Would you not consider “higher power” to be a transcendent being? I don’t know how these things are typically defined. To me, “higher” would suggest a being “higher than human” … which, also to me, is the top of the food chain, so to speak. Just wondering.
You would have to ask the people who picked that option in the poll. What it most certainly is not, however, is God. Otherwise they would have picked that option.
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I would agree that it is not God, but many people believe in a sort of pantheism wherein “god” is in all things. So they would not believe in “God” per se, but may opt for the “higher power” as the most appropriate selection. People who go through a 12-Step program invoke a “higher power” which is a generic phrase for God or whatever they consider to be their god. I agree, though, that it would likely not be the one I consider to be “God.”
Some people who say they believe in a higher power, believe that nature is that power, there are even people who call the universe God and so when asked say they believe in God/and yet they just believe in the universe, which they’ve relabeled. Some people say God is love, and mean it literally, that God is the emotion we call love, not a sentient mind or intelligence, just the emotion. They will even answer that when asked “do you believe in God?” “I believe in love”. Right, that’s not what I asked.
These questionnaires are almost meaningless because people stuff all sorts of oddly defined personal interpretations into these terms.
Those of us on a website like this have a tendency to see things in a more black and white way. Either they believe in a tri-omni person who created the universe(usually Christians, Jews, or Muslims), or they don’t believe in anything. But many people aren’t really in either of those categories. They pick “other” or “God”, and we can’t be sure of what they mean about either of them.
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