Informationalism and God


It has been stated earlier that it is of particular difficulty for one to be considered a follower of any religion and still be an informationalist.

Informationalism regards the existence of a personal god as a highly unlikely claim. And so, it is not in the nature of informationalists to believe in claims which are highly unlikely. While not dismissing the idea completely, it is very difficult to reconcile the belief in a personal conscious god and an established religion with Informationalism. This is because religions, especially major religions, are in the habit of limiting the flow of information. This limiting of information is sanctioned by a higher power whose will we cannot ultimately know, and thus following this will is counterproductive to the informationalist.

The personal god is an anthropomorphization of the universe. The informationalist acknowledges that the primary drive of human beings is the will to control our circumstances. In such a world, it is possible to fulfill all our biological and personal desires. Since we know that this is often not the case in the actual world, we impose the structures of our imagination onto the actual world. In this sense, our interpretation of events can be used to construct a system that is not in concordance with reality. When this lack of concordance with reality interferes with our desire to pursue information, due to the fact that it may to contrary to our image of the world, it has become something that is uninformationalist.

If one, however, believes in the pantheistic version of the universe, that god is all and all is god, this can be acceptable. Such a proposition is not unlikely. Since informationalists regard the personal god as a creation of man, the impersonal god can simply be the universe itself. The blind watchmaker, which is all and all is it.

Upon close examination this view is not different from the position of atheism. This is because the definition of god can be altered because of its lack of rigid linguistic status, and has thus been rendered to be a definition that expresses the definition of the atheist or most specifically weak atheism. Take Spinoza for example; the god of Spinoza worked by natural laws and did not possess a conscious of his own. The god of Spinoza posessed the universal consciousness and did everything out of necessity. Therefore, once can see that it is possible to bring the definition of god into terms that are acceptable for an atheist. However, obviously, the simple webster's dictionary defines god as something that is highly likely to be not the case. Atheists in this sense are pantheists and pantheists are atheists. So, disbelief in god is not against informationalism, it is dependent on your definition of the god in which you believe.

Even Polytheism on the pantheistic level is acceptable. If gods are divided into blind forces which operate by certain principles. In a sense, the religious terms can be brought into concordance with the philosophy of informationalism, and thus informationalism can thrive.

However, subscribing to the personal and conscious gods of most religions does not match these criteria. Thus it is not desirable if one has decided on the philosophy of Informationalism. It is not an issue of theism and atheism; it is an issue of perspective.