The
Real God
Last updated 2004-06-28 by Roedy
Green ©1999-2004 Canadian Mind Products.
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: The Real God.
How much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to
include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of
Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatalogical
mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel
movements?
--Joseph Heller
Introduction
The religions of the world disagree on the nature of God and even whether God
exists. How do you know which is right, if any? Let us humbly admit we have no
way of knowing for sure. This essay is a set of suggestions on what to do in
this situation of doubt.
The Nature Of God
But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and
they shall tell thee: Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the
fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee.
-- Job 12:7-9
Traditionally we have taken our images of the nature of God from the dusty minds
of men long dead. There are other places to look. If we define God as the
creator of the universe, then the creation is ripe with clues to the nature of
God. Even an atheist can work with this definition of God. God, when defined
as the creator of the universe, may be a scientific principle or even the null
set. With that definition, God need not necessarily be good, infinite,
omnipotent, omniscient, intelligent or even conscious. The universe is very
impressive, even the tiny bit of it we have explored so far. Therefore it is
safe to say that God, even when defined this way, is impressive and awe-inspiring.
You can make guesses about the temperament of an artist by studying his
paintings. Similarly you can make some guesses about the nature of God by
studying His style in doing the creation.
God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh..
-- anonymous
For some reason, whenever people think about God they get a pained expression as
if someone had poked a broom up their ass.
-- anonymous
But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and
they shall tell thee:
Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall
declare unto thee.
-- Job 12:7
Generalisation About The Nature Of God
"I can understand why people believe in God, Jacob, I just can't understand
why they are not trying to kill the motherfucker."
Doc Webster, a character about to die of a brain tumor, in Spider Robinson's Callahan's
Con.
What might you guess about the nature of the creator from examining the creation?
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God works on a mind-bogglingly immense scale. Earth is but the tiniest spec in
the cosmos.
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God likes variety. Consider the bewildering variety of fishes in a coral reef.
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God is cruel, or is for some reason is unwilling or incapable of combating
cruelty. Animals kill each other. Billions of animals every year suffer and die
of overcrowding, starvation or dehydration. Humans do the most hideous things to
each other and God almost never intervenes.
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God is not at your beck and call to perform miracles for you, unless you happen
to be a saint. God seems to run the universe, nearly always, by rigid
mathematical rules.
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God is no prude. The sex life of the periwinkle is evidence.
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On the small scale, God is big on using simple, indestructible, resusable,
apparently identical building blocks. Nearly all of ordinary matter in the
universe is made of only three basic building blocks, the proton, neutron and
electron. On the large scale, there is much more variety.
-
God is big on recycling. The sun recycles sea water to fresh through the rains.
Plants recycle CO2 to oxygen. Bacteria recycle corpses to plant
nutrients. Every atom in your body was once part of a star.
-
God's sense of aesthetics is big on fractals and asymmetry.
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God is not big on permanence. Everything changes, even if slowly. Even the
dinosaurs went extinct after millions of years. Even the continents drift and
change shape. Even the sun will eventually stop shining.
-
Staring at the grandeur of the universe and the pathetic description of God in
the Bible, I would have to call the Bible an insult, even if God (the creator of
the universe) turns out to be only a bunch of equations.
Hedging Your Bets
What if the Muslims are right, and the Qur'an is the best description of the
real God, and he calls Himself Allah? What if the Buddhists are right and the
there is no one, divine or otherwise, who created the universe? Everything that
exists arises from a myriad of interdependent conditions without beginning or
end. The closest the Buddhists have to grasping at god with our limited minds is
to think of the void. What if the Jehovah's Witnesses are correct, and their
booklets are actually the closest you can get to God's will? What if God is so
utterly beyond human comprehension that any description in words is a pathetic
joke? What if the universe itself is far more marvellous than we ever dreamed,
and it is capable all on its own of God-like actions such as creating life?
You can call God, "The Real God", addressing by title rather
than by name. You can't then be accused of worshipping the wrong God. The
real God, (or the creator God) is defined here as the creator of the universe.
We might just as easily have defined the real God as the sustainer of the
universe, or the destroyer of the universe. For the more pragmatic,
we could have defined the real God as that which answers prayer. These
alternate definitions may or may not refer to the same entity or principles.
Temporary Assumptions
People usually learn their beliefs about God from their mothers. This is why the
beliefs are held with such irrational certainty. People are sure their religion
is superior to all others even if they have no exposure to other religions. If
one religion truly were superior, how could it be nearly all Americans believe
in Jehovah, and the Thais in the Buddha, and the Iraquis in Allah?
Given that we can't honestly be sure, what would be some conservative
working assumptions? Not all religions and ethical systems are this strict, but
few would condemn you for the following extra diligence.
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Until there is substantial evidence to the contrary, assume God considers all
species important.
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Until there is substantial evidence to the contrary, assume God does not
particularly favour man over other species.
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Until there is substantial evidence to the contrary, assume God wants the
natural world left pretty much as He created it.
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Until there is substantial evidence to the contrary, assume God wants you to
avoid harming other people just because they have differing religious beliefs
from you.
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Until there is substantial evidence to the contrary, assume God wants you to
care for your body with proper nutrition and exercise.
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Until there is substantial evidence to the contrary, assume the best way to
ascertain the nature of God is to study the entire creation, not just religious
scripture.
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Until there is substantial evidence to the contrary, assume God would prefer you
to seek win-win solutions where the needs of all species are considered.
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Until there is substantial evidence to the contrary, assume you can determine
the morality of an act by thinking about its effect on the long-term comfort and
survival of our species and the planet as a whole.
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Until there is substantial evidence to the contrary, assume you should fight
injustice.
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Until there is substantial evidence to the contrary, assume you should refrain
from deception, dissembling and lying.
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Until there is substantial evidence to the contrary, assume you should keep your
agreements.
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We never know for sure.
Profound Irresponsibility
Religion often makes people profoundly irresponsible. They imagine God will get
them out of any scrape. They imagine God would not let global warming get out of
hand. God would not let our pollution rise to such levels it chokes us to death.
God would not let them starve to death or catch HIV. But the real God seems to
act very much like the God played by George Burns in the movie Oh God,
who said, "I gave you what you needed; you can do it." and then washed
his hands in disgust at what a mess humans had made of earth.
I have never once seen God bail anyone out of any dicey situation. The
last reported time was Moses and the parting of the Red Sea, and now the
historians tell us the story of Israeli enslavement was a crock -- implying that
so was the parting of the Red Sea.
God certainly turned his back on the slaves, on the Jews in the concentration
camps and on the children of Iraq.
Yet this myth persists by constant repetition that God will unfailingly come to
the rescue.
There is nobody here but us chickens when it comes to rescue. We have to get
ourselves out of our own scrapes. Contrary to popular opinion, religion is the last
thing we need to make this a better world.
The other irresponsibility problem with religion is that it leads people to
imagine that life here on earth is unimportant. What counts is the eternal
hereafter. There is almost no evidence there is an eternal hereafter. Even if
there were, surely looking after earth properly would be good practice for
looking after heaven.
Do you really think if there is a heaven, they will let the slobs in who trashed
a planet and deliberately wasted its resources?
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