Where is God? Inside or outside the Universe? Lent 2025: Day four

 Assuming you believe in God (either as a person or as a universal force and purpose), the next question is – where is God? Inside of everything? Or standing outside the physical universe? Is God behind the scenes, or is God part of the scene?

Here we come to the split between the notions of pantheism (God is present everywhere – the Divine and the totality of the universe being identical) and panentheism (God extending beyond space, time and matter). Google Gemini Advanced 2.0 Imagen 3.0, prompted to illustrate the difference between pantheism and panentheism, comes up with this, and the pantheistic view is seriously trippy (click to enlarge)...

I have pondered over this distinction for a while, and have come to the conclusion that it is not at all important. Ultimately, it's just one of those things philosophers like to indulge in, having no practical impact on our daily lives. Just like my cat doesn't need to know whether cat food comes a factory in Poland or is imported from abroad – a meaningless abstraction.

God is very much present in my life; in my little daily rituals, in my thoughts and observations; I seek to align my way of life to the Cosmic Purpose as I see it – a path of continuous spiritual evolution, away from the beastly towards the angelic in small steps, one life at a time. But does God extend beyond space and time – and indeed, beyond matter and energy? Or is there even a question?

My worldview hinges on the primacy of the subjective conscious experience, on consciousness being fundamental, preceding space and time, energy and matter. God as 'Big-C' Consciousness, the prime mover and purpose of everything.

But whether God is present within every single particle field across the entire cosmos, or dwells within and without of the observable universe, is something beyond our intellectual grasp, and believing in one or the other, or neither, or both, does not make us better or worse human beings. If I were to have to express a preference, I'd go for pantheism, considering 'small-c' consciousness to be omnipresent, though I could not rule out a Deity (though not a personified one) standing above and beyond a pantheistic universe.

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