The Search for God

This is the story of a relationship between a natural, terrestrial human being and a supernatural, extraterrestrial being, which I choose to call the entity. It is not a science-fiction story. It is my brief narrative describing my own and humanity’s search for that supernatural entity and our efforts to understand it, describe it, and communicate with it. I choose the pronoun it quite intentionally, because, as I shall describe, I don’t know the gender of this entity—if it even has anything close to a gender. An entity, per Merriam-Webster, is something that has separate and distinct existence and objective or conceptual reality.

Some of the earliest researchers of the entity, mainly in Greece, Turkey, and neighboring areas, have names and documented histories—they lived and breathed, had families and friends, and authored reflections about their understanding of it. Others lack a documented history, possibly never existed, or are simply composite figures onto whom historians or storytellers have projected actions, thoughts, and feelings. The writers of many religious texts, including the Bible, chose to remain anonymous, or were known as its authors for a brief time, or never revealed their identity.

The concept of the entity as being God with the capital g emerged into human awareness slowly. The search required the thinking, actions, and emotional impulses of hundreds of human generations. The effort continues to this day, and my book is a snapshot of that ongoing quest, a quest that implicitly demands intellectual and existential courage from those who pursue it. Why courage? Because it navigates profound uncertainty and the limits of human understanding (Nussbaum, 1990), it is fraught with the risks in being spectacularly wrong, was and still is the target of critics, detractors and persecutors.

In the beginning, I’m guessing, there must have been a first perception of “something not like us” by a representative individual, whom I may call the Caveman. The Caveman witnessed lightning, heard thunder, felt earthquakes, and instinctively perceived these natural phenomena as supernatural. Caveman’s relationship with entities “not like us” was likely one of fear, shock, and awe.

Many generations later, storytellers equipped with more advanced knowledge, better language skills, and thinking time began crafting and sharing origin-of-the-world stories. Why they wanted to know the origin of their world is not clear, but since we’re continuing to search for our origins to this day, my guess is that it was and still is an innate desire of the human being. Their stories, necessarily fantastic and invented of whole cloth, were passed down through the generations as songs, poems, myths, and legends. Nearly all stories (I hesitate to call them theories) attributed the existence of the world to a supernatural and powerful “originator.” At this early stage, however, definitions remained vague and inconsistent. Was the originator singular or plural? Was it located above, below, inside, or outside of the physical world? Most importantly, who or what was it?

Hundreds more generations passed. Eventually, in present-day Greece and its surrounding regions, philosophers (literally, “lovers of wisdom”), individuals who devoted their lives to contemplation and who regarded knowledge as intrinsically valuable, refined the earlier stories and constructed philosophical theories, cosmogonies (studies of the universe’s origin), and theologies (studies of the gods—there were many back then). The wide array of gods, spirits, and supernatural entities from the Caveman’s era persisted and flourished within popular culture, and were vividly represented in art, literature, poetry, and theatrical works. Many of these entities appeared as anthropomorphic figures (supernatural beings with human-like qualities and appearance), as animals, or natural forces.

In an attempt to make sense of this growing pantheon and clarify its purpose, later generations of philosophers gravitated toward the notion of one principal entity as singular creator, prime mover, or intelligent designer. Concurrently, concepts regarding the immortality, eternity, the nature of a divine being, and its direct intervention in human affairs emerged and gained emotional currency. The possibility of a meaningful relationship—rooted in friendship or love, or kinship—between the entity and individual humans began to be explored. The refinement of the characteristics, expectations, and limitations inherent in this relationship remains ongoing.

During the polytheistic era, which we now consider as a pagan (from the Latin pagus, the village) religion, the relationship was understood as adherence (or religion, literally “binding oneself”) to prescribed rules of thought, emotion, and behavior intended to appease or secure the favor of the gods. Within these communities of believers, certain individuals (who weren’t busy hunting, gathering, or farming) took on the role of interpreters, mediators, teachers, and “local” representatives of the entities. Monuments and temples were erected to honor, symbolize, or house the principal ones. Long-established burial practices dating back to the Caveman signified the enduring belief in life after death. The earlier experiences of awe and fear associated with the weather and other natural phenomena evolved into concepts, such as the sacred, the holy, and the hallowed. Pagan religious practices mandated, or at least strongly encouraged, acts of veneration, sacrificial offerings, purification rituals, and acts of atonement. Meanwhile, ancestral fears about incurring the gods’ wrath or displeasure remain—Will the lighting strike me? It won’t if I’m “good,” right?
Anonymous religious writers—the former storytellers, now fully literate—compiled scriptures and narrative texts capturing generations’ worth of accumulated knowledge about the gods. While some traditions simplified their pantheons and transitioned toward monotheism (belief in one entity), others continued their polytheistic traditions, a few of which survive to this day.

Given the inherent difficulty, despite strenuous and mind-boggling feats of imagination, of discerning the personality, attributes, and intentions of an invisible, extraterrestrial, and profoundly non-human entity—and of establishing and maintaining human-like relationships (such as those characterized by love, friendship, or familial bonds) with such an entity—religious practices evolved as the critical mediums for establishing such a connection. For a significant portion of humankind, local religious traditions mediated their relationship with the entity or entities, increasingly suggesting, recommending, or imposing how humans should interact and behave toward it and toward one another.