This is the first form of the essay that started all this, written by Frank Den.
There is a story about Krishna as a child mischievously eating clay. Krishna's friends tell his foster mother, Yasoda. Krishna tries to convince her that he has not eaten clay by opening his mouth. Yasoda sees the whole universe in Krishna's mouth, including herself with Krishna on her knee! The Internet is akin to this. We switch on our computers and we see the whole universe; including ourselves with Krishna on our knee, so to speak. One way of approaching The Internet, therefore, is to think about how things are before we turn on the computer. We may be alone or isolated. Or we may be at the heart of a loving family. But going on-line, at the very least, opens up new channels of communication for us. Not everyone has access to The Internet or judges it favourably. But we see the central importance that it already holds in many people's lives – an importance akin perhaps to that of The Church in the Middle Ages – when it is temporarily unavailable. People are suddenly rootless; without their God. I am not suggesting here, needless to say, that every computer screen (like altars in the Roman Catholic Church) should have a martyr's relic within it! This outline can be seen as an exploration of the extent to which the metaphor – The Internet is God – holds true for The Internet, for God and for us. The idea of The Internet as God is therefore used here as a working model for testing out some thoughts on God; all of which have been addressed in religious and philosophical thought and practice over time. Whilst God, should he or she exist, may not be changed by society, our view of God may well be. My contention here is that The Internet throws light on what we call God in all sorts of ways. This does not assume the existence of God; the idea of The Internet as God may help us to approach ideas and ideals that could be called God; whether or not God is a figment of our imagination! In using a metaphor such as the Internet to help our understanding of the metaphysical, we are within a long religious tradition. Christian myth, for instance, is powerful as much for its allusion to truth as for its literal accuracy. Some would argue that The Internet is too worldly to be God-like. I think about this in the section, God is Man. God is often seen as separate from man in religious thought. But, even in Islamic thought where a visual representation of God is prohibited, one way of understanding God (at least for Sufis) is to discover the man whose will is God's will. Few religious scholars would doubt that it is in the world that we find God and so the argument that The Internet is too worldly for God is unconvincing to me.
The first thing to say about the nature of God is that our perception of God will not be what God is. The Internet to some extent shares this characteristic of not being what we take it for. It is not what we see on our screens. So the question, 'What is the Internet?' raises some of the same issues as the question, 'What is God?' Like God, it is exceedingly difficult to describe and encompass.
So the God that religions describe may be no nearer to God than the God that, for the sake of argument, I am calling The Internet God. In Spinoza's view, ideas like wrath, punishment, reward and compassion are peculiarly human qualities; not necessarily God-like ones. These are qualities that we may wish to see our God display; they are not necessarily those that are natural to God. If we are prepared to accept a position that the qualities that we wish to see God display may not be those that are inherent to God, then we may have less difficulty with the idea of an Internet God as a supplement to the God of the church, mosque or temple! It may be hard for some Christians to accept that even their most beautiful and inspiring representations of God, such as Michelangelo's God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel from which generations have drawn inspiration, might be no more truthful to God than any other ways of interpreting the divine being.
As well as God having the quality of being inconceivable to us, there is the idea of God being both one and many. This theme pervades most religious conceptions of God. The Sanskrit term, Brahman, is therefore understood as implying both single and multiple qualities, among other characteristics such as kindly and terrible. The Internet fits comfortably with this idea of being both an all encompassing whole and numerous individual experiences. A Hindu understanding of the supreme tends to emphasise a multiplicity of attributes and forms but a oneness at its core. In Hindu scholarship, plurality does not diminish oneness but rather enhances it; 'this gold does not cease to be gold because it shapes itself into all kinds of ornaments.' In Muslim thinking, any picturing or representation of God is anathema because associating anything with God denies that God is who he is. Nevertheless, in Islamic thought, the discussion of the one and many qualities of the divine is central; he who possesses the ocean, possesses the drop also.
