“Anselm’s Dream”
A final refutation of the ontological proof, and the world suddenly
Category Archives: God
283: A Memorable Fancy – XXVI
“The Talk-Show”
It was an honor to be a guest on his show. They waited off-stage during the monologue, gauging the response of the crowd. They passed a few quiet, unnecessary words. They knew they wouldn’t get the best of him in conversation, he, the master of debate, sometimes a master of abuse as well; but someone had to speak out for the old ways, for righteousness and faith.
After a short commercial break they were escorted to the stage: the scribe, then the Pharisee.
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<Excerpted from “Tell No Tales: Adventures of the Dead”, a book in search of a publisher>
284: Moses and the Ten Commandments
Again there were thunders and lightnings in the mountain, and trumpets, and smoke there, and fire. Again Moses came down from the mountain carrying the tables of the Law, came a second time to Aaron and the people. They swore, the people, this time, to take the Law into their selves, their bodies, and live in the grasp and clutch of the god, forever.
Moses set up the tables of the Law in the midst of his people, so they might read what the god had commanded. Each one read with eyes and fingers probing the still-hot grooves where the god had burned his Law into stone.
They pondered and studied, discussed and argued, interpreted, wrought commentaries, and commentaries on the commentaries, and after a time they forgot that there had been anything but commentary, while the grooves in the stones of the Law slowly filled with desert sand.
or — They read a different thing, each as he wished or dreaded to see, and together they sought a reading from Moses, to settle the Law forever. And then Moses himself read the tables, probed the cold grooves with his fingers where the fire of the Lord had once burned hot, and stopped. He said something very quietly, something they couldn’t quite hear.
or — They read, tried to read, but the letters merged into each other, the words turned soft to their sight and blended into other words; hot grooves of the Law burned together: and the tablets crumbled into sand. Each one groped in the dust to carry off a commandment, a word, a letter.
or — They read the words of the Law together, aloud: I will rule you with a rod of iron. I will crush you where you stand, if you do any of the nine million things that displease me. I will make every other nation despise you.
And then they turned over the final table and read the final curse: I will preserve you as my holy nation, your children and your children’s children, forever.
Aaron and Moses observed all this and more. Finally, Aaron turned to Moses and said, Well, what did you expect when you went to the mountain? And Moses was silent.
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268: A Dystheist Thought
If God says he is God, what reasons do we have to believe Him? He moves mountains? But there may be other beings in the universe who could do the same. Save souls? Ah, there! He must be the Evil One indeed!
246: Better Say “Amen” !
The following, from , the Washington Post, March 29, 2009, is verbatim but abridged.
“Members of One Mind Ministries denied a 16-month-old boy food and water because he did not say “Amen” at mealtimes. After he died, they prayed over his body for days, expecting a resurrection, then packed it into a suitcase with mothballs. They left it in a shed in Philadelphia, where it remained for a year before detectives found it last spring.
“The boy’s mother, Ria Ramkissoon, has agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge on one condition: The charges against her must be dropped if her son, Javon Thompson, is resurrected.
“Psychiatrists who evaluated Ramkissoon at the request of a judge concluded that she was not criminally insane. Her attorney, Steven Silverman, said the doctors found that her beliefs were indistinguishable from religious beliefs.
“”She wasn’t delusional, because she was following a religion,” Silverman said, describing the findings of the doctors’ psychiatric evaluation.”
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244: The Big Picture
“The origin of life seems to be an incidental adjunct to the early development of a planetary surface.”
– Carl Sagan, Intelligent Life in the Universe [paraphrase]
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236: A Gesture to Ward Off the Godly
When confronted with beings of evil intent it is, or was, customary for some Christians to make a protective gesture, the sign of the cross.
What should non-Christians do when confronted with beings of evil intent, e.g., Christian missionaries? Are they really evil? They are, after all, after your souls. If they would just settle for your wallet and cell phone like more practical assailants, it wouldn’t be so bad.
Atheists are sadly mistaken if they think they can just laugh off these emissaries. If only atheism were true …
It might at least make us feel better if we had our own protective gesture, even though ultimately it would have no more real effect than crossing ourselves.
But what gesture? No, that that one; that’s just crude. We need a more serious sign.
How about the ASL sign for “go”? (see www.lifeprint.com for an illustration)
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222: The Really Bad Deal – II
Do you remember this scene near the beginning of The Matrix?:
“[Agent Smith:] We’re willing to wipe the slate clean, give you a fresh start, and all that we’re asking in return is your co-operation in bringing a known terrorist to justice.
