Im far from being God ....but I work goddamn hard
Charles Dudley Warner once made an observation about the strangeness of political bedfellows that has certainly stood the test of time.But, in the history of the West, it is religion that makes the oddest and most baleful bunkmates of all.
A few days ago I read an article on MSNBC.com called the The New Naysayers. It was about the rise in popularity of what can be called “Strong Atheist” literature. These would be works such as “The End of Faith" by Sam Harris, that argue without apology that there is no such thing as God, and that religiosity of every stripe contributes much to human suffering . In my opinion the advent of moral monotheism has been an crucial stepping stone in the development of mankind. Most of the atrocities that are attributed to faith were actually the result of tribalism, the dark side of our patrimony as social creatures. If no one ever again spoke the name of God we’d just find other things to Crusade for, or Jihad over.
What I always find disappointing about the "God Debate" is the degree to which everyone seems to agree on the field of battle. It was 4000 years ago that a Mesopotamian merchant was called by an unseen voice to leave his home for a “land that I will show you” It is still that voice which the western world is following.It is still that land that we seek. But why is that true? Why in this age of clones and quarks do we cling to a pre- technological, pre-democratic, nearly preliterate formulation of Divinity. I personally dont think God is dead, but his resume seems to be hopelessly out of date. Deity must be, ex vi termini, so far beyond the pale of human comprehension that no theology could ever articulate him in full. Each religion captures some dimension of divinity (and humanity) that others have missed. There is a horizon for every eye, but none of them is the actual edge of the world.
Why, in all of the vastness of the Universe did Eloi choose a nomadic herding community in the middle eastern desert as his only people?
How can an entity be omniscient and still experience regret, or ever have “a change of heart” about anything ?
Why does a God who is entirely good allow evil to prosper?
Simple..He didn’t, He couldn’t , He doesn't.
For the sake of atheist and adherent alike, we need a radical redefinition of terms. I believe we are seeing the leading edges of this in the often ridiculed New Age movements, as well as those branches of science that concern themselves with cloning, and artificial intelligence, and the architecture of particles.
Those same middle-eastern nomads, yoked and oppressed by one empire after another have given the world an enormous gift. They handed down to us a story that summed up their highest hopes for a relationship with the numinous as they understood it. We, the recipients of that gift, have spent millennia arguing about (and killing over) the nature of the wrapping paper that surrounds it. Could this be the century in which we finally find the courage to look inside the box?
A few days ago I read an article on MSNBC.com called the The New Naysayers. It was about the rise in popularity of what can be called “Strong Atheist” literature. These would be works such as “The End of Faith" by Sam Harris, that argue without apology that there is no such thing as God, and that religiosity of every stripe contributes much to human suffering . In my opinion the advent of moral monotheism has been an crucial stepping stone in the development of mankind. Most of the atrocities that are attributed to faith were actually the result of tribalism, the dark side of our patrimony as social creatures. If no one ever again spoke the name of God we’d just find other things to Crusade for, or Jihad over.
What I always find disappointing about the "God Debate" is the degree to which everyone seems to agree on the field of battle. It was 4000 years ago that a Mesopotamian merchant was called by an unseen voice to leave his home for a “land that I will show you” It is still that voice which the western world is following.It is still that land that we seek. But why is that true? Why in this age of clones and quarks do we cling to a pre- technological, pre-democratic, nearly preliterate formulation of Divinity. I personally dont think God is dead, but his resume seems to be hopelessly out of date. Deity must be, ex vi termini, so far beyond the pale of human comprehension that no theology could ever articulate him in full. Each religion captures some dimension of divinity (and humanity) that others have missed. There is a horizon for every eye, but none of them is the actual edge of the world.
Why, in all of the vastness of the Universe did Eloi choose a nomadic herding community in the middle eastern desert as his only people?
How can an entity be omniscient and still experience regret, or ever have “a change of heart” about anything ?
Why does a God who is entirely good allow evil to prosper?
Simple..He didn’t, He couldn’t , He doesn't.
For the sake of atheist and adherent alike, we need a radical redefinition of terms. I believe we are seeing the leading edges of this in the often ridiculed New Age movements, as well as those branches of science that concern themselves with cloning, and artificial intelligence, and the architecture of particles.
Those same middle-eastern nomads, yoked and oppressed by one empire after another have given the world an enormous gift. They handed down to us a story that summed up their highest hopes for a relationship with the numinous as they understood it. We, the recipients of that gift, have spent millennia arguing about (and killing over) the nature of the wrapping paper that surrounds it. Could this be the century in which we finally find the courage to look inside the box?
posted by jayjay23 at 1:24 PM
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