In addition to the inconceivable nature of God and God's one and many qualities, there are the placeless, formless, timeless and uncontainable characteristics attributed to God and frequently seen as co-existing with a physical presence in time too. So, in Hindu scriptures, the ultimate reality is seen as formless but it assumes forms too. And in Sikhism, God is both nirguna (without qualities) and saguna (with qualities). We can apply this kind of dual nature to The Internet too. It is physical – a box on our desks – and also an idea that stretches everywhere. The Internet also exists in time – Skanda, the snake, of Hindu symbolism – blogs or news sources respond fast to new information, for instance. The Internet also has timeless qualities, the peacock of Hindu symbolism. The timeless nature of God is a common tenet of religious discussion. As Norman Solomon points out, even the description of God as “the first” is a metaphor, for “first” can only properly be applied to objects which exist in time, and God is beyond time. [1]
He argues that if God is perfect and unchanging, one cannot ascribe to him intention, thought, word or action as these are processes in time.[2] Each web site could be said to exist in time and out of time; still traceable back to how it was at inception. Through such things as the recording of film and video we can experience a dialogue beyond time. The Internet's timeless qualities have profound implications still to be explored.
The unfathomable nature of God is paralleled on The Internet too. There is this same sense that whatever we say about God or The Internet is both right and wrong, for all things are covered. Each contribution to The Internet is like a wave in the sea too, a part of the greater whole.
The Internet's myriad of locations give it a Godly sense of scope. God has always been seen to exist irrespective of location so that God is conceived as everywhere; in the prison cell, on the moon, in the desert. There has been discussion about whether or not the nation-state can continue to exist in an Internet age and many would welcome this God-like quality in it to pay no heed to national or regional borders. We might say, indeed, that the the more The Internet enables us to reach beyond our provincialism, the more likely we are to experience the divine in ourselves.
Another characteristic often discussed in relation to the divine is God's impersonal as opposed to personal nature. This is often expressed as a numerical quality. So, in Sikhism, God is seen as the numeral one, Ik. Interestingly, this impersonal quality often attributed to God seems to contrast with the human need for a personal and emotional relationship with God. This is one of the paradoxes in the relationship between Man and God.
The Internet's underlying nature is numerical too; founded on binary code. However, as is the case with God, as consumers, it is largely the personal and emotional aspects of The Internet that draw us to it and engage our interest. Similarly, when Krishna describes himself as the beginning and end of the universe and says that we are strung on him like pearls on a string, we are back with this mathematical and emotional combination. At a computing level, data types in data structures get lined up like pearls on a string but we use The Internet not so much for its structures as to satisfy our need for love, communication and recognition. The Internet may have numerical impersonality as its underlying structure but, as in the case of God, our experience of it is personal and emotional. The impersonal and personal nature of The Internet echoes nicely the idea of God's detachment and yet God's illuminating presence expressed here in Sri Guru Granth Sahib:
God has no mother, no father, no son and no relatives. He has no wife, no sexual desire. He has no family. He is completely detached, and he is infinite; but it is his light that shines in his creation; and his light that is everyone and everything.[3]
Finally, in thinking about the nature of God, there is the concept of Nirvana. This is arguably seen more as a human God-like state but it nevertheless reflects on the nature of God too. So, in the type of Buddhism found in Japan, Mahayana, there is the belief that Nirvana is a real possibility in this life. For those involved in The Internet project, there may also be this feeling that Nirvana, if not here now, can be aimed for in the present! The idea that reality is here for the taking can be found in these thoughts of a Zen master:
Before a man studies Zen, to him mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after he gets an insight into Zen ... mountains to him are not mountains and waters are not waters; but after this when he really attains the abode of rest, mountains are once more mountains and waters waters.[4]
Buddhists do not necessarily need to refer to a God but this idea that fulfilment can be found in the present links with the concept discussed in Section Seven that God is Man. It also fits with Spinoza's analysis that God is not distinct from the world, but immanent within it. This would be part of my response to the view raised in the Introduction that The Internet's worldliness disqualifies it from having divine qualities too. By this way of thinking, the more rooted that the Internet is found to be in the everyday world, the greater its potential for acting as a meeting point between heaven and earth.
