Goethe about God

“People treat God as if the incomprehensible, unthinkable, supreme Being were not much more than themselves. Otherwise, they would not say: the Lord God, the dear God, the good God. He became to them, especially to the clergy, who talk about him on a daily basis, a phrase, a mere name, which has no meaning at all to them ... And what bad stories do these narrow-minded people put upon the Godhead! Nothing more blasphemous than the old dogmatism which has created an upset, angry, unjust, and biased God. I can not believe in any God who exalted thrones outside the world ...

I am accustomed to look at the world as a researcher of nature, and as such I seek God. Then it is insufficient for us to merely describe nature and to name it. They say this is aluminum oxide and that is silicon dioxide. How does knowing these parts help me, or their names? ...

Which is also the basis for all interaction with nature,when we only work with individual material components in an analytical way without feeling the breath of life that dictates every part’s direction and, by an inner law, prevents or sanctions any deviation? Behind every being is a higher idea. That is my God, that is the God whom we all are always searching for and hoping to set eyes on, but we can only suspect, not see.

I do not ask whether this Supreme Being has understanding or reason, but I feel it itself is Mind, it is Reason. All creatures are penetrated by it, and man so much that he may recognize parts of the Most High.”

(From ‘My Religion, My Faith’ by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

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