“[Neo:] Yeah…Wow, that sounds like a really good deal. But I think I’ve got a better one. How about I give you the finger, [Neo does so] and you give me my phone call.”
Quite a few centuries earlier, God offered Abram [Abraham] what sounded like a really good deal, too:
“And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee. And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land of thy sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God. And God said unto Abraham, And as for thee, thou shalt keep my covenant, thou, and thy seed after thee throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee: every male among you shall be circumcised. [etc. etc.] –Genesis 17: 7-10 (ASV); see also Genesis chapters 13-15)
To Abraham, the deal must have sounded too good to be true. Actually, it was. Abraham, suitably overawed by God, didn’t think to make the same response Neo did. And so the Law.
214: “Acts of God”
(Michael Shaw writing in the Washington Post, 19 March, 2011, page A15:)
“In your March 9 editorial about tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve [“A crude idea”] you said that historically, “presidents have tapped the reserve to cope with acts of God (hurricanes Ivan and Katrina) . . . .” Hurricanes are not “acts of God.” They can be described as “acts of nature” or “extraordinary events” or the like, but, since there is no evidence of a “God,” the events are definitely not “acts of God.” It might take insurance companies a long time to eliminate the terminology, but The Post should do it right now.”
TK: Have you ever noticed that “acts of God” are all really bad stuff, like tsunamis and volcanic eruptions? They’re also big stuff. A one-inch snowfall isn’t an “act of God”, but a 36-inch snowfall could be, if it causes enough disruption. Where’s the boundary? And if an old woman in Des Moines suddenly finds herself cured of metastatic cancer, that might or might not be a miracle, but no one would call it an “act of God”, especially the insurance companies.
“Acts of God” is right. There is a God. And He’s pissed.
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204: God Hates Homosexuals?
As queer (yes) as it may seem, those Westboro folk may be on to something. You will recall the injunction “Be fruitful and multiply.” That is, Yahweh (the Abrahamic god) wants there to be lots of human beings, just as human farmers want their own crops to breed and flourish. Homosexual people have fewer children, statistically, than hetros; in most cases, none. God is displeased, because he enjoys the taste of fresh soul and can’t get enough. Therefore, the more human beings the better, even if they overwhelm the planet and cause the extinction of thousands of other kinds of beings. It isn’t just the same, eating rabbit soul, when you can gorge on the top earthly predator, i.e., us. God must feel threatened when He looks down and sees people voluntarily not reproducing, and yet they take bread from the mouths of those willing and able to breed again and again. There are pests loose on the farm, and they must be eradicated, ’cause they’re buggering the crop yield.
But the idea that God kills U.S. soldiers is truly stupid; service members are just the kind of healthy, vigorous breeding stock that He wants to see more of on the farm, not fewer. And they’re good eatin’, too.
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176: Riddick as Dystheist
An excerpt from the script for the film Pitch Black
RIDDICK
What're you doin'?
IMAM
Blessing you like the others.
It's painless.
RIDDICK
And pointless.
IMAM
I see. Well, even if you don't believe
in God, it doesn't mean He won't be --
RIDDICK
You don't see.
Riddick shrugs into the harness, snugs it down.
RIDDICK (CONT'D)
'Cuz you don't spend half your life in
lock-down with a horse-bit in your mouth
and not believe. And you surely don't
start out in a liquor store trash bin with
an umbilical cord wrapped around your neck
and not believe. Oh, absolutely I believe
in God. And I absolutely hate the fucker.
IMAM
He will be with us. Nonetheless.
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167: The Essence of Dystheism
Dystheism has two basic beliefs: (A) Yahweh, aka the God of Abraham, exists and affects events in this world. At the extreme, Dystheism holds that Yahweh created the universe and everything in it, and is the continuing underlying cause of all that happens, everywhen and everywhere. In either case, (B) Yahweh is evil. “Evil” here does not necessarily imply intentionality. It could be that Yahweh views His work, according to His own values, as neutral or supremely good. But the nature of God and the nature of man are very different, and our values are very different from His, primarily because we are mortal but for many other reasons as well. If a man suddenly became all-powerful and did many of the works that God is credited with, both in the New and Old Testaments, we would consider him the most evil, most sociopathic person ever to have lived. In the early parts of the Old Testament God is more feared than loved, and for good reason.
Yahweh is the divine farmer. He grows people (and other species, perhaps) as a farm crop. At death he harvests our souls. He moves people to have many children, so He can have more souls to raise to Heaven, i.e., to devour, making us (it is said) “eternally happy”.