This position that sacredness is more a quality of truth than something exterior gives weight to the idea that The Internet too is potentially sacred as is all life; and that holiness resides in the attitude that we bring to mundane existence rather than residing elsewhere. This transfers responsibility for enlightenment back to us and the integrity of our perceptions. The Internet, according to this view, can be seen as a territory of faith like any other human endeavour; testing out the level of honesty and integrity that we bring to all our experiences. Whilst ritual and ceremony play a part in many forms of worship, I would wish to make the observation that from an alternative viewpoint, the simplicity, lack of ornateness and ordinariness of on-line procedures can be regarded as bringing us nearer to the holiness of the everyday.
In this section, I have looked at some of the characteristics that can be attributed to God. These have included the idea that how we see God may not be how God is. It also includes the paradox of God having one and many natures and placeless, timeless, formless and uncontainable attributes. There is also the impersonal or numerical in God that may not always square with our human need for a more personal deity. There is also the idea that God is an aspect of our own degree of enlightenment or truthfulness; something that might be found here and now. All of these characteristics of the divine can be usefully discussed in relation to our metaphor that The Internet is God. In the next section, I examine how God is worshipped and explore whether or not the Internet can throw light on this.
fn1. 'Judaism' in Picturing God (London, 1994), pp. 142 - p.154 fn2. ibid., p. 156 fn3. Dhanjal, Beryl, 'Sikhism' in Picturing God (London, 1994), pp. 173-184, p.180. fn4. Dossett, Wendy, 'Japanese Religions' in Picturing God (London, 1994), pp. 208-219, p.212.The idea of God as enlightenment, as a truth within us, or as an ever present possibility was discussed at the end of the last section as one aspect of the nature of God. This particular idea of God leads nicely into the consideration that worshipping God is not necessarily restricted to places associated with worship such as a church, synagogue, temple or mosque.
The Christian picture of a shepherd with a sheep over his shoulder as representing an aspect of holiness has all sorts of resonances for Christians that a man or woman with a laptop clearly does not! Nevertheless, there is every reason to argue that the computer, with the access it gives us to experiences within and beyond ourselves can be the foot of the tree of enlightenment too! The ritual of logging on opens up new realms so that for instance we can visit communities of our choice and engage with them too. This may seem like a poor substitute for visiting sacred places but many find a religious solace on-line that they do not find anywhere else. The isolated, housebound, disabled or elderly, who may have fewer other options, are clearly not the only ones to find their spiritual home at the keyboard.
The religious experience can have something to do with identifying with others who have similar spiritual and emotional needs. The Internet can enable this to happen; whether or not God has a part in this communion. Nor does it run counter to the way in which the religions themselves often regard worship to argue that The Internet can be as much a sacred place as a shrine or stupa. We might wish to recognise that sacred places exist apart from our ordinary lives whilst also regarding all life as sacred and all experiences, including those on The Internet, as potentially in God's domain.
The argument here is that places and experiences are sacred by virtue of the use that we put them to. This view of worship would see belief more than place as what makes for holiness. The feeling that God resides where an individual or group behaves in a sacred way, or humbly approaches the mystery of their faith, has wide credence among religions generally and individual sects in particular. On this understanding of worship, therefore, we might say that God inhabits our minds to the extent that we allow this; and that this applies no less on The Internet than anywhere else.
