Spinoza (OUP, 1986) p.16 fn4. The Social Reality of Religion (London, 1969) p.60