What is a god? Any god. Who is it?

Belief in God, Religion 2 Minutes

I Googled ‘God.’ I got about 2.16 billion hits. Wow. The answer must be there. Right?

One was from a Christian religious site. Everything they claimed about God was supported with biblical citation by chapter and verse, of course. But there were two important exceptions.

First, the article claimed it’s obvious: “God’s existence is so conspicuous….” So, everyone should know. Second, it championed God by further claiming that “creation,” or existence, and human consciousness make God manifest. The writer did not answer what, or who is any god. But they continued to try.

The rest of the post made interesting claims. Such as, they said if you don’t get God right, that is idolatry, which is a sin (Pardonne-moi s’il te plaît). “God is spirit, by nature intangible.” No help there. But then they said, “We know certain things to be true of God…” Then they quoted more scripture. Why? Because all we “know” of that God are unsupported, written claims from thousands of years ago.

The piece also identified characteristics of God. Those are loving, truthful, holy, compassionate, merciful, graceful, judgmental, and forgiving. All human traits, yet again based on scripture because that’s all they have. Still not much to help with what or who a god is.

If we return to the it’s conspicuous and human consciousness claims, which make God obvious, there are problems. Nature, a certain creation of God’s, is obviously random and destructive. Additionally, God’s humans are incredibly destructive toward each other and to nature. Enter The Problem of Evil.

There is also the fact that no one is born knowing anything about any god. We are taught about God by others. God must be learned. How is that obvious, intuitive, or rising from human consciousness? And why not? Many less important things such as breathing, swallowing, our beating hearts, and more are there from day one or before.

A God, or higher power, is whatever we say it is or want it to be. We create gods and always have. That need may be a human trait. But so is thinking. A tree, nature, rain, an animal, something living in a volcano or in the sea may be a god because we say so. Personally, I like the Sun as a god. Planets named after gods and goddesses are all ready to step in for us. And what about goddesses? We’ve had Luna, Phoebe, Athena, Aurora, Flora, Freya, Iris, Cora, Selena, Thalia, and hundreds more.

I enjoy H. L. Mencken’s 1922, funeral oration for dead gods, “Memorial Service,” in which he lists names of many gods now gone. He ends with, “You may think I spoof. That I invent the names. I do not. Ask the rector to lend you any good treatise on comparative religion: You will find them all listed. They were gods of the highest standing and dignity – gods of civilized peoples – worshiped and believed in by millions. All were theoretically omnipotent, omniscient, and immortal. And all are dead.”

None of those gods ever actually existed. The author of the referenced Christian article would almost certainly agree with Mencken and me, with one exception. The one God and religion they were luckily born into and taught about. Lucky them.

I see the Sun. I get it. It’s there every day. We need it to survive. It preceded us and probably contributed to human and nature’s existence. Why not retro that old god? It’s nothing new. What is a solar system without a Sun?

Bill

 

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41 thoughts on “What is a god? Any god. Who is it?”

  1. One of my favorite quotes of all time, from the play “Inherit the Wind”, which was about the Scopes trial goes something like this: “The Lord God created man in his own image, and man, being a gentleman, returned the complement”. Obviously you have to get past the “sexist” gender assignment here, but to me, the quote rings very true.

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  3. Wonderfully amusing read Bill. ❤️ Could we now include Google as a newest God—e.g. “Google-God” as we call It/Him/Her in our family and from a society glued to our cellphones 22/7, 365-days a year—inside the many Pantheons of Living & Dead God’s easily found littering our world on every continent, in every culture, living or dead? 😉

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  4. Rastafarians got it right, until it becomes wrong. Smokable shit doesn’t grow on trees, y’know. God made shit in order to test how long it took for those who smoke it to realize it is the Devil’s weed.

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  7. Been out of commission for a few days (still not totally up-to-snuff) so I’m a bit behind on blog reading. In any event, I LOVE this post and am going to reblog it. I feel certain you won’t mind — but it you do … sue me. 😈

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  9. I like this quote from Jiddu Krishnamurti —

    “Now with the word ‘god’ there is nothing to which it refers, so each man creates his own image of that for which there is no reference”

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      3. To me, it’s morally safer to be responsible to many gods (comedy of errors), than One.
        In the OT it was the Egyptian and Canaanite gods. And in the new, the Greek gods.
        Compare to God Almighty.

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      5. Yeah, was more a kneejerk opinion- to me, many inferior gods dispersed are safer than responsibility to one God.
        And then Bill wanted a back-up Bible verse.

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      6. I did? Trust me (or not), I do not need to be told or reminded what the Bible says. Besides, just saying God is God is kind of weak.

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