Buddhism has always emphasised that it is our minds that matter most: 'if the waters of the Ganges could truly wash away sin then all fishes would go straight to heaven' the Buddha says with characteristic wit and wisdom. In fairness, Hindus have always understood this truth too; recognising that the pilgrim's soul must be carried on God's path too for pilgrimage or the washing away of sins to have any meaning. And Hindus, perhaps more than other religious groups are just as comfortable worshipping at home as in the temple; often arguing that temples are for simpler souls whose spirituality is less abstract! Indeed, some Hindus regard no specific places as Sacred and prefer to think about internal sacredness. The Bāuls of Bengal regard the human body as the only shrine, as it contains God.
For many Christians too, it is the holy spirit more than the place of worship that matters most. These Christians would tend to find all life equally sacred because they see God in Christ as everywhere, making all places, places of worship. This chimes with the Islamic view that everything God made must be good and have no existence apart from him; the implication being that nowhere is more holy than anywhere else.
Clearly, the idea that all life is worship and that worship goes on everywhere is a truth widely acknowledged in religious thought and practice. This idea is explored from another angle in the section 'God is Man' and it clearly has implications in relation to God and The Internet at least in so far as The Internet is becoming a more and more important part of our lives and therefore offers increasing opportunities for sacredness. The argument here is that any place is potentially sacred to the extent that we feel sanctified by being there, and there is no reason to exclude The Internet from this observation.
Another aspect to look at in relation to The Internet and worship is the ritual of logging on and the process of entering the Internet world through a rectangular screen. The screen can be seen as our access to worship, our symbol and religious focus. Of course, I am not suggesting that we all use our browsers to become like great Brahmās – for deep meditation on loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity – although there is nothing to stop us from doing so! Nevertheless, in Buddhist terms, one can make the case that The Internet is indeed, for all its faults, a possibility to be realised; its purity (and its impurity) exists whether we attain it or not. Nor is it unreasonable in Christian terms to view the computer screen as a potential context for worship in the same way as an altar might be viewed.
Another characteristic of the computer is that it is relatively idolatry free, unlike many churches and cathedrals. To the Internet searcher after God, the screen and browser is less important than the experience. It does not matter whether we connect with an Apple, PC or mobile phone, a two inch, 14 inch or 19 inch screen. It is the prayerful experience and interaction, not the physical icon that determines the quality of the moment. The Internet God is there for worship in the Internet heaven should we so wish to recognise God's presence there. And few Internet users, even Apple owners, end up worshipping the wrong thing; the plastic, glass or cable! In this sense at least, The Internet conforms to the Jewish commandment not to make any graven image of anything in heaven or earth. The Internet at worst may bring to our eyes and ears all sorts of deprivations, but at least there is little in the way of a disobedient modelling of a golden calf at least in the mechanics of the way that we get on line. The Internet God may be available to us while we browse or communicate through The Internet but by and large it is not worshipped through idolatry when the power is off. We log on and we may pray but we do not worship anything sacrilegiously other than the Internet God. Indeed, within a strand of many religions, the simplicity, lack of ornateness and ordinariness of the computer transaction might be regarded as enhancing rather than detracting from its holiness. After all, the sanctity of the everyday is a recurring theme in religious discourse.
We have examined in this section some of the ways that The Internet might allow for worship, in spite of a common conception that The Internet is nearer to Mammon than to God. In the next section, I look at some of the characteristics of The Internet, in particular its communal and sharing nature, and how this too has God-like qualities.
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.60In the last section, I looked at how The Internet, as a natural medium for sharing information and emotions, can touch spiritual aspects of our lives by association with others. In this section, I examine how The Internet changes lives; something that most religions are in the market to do! The extent to which the Internet sweeps us up and carries us forward, engaging our hearts and minds in the way that the great religions proclaim that God should, is therefore the subject of this section.
Those of religious belief might acknowledge that, on an intellectual level, the analogy between The Internet and God has some validity. But they might also argue that the religious experience is much more than this – it is also about accumulated wisdom and history, worship within a community; engaging with God at a deep and emotional level and often changing lives for the better within the moral precepts of each particular religious tradition. This is of course absolutely the case and it is a territory that The Internet can in no way replace, nor should it try to.
