God is Man

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.