Iota

Most theists will agree that the infinite God they worship or believe in is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. But holding such beliefs rules out the possibility of belief in a god who stands in an absolute relation to the universe – for the following reasons: Omnipotence. If we claim that God is infinitely powerful, we have to admit that wherever power (or energy) exists it is of God, and that there is no power (or energy) at all apart from God’s power. Omniscience. If we claim that God is infinitely intelligent, we have to admit that wherever intelligence exists it is of God, and that there is no intelligence apart from God’s intelligence. Omnipresence. If we believe that God is infinitely present, we have to admit that nothing exists in the physical world where God is not present. No exceptions to these conditional inferences. We can make no exceptions to the above three conditionals, nor can we moderate them in any way. We have to believe that God’s power and intelligence is in every molecule, quark, neutron and electron. We have to believe that every stone, every tree, every human being and every animal is God through and through, both as regards power, intellect and will. If we believe in God’s omnipresence and infinite intelligence, we cannot deny that intelligence also pervades the physical world. Each living being uses intelligence in the way its physical body permits. Examples of animal intelligence – in apes, elephants, porpoises and orangutans – abound. Just because we cannot carry on a conversation with a giraffe does not mean to say that a giraffe has no intelligence. If we believe in the indivisibility of intelligence, we have to accept that volition, or will, is also indivisible. On that basis, we have to abandon belief in individual free will. Once it has been accepted that God is indivisible, omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent there can be no difficulty in comprehending that wherever there is God there is Nature, and wherever there is Nature there is God. ‘They’ are one. That one is Iota, the Infinite One which we perceive and understand through the Two Aspects of thought and matter. Use of the word ‘God’ induces us to think in theistic terms of a creator who stands in an absolute relation to, and is external to, ‘his’ creation. Because we identify God with Nature, we could legitimately substitute the word ‘Nature’ for ‘God’ wherever ‘God’ appears in the text of this treatise. But this would be confusing, and that is why we have coined the acronymic name ‘Iota’, which contains within itself the concept of an Infinite, self-causing One which we humans conceive under the Two Aspects of thought and matter (or extension). If I had a perfect understanding of a computer program, my mind would conceive of it in terms of non-material language, or ‘software’. If the language of the software were to be recorded on a compact disc, it would be fully expressed in the physical matter of the electromagnetically modified disc. The program would be conceivable, simultaneously and completely, under the aspect of software (or mind) and under the aspect of hardware (or matter), the one being the program’s conception, the other its expression. We might say that the conception was the fact of the matter, and the expression was the matter of the fact. Now suppose this computer program to be infinite and self-causing, and simultaneously and completely expressed both by its hardware (matter) and its software (mind). Being infinite, nothing can stand outside it. This is what Spinoza calls Deus-sive-Natura, God-or-Nature, and what we now know as Iota. That which is divided by one is undivided. When we count, we say: ‘one, two, three, four, five, six, seven...’ we do not say ‘one over one, two over one, three over one, four over one, five over one, six over one, seven over one...’ There is no need to say that, because we take it for granted that one goes into, or abides in, each number that number of times. In a similar way, when we refer to objects – earth, moon, Mary, crocodile – we do not say ‘earth over one, moon over one, Mary over one, crocodile over one’. We take it for granted that one abides in every thing. That one is Iota, the infinitely infinite, all-inclusive reality.