But, as Walter J. Ong says, technologies are not merely exterior aids but also interior transformations of consciousness. In discussing God and The Internet, one cannot ignore the deep significance that The Internet already holds for many people. The Internet may be a tool that we can pick up and put down as we please but it is also often a deeply emotional experience that can engage us at the deepest level. It too has the capacity to change us and makes us into different people. If this is the level at which God works, one would have to make the observation that The Internet God at times seems to be engaging us more fully than the off-line God!
The world religions often adopt something of a missionary instinct, extending into regions where previously they had no influence. The Internet has an innate capacity to engage with every culture, and perhaps more naturally adjusts to each new influence than the most enlightened missionary! The Internet draws us in and engages us in a way that religious practice often fails to do. It fascinates all age groups. Here, in the UK at least, however many Internet terminals are placed in our libraries, they are immediately taken up whilst the books on the shelves beside them gather dust. The Internet knows how to fill our temples, synagogues, mosques or churches, so to speak.
The passion that The Internet invokes is more than just its usefulness as a tool. Our love for it has something to do with its lack of prescriptivism; its resistance to absolute truth – the very ground on which religious authority, though not necessarily God, holds sway. The Internet mindset is perhaps more akin to the Japanese way of seeing religion where different religious states are applicable to different stages of life, no religious position being granted absolute truth.
The Internet may to some extent fit this model in accommodating to our spiritual needs; providing a God of individual preference and a belief structure set up to accommodate our individual requirements. Whilst such a malleable God might be seen as a God lacking in moral fibre and not standing for an absolute truth, the Internet God entertains absolute moral positions too – if this is what we require of our God! The effectiveness of a God that can adjust to our requirements of a God goes some way to explaining The Internet's remarkable hold on our lives and capacity to change us. By conferring on us a sense of identity that we can understand, the Internet God provides us with an individual experience that can be both significant to us and sacred as well. By offering the tools with which we can identify with others who have the same emotional needs, The Internet caters for much more than our intellectual curiosity.
There are areas in which The Internet seems more accomplished than any of the religions. One of these is its approachability, especially to the young. The Internet may lack religious ritual. It may offer nothing comparable to the Christian eucharist. It offers no holy communion built up by habit and ritual. But The Internet is still young and we may hardly have scratched the surface of its potential to ritualize belief. Through the ever more interactive nature of the Web, and through experiencing it body and soul, it will hold emotional experiences and rituals in store.
If we accept the soul's deep yearning to be united with the divine then The Internet can be seen as providing his or her our own connection. It has parallels with the story of Krsna who multiplies himself innumerable times in order to dance with each of the Gopis in the Rasa dance; each Gopi thinking that Krsna danced with her alone. It may seem trite to talk about our Internet connection in the same breath but we can see this too as a way for us to dance with God to our own tune and in our own clumsy way.
So, on The Internet, we can create our God to be as personal as we wish, or as distant. For example, the Internet God could serve the monist Hindu who sees Brahman as beyond himself and also the theist Hindu who perceives Brahman as personal and on first name terms. And this is not necessarily to dilute the nature of the divine experience in my view; rather it is to be able to respond to different aspects of the divine perceived by us. Most religions, after all, acknowledge God's all encompassing nature – of neither East nor West, male nor female or first and last, everywhere and nowhere – whilst recognising too God's closeness to us so that the transcendent is balanced by the personal, the infinite by the immanent. In other words, on The Internet, we can potentially see God in terms that we understand; those terms do not necessarily reflect God's being. But this has always been how humans worship God. They take of God that which they can comprehend and that which means something to them. Without wishing in any way to undermine the role of mainstream religion, it so happens that The Internet too is rather good at facilitating a process by which we can find the God we need.
