So if, as Paul Tillich says, the idea of a personal god that keeps tinkering with the universe, not to mention our personal lives, who is mean and jealous, is absurd. ( that is really a germanic sentence, sorry) Who wants a tyrant. Who wants just another petty being like us? Atheism is justified. We, since the beginning of it all, have had gods. It seems we are hard wired for it. If we are to create a new god what would we look for? What good things have gods given us in the past? What was so important about god that we actually evolved with the idea? Is it possible to believe in god and belong in our contemporary intellectual world? With very few exceptions, people who have a personal/tyrant god are not really intellectually engaged in the world. They seem to exist in a "god spell". Is this good? Well one thing that results is a cultural war. Exactly what we have now. Apparently, live and let live are irrelevant concepts when you know you are right and of course both sides are right.
posted by Anne Coe | 6:34 AM
3 Comments:
I am not sure what you mean when you say "intellectually" engaged. If you mean that the people who are intellectually engaged have the leisure time to ponder untestable ideas, absurdities and other tidbits and that others stick to the explanations given them by their ancestors, then perhaps those people with a tyrant god are the most lucky of us all. How nice to have been given a roadmap for how to live life, and then get on with the business of living life.
I also am not sure what you mean about a "god spell." Does a god spell imply a strong, unshakable belief or strong claim about one's god? If so, then those people who are in a godspell are not the only ones with cultural wars. We are involved in one right now in the US. We are a xenophobic species. That means culture wars will be with us until we are all the same, no variability either genetic or cultural. Do you like the thought of that world? How ironic--the intellectuals lead us to mindless sameness so we can be intellects and avoid god spells and culture wars.
I have to admit that I find "intellectuals" to be quit tedious. Pondering untestable hypotheses, leading us on long wandering paths of ideas that may be deadly wrong, they may not be of benefit to our species.
The real question behind all your questions is why are we here. That we cannot answer right now except with science--we are here to reproduce and transmit our genes to the next generation. If there is some other reason, it is unknowable to most of us right now, and it may not be of benefit to try and create some intellectual explanation that may be very wrong.
I wonder why it says there is no comment. There is one.
Not all intellectually engage people ponder absurd ideas. Nor are the god spell people the only ones involved in a cultural war. All true believers cause cultural wars because they are all correct. I wouldn't want a world where everyone was the same but a little compassion would go a long way.
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