Finally some Clarity on God #1 and God #2
It began for me with the Jordan Peterson/Sam Harris Debate
My favorite podcast (yes I'm a Protestant along with all those who identify as atheist) is doing a World Cup of the gods. Genius.
This will be great fun but it will obviously cause practicing Christians and other religious people to tremble. Every attentive lad or lass in Sunday school knows that there is God and the gods. You can even spot this is Plato.
My Youtube odyssey was jolted when a viewer of my videos asked if I'd ever watched this. This led to a number of things including wrecking the economy around a certain used book.
I had already come up with my working boxes of God #1 (@jordanbpeterson 's God) and God #2 (the God @SamHarrisOrg loves not believing it) after listening to their first chat with @BretWeinstein "What do you mean by God?"
The Hebrews had their God were not like the other peoples and their gods. The Hebrews never really disbelieved in the gods but they acted out their relationship with their God that the normal ravages of history did not destroy. It met the Jordan Peterson standard of Darwinian truth.
The gods of the ancient world can't do "anything". Village Atheist (folk atheism) questions usually expose that aspect. "Can God create a rock too big for even God to lift." Classic example of an agent/arena relationship. "too big" is a function of the arena.
The Hebrews managed to identify the arenic God (#1) as a character in the story. There seem to be other attempts in other religions (The Fates for example) but they are never like the Hebrew Lord.
Christianity turns up the heat when it declares that a human being, who is born, lives, dies, rises and ascends into Heaven within history IS the God. Not "a god" because then we'd be back with the polytheists subject to their meta-divine-realm.
Christianity is God #1 (the arenic God) and God #2 (God as agent within His own arena) fused in a way that has bothered our collective subconscious for two thousand years.
This frames @TheRestHistory is history World Cup of gods because as they say, the House always wins. :)
The Arena is Agentic, but humans still needed a walkthrough.
Sam Harris critiques God #2. Every time you hear Sam Harris say "consciousness," he is describing a neo-platonic conception of God with a Hegelian twist.