Nor should we assume that those from one religious tradition or another are immune to a distorted perception of God. Spinoza's position is that men who worship a particular view of God may be more firmly rooted by their religious practice in inadequate cognition.[1] In other words, any particular religious tradition will not of necessity reflect a true God and so we should not necessarily assume that an Internet God reflects God less adequately. The Internet, like God, has an unclear measure, description and form. God has been likened to the sea or rivers whose waters have no shape of their own, but take their character from the land over which they flow.[2] Through The Internet, we may sometimes glimpse what we take to be God's attributes whilst the essence of God remains as ever unfathomable to us. Each sighting, or perceived sighting, may be of the one God, but the more we say of God, the more there remains to be said; an aspect of God that holds true for The Internet too. We should also remember that a free for all and unruly approach to God that can be thought of as one element of Internet culture too, has long precedent as well in the Greek Bacchanalian tradition, or the teaching of the Sikh Gurus, and is as worthwhile, arguably, as any more systematic approach to God; though The Internet is equally adept at systematic approaches to God too!
In this section, I have examined aspects of The Internet that can excite us by corresponding to our spiritual needs; whatever these may be. In the next section, the discussion stands back from our own needs to examine how the Internet God bears up to an absolute truth.
fn1. Spinoza (OUP, 1986) p.93. fn2. Norman Soloman, 'Judaism' in Picturing God (London, 1994), pp. 142- 165, p. 158.In the last section, I looked at ways that The Internet can fulfil our deepest spiritual needs; arguably sometimes doing this more adequately than mainstream religions. In this section, I wish to consider how God relates to truth and knowledge and how the better comprehension and feeling of universal citizenship that The Internet can provide brings us nearer to what has traditionally been meant by God.
The Internet can be seen as blazing a trail through, or simply ignoring, provincial and national boundaries and potentially seeking out truth wherever it resides; that it correspondingly can also be a vehicle for bigotry, rampant commercialism or pornography cannot be denied either. This is in the nature of new media developments. They provide new potential for both good and evil. But we do not necessarily decry the printing press because it spreads the sinful and scurrilous more widely too! Instead, we tend to assess the overall impact of such developments on civilization and education. One of the features of The Internet is that it makes it difficult to suppress knowledge. It opens our eyes to everything that we may, or may not, wish to know. It bears resemblance perhaps in this respect at least to the Hindu God Kāli; taking on the forces of ignorance.
Each of the main religions recognizes knowledge as to some extent crucial to finding God. It is no coincidence that synagogues, mosques, monasteries and cathedrals have always been centres of learning. Muhammad's saying: 'seek for science, even if it be in China ' is pertinent in this connection. Provincialism is not in the nature of what we understand by God or of The Internet. The idea that God's domain is the whole earth – his providence extending over everything – is a common theme to the prophets of the Old Testament: 'they are the eyes of the Lord, which run to and fro through the whole earth.'[1] There may be no better analogy for God's providence extending over everything on earth than The Internet. Jonathan Sacks argues that printing, by providing everyone with access to knowledge, created the possibility of universal citizenship [2] This is the kind of mantle that The Internet, at its best, takes on too. We may not accept that God plays any part in such Internet developments as Wikipedia where knowledge on every conceivable subject is pooled and shared but we should acknowledge that such generosity of mind is in keeping with the understanding and enlightenment that most religions encourage in their adherents. Such opportunities to share a comprehension of our world encourages egalitarianism, self-belief, selflessness and what Spinoza would call more adequate ideas. These are the kind of qualities that are most associated with religious enlightenment too.
We might also draw a comparison here with the tendency of certain religious institutions both to instil their own values and to withhold knowledge. Where knowledge is open, this kind of restriction on knowledge and behaviour, where power results from ecclesiastical position or ivory tower hierarchies, becomes more difficult to sustain.
Spinoza's position is that as we become more enlightened, we become nearer to God.