Beliefs in the soulful meal are apparently of long standing. For example,
“Whatever men want, ghosts want. … Often the notion is that the gods eat the souls.” (Sumner)
We raise chickens and care for them. We feed them and harvest them and eat them. They become part of our selves, part of whatever bodily glory we have. Are they eternally happy to be so honored? That’s not quite the question. The real question is, is the universe arranged to accommodate the purposes of chickens, or people — or God? The latter, apparently; and that is what is evil to Man.
Notes:
.. Dystheism is also known as ‘Maltheism’.
.. William Graham Sumner, Folkways: A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manner, Customs, Mores, and Morals (1907), p. 336.
.. See the Baltimore Catechism [of the Roman Catholic Church], edition of 1885: “LESSON FIRST[:] ON THE END OF MAN “6. Q. Why did God make you? “A. God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.” <END>
166: Local and Global Gods
Shelly, the poet, in his essay “The Necessity of Atheism”, begins “There Is No God.” But he immediately continues “This negation must be understood solely to affect a creative Deity. The hypothesis of a pervading Spirit co-eternal with the universe remains unshaken.”
One of the gods Shelley didn’t believe in is Yahweh, the God of Abraham, who is said to have created the world, and is worshipped by Jews, Christians, and Moslems.
Is there, beyond local gods such as Yahweh (some of whom don’t exist and some of whom, perhaps, may) a Spirit of the universe, something akin to what Hindus call “Brahman”?
A warm belief in a somewhat chilly being. But the universe would be no different if there were, or were not, such a being; there is no possible evidence that would make a difference in our thinking of such a being. That’s why belief in a universal spirit is harmless. It’s also pointless.
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99: The Strong Leader
What’s wrong with the world society we have built? It’s threatening to destroy itself. This has been true for all of human history, but now we can actually do it, pushing and tugging each other in all directions. What’s needed, as Anakin said, is a strong leader. But human leaders are infected with the same problems the rest of us have, disastrously so; and God seems to have no interest in saving us from ourselves, the ultimate strong leader being occupied with his own ends, largely to our detriment.
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88: Divine Intervention in Fargo
Thousands Flee Fargo as Floodwaters Surge in N.D.
Washington Post, March 28, 2009, page A4
Fargo, N.D. — As thousands of residents left North Dakota’s largest city Friday, others stayed and prayed that miles of sandbagged levees would hold against the surging Red River.
“It’s to the point now where I think we’ve done everything we can,” said resident Dave Davis, whose neighborhood was filled with backhoes and tractors building an earthen levee. “The only thing now is divine intervention.”
(Isn’t that what they’ve been suffering from?)
= = = = =
[Can there be an evil god? Is the concept contradictory? In the book of Job, Yahweh certainly seems to be evil, but that’s only from the point of view of Job’s dead sons, and his dead servants, and his dead sheep). In the end, Job’s faith was rewarded with seven new sons (among other gifts) -- as if his sons were all just interchangeable, no matter about the first batch now that he has more.]
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63: A Biblical Challenge: Who’s Behind the Curtain?
A thought-experiment:
1. Empty your mind of everything you’ve ever heard or believed about Christianity. Pretend, for the sake of this experiment, that there is no Church, no Christian religion, and that you have never heard of Jesus of Nazareth.
2. Read the Gospel of Mark in some reputable and literal (or almost literal) translation, such as the Revised Standard Version of 1946 (or as revised in 1990), or Richmond Lattimore’s, or (especially) Reynolds Price’s. Read it front to back, in one sitting; this can easily be done in one evening.
3. Assume, for the sake of this experiment, that every matter of fact reported in Mark’s Gospel is literally true.
4. Now: Based on this reading, what do you think of the character of God? What are his apparent motives? What do you think of his relationship to Jesus? Your answers may surprise you.
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* Notes:
Why Mark, and not the other Gospels? Because Mark was written first, and has a freshness of encounter the others lack. (Scholars agree that Mark was written before Matthew; and even if they didn’t, in reading the two together it just becomes obvious that Matthew was retelling and elaborating Mark’s work, especially with respect to fulfilling O.T. prophecies.)
Translations: the translators of the RSV had tin ears, so bear with it if you read that translation. The Lattimore and the Price are better, but not easy to find in libraries or bookshops. The King James (1611) and ASV (1901) ** versions are my favorites for reading, but both suffer from the unavailability of XXth Century scholarship.
** The ASV is identical, except for a few matters of spelling and punctuation, with the [English] Revised Version of 1881.
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