THE GOD PICTURE

Where did our concepts of a "god" originate? Could they have arisen from a world and society such as that with which we are familiar today?

This is an advanced, modern and over-populated world. The technology that has developed in my lifetime is astounding.

At my birth in 1934, we weren't very far removed from the horse and buggy world. I have harnessed horses and think I could still manage it with a little thought. Horses were still common on World War II battlefields. The Polish army met panzers with horse mounted cavalry. It's what they had.

When I was in elementary school, the world contained about 2 billion people. The population now is seven billion and growing. If you wanted to make a phone call across country, you had to drive to town which was twelve miles away.

Television was in its infancy and only the wealthiest in big cities were even aware of its existence. By my late teens, it was invading the more prosperous homes in our area on limited black and white channels. Color, high def and 3-d were science fiction. Telephone party lines came in during my late teens. Nobody even thought of a cell phone.

Yet, this world was tremendously advanced from the world of my ancestors just a few generations back, when world population was measured in the mere millions and technological wonders involved things like the besemer process for making steel and steam power.

Even farther back, the human race was struggling just to master basic metalurgy to replace stone and flint and most people subsisted in hard scrabble labor to produce the basic necessities of life from the soil and whatever happened to be at hand and workable. My grandfather was an expert with a drawknife for shaping wood. Most people today don't even know what a drawknife is, but I have one hanging on the wall of my toolshed. I don't use it. It's there for sentimental reasons.

However, even that world was amazingly advanced compared to the world from which our basic theological concepts arose. In that world, tribal chieftans and territorial kings ruled over small (comparatively) populations that barely got by with the barest of necessities.

In that tribal world, which is still seen in parts of the Middle East and Asia, the population's relationship with those in power was very personal. If you had a request to make, you went directly into the presence of the "grand poohba" and petitioned him personally.

How your petition was handled depended entirely on that potentate's attitude and personal opinion of you and your request. The outcome could sometimes be catastrophic, as the accounts of how King David dealt with some of his subjects shows. (I'm not vouching for the accuracy of all those accounts. They just illustrate how things were done in that world.)

Out of that bronze and stone age world came the concepts of "god" that still permeate our societies.

We still have the concept that all of the seven billion homo sapiens on this planet can have a one-on-one relationship with whatever conceptual idol populates our consciousnesses. People are abolutely convinced that great personage knows everything they think and do and is going to take personal umbrage if they mess up. Then, they have to grovel and beg and carefully make whatever amends their particular theology stipulates to get back in the good graces of the heavenly potentate they imagine.

Even the fanciful pictures of "god's throne" contained in the scriptures we've inherited are pictures from that basically tribal time -- pictures of a grand and exalted being sitting on a throne with fauning sycophants flinging their crowns at his feet while vociferously praising and exalting him.

This is all just a carryover from the tribal setting in which these fantasies developed. The god people worship is simply a tribal chieftan or territorial warlord such as we struggle against in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Isn't it time for a more realistic view of the cosmos and our place in it?

IT'S FRUSTRATING

I haven't posted any blogs for a while, but I have been active commenting on other blogs. On one of those blogs, quite a discussion erupted about the "mark of the Beast." A lot of people are very concerned about this "mark" and are absolutely convinced that it is real and they will live to see it.

I commented to show how stupid the whole thing was, only to have some "faith addicts" continue on with speculation about it. Hence the comment which follows copied from that site:

"I never cease to be amazed at how people cling to these ridiculous myths and fairy tales no matter how much that biblical nonsense is shown up and disproven and the whole book itself is shown to be a total travesty.

The machinations of the human mind are beyond fathoming. When people desperately want to believe, they will believe, no matter how many facts are laid out or how plainly. Sometimes I wonder why I bother commenting on these sites.

It's just like a comment a lady made at a yard sale this morning after my wife detailed how her daughter was saved from a serious heart condition due to doctors happening on the right tests to show up her heart valve problem. She now has two metal valves in her heart put there by one of the two surgeons in Arizona qualified to perform that operation, and she is feeling and doing great.

She commented that "the lord" put our daughter in the right circumstances. I had to walk away to keep from exploding about "the lord" and the holocaust, Bosnia, rampant sex traficking slavery of innocent young girls, deformed and retarded babies, inherited genetic weaknesses and deformities, natural disasters "the lord" is supposedly in control of, etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum.

Where is "the lord" in those situations and circumstances?

If something good comes along, "the lord" gets the credit, not advanced medical science dedicated humans brought about, the well-trained and analytical doctors, etc.

The bad? I guess "the lord" was busy with situations like our daughter's and didn't have time, or something. She must be one of his favorites, but she's an unbeliever like us. Go figure.

The goddist will have some explanation to hide his or her eyes from the stark reality that we exist in an uncaring universe and have ourselves to rely on -- totally! As long as we have dedicated scientists and medical experts, the progress and the medical and scientific and technological "miracles" are amazing.

If enough people come to that realization, maybe the human race can begin to reason and cooperate enough to save us from the tragedy of the extermination that seems so likely under present circumstances and attitudes -- attitudes mainly shaped by religions.

The religions of our hand-crafted gods are destoying us! Why is that so hard to see and understand? Why must we still cling to idiocies Constantine and those dumbass "church fathers" at Nicacea saddled us with? They invented that Bible and all the nonsense, like beasts and marks of beasts, it contains."