Since God has adequate knowledge of everything, our own ideas are adequate in so far as we share in the infinite intellect ... the more adequate my conceptions, the more I reach beyond my finite condition to the divine essence of which I am a mode.[3] Of course, there is no automatic enlightenment associated with The Internet and the commercialism can be overbearing and insidious too. But The Internet is nevertheless a repository of knowledge and wisdom such as the world has never known; much of this resource being available without cost, almost instantaneously, and to anyone with an Internet connection.
Clearly, not everyone would accept that the access to knowledge and the opportunity to learn almost anything that the Internet offers has anything to do with God. Feuerbach's position, for instance, is that, although there is no God, religion plays a part in our self-understanding and therefore has value to this extent at least. The Internet, under such an analysis, helps us to learn about our world, helps us to comprehend others and gives us insights into ourselves. This argument that an idea of God is desirable even if the empirical evidence for God doesn't stack up, can always be made of the God worshipped by every religion. But this position does not discredit an Internet God to any greater extent, in my view.
In this section, I have considered some of the ways that the truth and knowledge made available to us through The Internet can be argued to be of assistance in providing us with adequate conceptions, such adequacy of ideas being necessary to divine contemplation too. The final section is a continuation of this idea in that it assesses some of the ways that God can be seen as within us rather than beyond us. This relates closely to the knowledge, enlightenment and understanding that a connected world can help to imbue.
fn1. Zechariah 4. 10, King James Bible, 1611 fn2. The Dignity of Difference (London, 2002) pp. 134-135. fn3. Scruton, Roger, Spinoza (OUP, 1986) p.69.In the last section, I argued that in theology, God has something to do with knowledge, enlightenment and truth – and that The Internet is now also a crucial provider of such understandings. In this section, I examine the religious tenet that God is integral to everything we do – God is Man – and therefore that God is inevitably to some extent The Internet too. And the more that The Internet becomes a part of our lives, the more that God can be seen as associated with it.
All the religions perceive God as having at least some kind of a relationship with the world. For Christians, through Jesus, it is inevitable that God has a bearing on the world. To Buddhists, everything is potentially sacred, whether or not a God exists. For Hindus, religious and sacred matters are never completely separated; every activity linked to God's will – so that sacredness lies within the heart. Every Muslim believes that there is no reality but Reality, nothing that does not contain God; Muhammad saying, 'Revile not the world, for God is the world.' In Judaism, Rabbinic Texts emphasise that although God is present in the temple, this did not prevent God from also being present everywhere else. The cave can be full of the sea without reducing the amount of water in the sea everywhere else. There are many examples in Sikhism where the Gurus say that the True One is to be found in the heart. In Japanese Religions, as Wendy Dossett says, the human and the Godly are so close that simply by participating in humanity one is participating in both.[1]
So, even if The Internet does not always seem holy, it is nevertheless part and parcel of our world and of ourselves and to this extent at the very least, it relates to what is described as God in religious and secular thought. To say that any God must have a bearing on Man makes no assumption as to whether or not God exists. It is simply to recognize that an idea of God cannot be entirely separated from our every activity, the Internet included.
The idea of an Internet God, then, may fit more comfortably with the notion of the human God than the God on high that we adulate and keep at arm's length. Such a God tends to be within us rather than apart from us; perhaps nearer to the idea of God found in the Romantic movement where enlightenment is sought within ourselves. This is the implication in some representations of the Hindu deity – for instance Hanumān tearing open his chest with both hands to reveal Rāma and Sita in his heart. Similarly, in Islam, everything that God has made is good so that nothing is by nature evil and the sacred is to be found everywhere. There is a deep and at times bitter controversy within Islam over the extent to which God is Man that has relevance to any discussion of God's relationship with Man; Sufus having been criticised and persecuted for idolatory because of their claim that God is best found in the perfect man. Sufus, in their turn, see polytheism in those who insist on saying that God and Man exist separately. This is a subject that all religions grapple with. Is God in or beyond nature? The Internet, as an analogy for God, seems to allow us to hold both positions. We can perhaps both recognize our unique Godliness and also that we are a small part of a bigger spiritual whole. To return to the ocean metaphor again, each wave may be unique but not entirely distinct from the ocean of which it is a part.
The Sikh Gurūs have no difficulty with the idea that the True one resides in the heart. We find the same practical and worldly attitude in the Japanese religions where the Buddhists of the Mahāyāna school tend to be involved in the immediate world; Nirvana regarded as obtainable in this life.[2] This same feeling of present potential is characteristic of The Internet project where the conditions necessary to achieve Nirvana could be said to be made available to us today! On The Internet, enlightenment can be viewed as here and now, not in some other place or time.
In Western philosophical thought, Spinoza has perhaps been the most thorough and innovative in exploring the idea that God and the world are one. In his proposition 15, he says that 'Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can exist or be conceived without God.[3] Spinoza did not live in an Internet age but The Internet cannot be excluded from this formula either! The Internet is also a nice way to visualize the mind. It is a nice example of our existence apart from our bodies. We talk about our Internet presence or our Internet identity. This can still persist even when we switch off our computers; even when we go on holiday or die. We might have a blogging identity that will have some relationship to our physical identity but it can never be exactly the same. Many of these same things have been said about the body and the mind. Spinoza asserts that God is not distinct from daily life but identical with it. His argument that God is not transient but the immanent cause of everything – existing in his created world and not beyond it – makes the idea of an Internet God seem less far-fetched perhaps than the God that we may have become accustomed to worshipping on high. Under Spinoza's model for God, the more we understand ourselves and our emotions, the more we love God. If God is in ourselves and in others, The Internet, at least, can help us to discover ourselves and others more fully.
fn1. 'Japanese Religions' in Picturing God (London, 1994), pp. 208- p. 209. fn2. Wendy Dossett, 'Japanese Religions' in Picturing God (London, 1994), pp. 204-215, p. 211. fn3. Scruton, Roger, Spinoza (OUP, 1986) p.35.In a post-modern age, perhaps it matters less to us than previously whether or not our particular God exists. To be preoccupied with those issues that theologians are concerned with may in fact matter more to us than whether or not, in absolute terms, the existence of God can be proved.
The Internet can help with this discussion because it is there and because we use it and because, as I have tried to show in this preliminary discussion, certain parallels can be drawn between The Internet and God. I have tried to keep the argument light and not to overstate my case. I have also been careful to avoid suggesting that The Internet is any kind of substitute for religion. Certain analogies have been drawn here but we will continue to use The Internet in our own way whether or not these analogies are helpful. One conclusion of this examination, therefore, is that The Internet – because of its base in the ordinary, scientific world – may perhaps help us to take a more relaxed attitude to metaphysical matters. The Internet dispenses nicely with some of the paraphernalia of religion. This position could be summarised as, “The Internet may or may not throw light on God but comparison is intellectually enjoyable to me and I will continue to use The Internet in much the same way in any case.”
My own position is that I have found no better analogy for God's providence extending over everything on earth than that of The Internet. Indeed the analogy at times seems to me so startlingly appropriate that I am puzzled that more people do not talk about the Internet and God in the same breath! The reason for our reluctance to draw the parallel between God and The Internet may lie more in our nature than in God's nature. A God with a long beard sitting on a cloud may chime with our human requirements of a God even though the analogy of God with The Internet could be at least as close to God's true nature.
I have also argued here that The Internet provides us with a contemporary means of comprehending God that the mainstream religions sometimes fail to establish in our minds. I would not go so far as to describe The Internet as 'a new heaven and a new earth.' It is often nothing of the kind. But I would argue that The Internet's worldliness does not make it less divine. The Internet's place of worship is at the shrine of our computer screen and everywhere. And I do not consider it fanciful to suggest that, at our computer screen, earth and heaven conjoin. For God, if God exists, is like The Internet – both in us and beyond us.