Watson Memorial Methodist Church sat at the corner of North Delaware Street and Maple Street in Independence, Missouri, at the time we lived there. I understand that it and the house that sat next door, which served as the church annex, and was used for Sunday school, have since been torn down and rebuilt as a hotel complex. Our parsonage, which sat next to the church facing south on Maple Street, was an old Victorian two story home up two flights of steps from the street. It sat right across from William Chrisman High School. That street was always bustling with the coming and going of high school students. William Chrisman High School has since, I understand, moved to the north of town. At that time, however, it seemed as if we were in the middle of everything that was happening. The Memorial Auditorium, where there were concerts and plays, and the town square, full of businesses and shops, were just a few blocks east on Maple. To the southwest of us, just off Lexington Avenue, the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints had a large church which was vibrant and growing. There was a triangular piece of land which sat in front of the church. My mother said, almost every time we drove by it, “They say they are going to build a big temple there some day.” That temple does now exist, a magnificent spiraling structure which reaches up into the sky. Inside, there is a huge organ which produces surround sound that also lofts up to the sky. To the east of the RLDS church was the college for that church and its campus. It had a big pond between the church and the campus, which served as our ice skating playground during the winters. We would trudge back from our winter fun with frozen toes, seeking hot chocolate. It was a small town which was vibrant and growing, and is now a large part of the greater Kansas City metropolitan area. It has become the fourth largest city in the state of Missouri. It was a great place to grow up as a little kid.
The parsonage was old style, with tall ceilings, a downstairs living room, dining room, and at the back of the house, a kitchen on the left and study off to the right. Going off the kitchen was a small screened in porch, leading to the yard in back. The upstairs was reached by a long three flight staircase which was just inside the front door. The upstairs had two front bedrooms, which belonged to the children, a middle bedroom occupied by our parents, a back bathroom and storage room. My fear of heights was created the time my oldest brother, Paul, held me up over the bannister at the top of the stairs and threatened to drop me some thirty feet unless I behaved better. The bedrooms had some loose boards. We used to hide cherished items in the space under them, until one time a bottle of homemade root beer ruptured during a hot summer night, creating quite a mess of syrup and broken glass. The boards got nailed down after that. All kinds of church meetings were held at the house during the week, and we had to get out of the way at those times. There was a partial basement with a coal furnace. It took frequent attention, and the floor was a mess from coal dust and ash. When the coal truck would come and unload though the basement window into the bin, everything turned black. We thought we were living the high life when we got a stoker, which was basically a large screw in a trough. It gradually fed coal into the furnace so that we did not have to constantly feed that furnace. There was a nice yard out back, with a big shade tree off to the left, and to the very back some pens where my oldest brother kept rabbits, next to the alley.
The alley behind our house bisected that city block, which had North Union Street to the west, North Delaware Street to the east, Maple Street to the south, and Maywood avenue to the north. That alley continued on east across Delaware, past a house which sat at the corner of Delaware and Maywood. This was a two story farm house in appearance, had a dirty coat of white paint, was somewhat in disrepair, and had grass in the yard which was about a foot high, because it was not mowed all summer long. It did not at that time have a steel fence around it, immaculate grounds, a gleaming clean exterior, and a park service ranger who came to the gate to meet you for your tour. The reason for all that cleanliness, neatness, and attention, as well as the reason there is now a hotel where our church once stood, is that this was the home of Mr. Harry S. Truman. Mr. Truman was at that time spending most of his time in the U.S. Senate, and did not tend to his home very often. On a few occasions, when my father was on the same podium with him for some social event, I would tag along and peek at this man who was supposed to be so famous, and in cahoots with the political bosses in Kansas City. Locally, his honesty was somewhat in question because of his close association to these powerful political bosses. Maywood is now known as Truman Boulevard, and that home is a National Historical Site, open to tour. It looks much cleaner than the house that I remember back in the 1930’s. The Truman library sits several blocks north, off Highway 24. Both are fascinating to visit.
One time brother Paul’s rabbits got out of their pen, when he had gone out to feed them. They immediately ran lickety-split down that alley and without hesitation into Truman’s tall grass. All three of us brothers went down there to look. We each took a section and stomped up and down, then across, trying to find those rabbits, but never did. They were gone for good. Our next president had confiscated my brother’s rabbits. After a long time searching, we went back up the alley, and my brothers went inside. I stopped, went behind some lilac bushes that were on the other side of the alley, got on my knees, and prayed to my God that He would help us find my brother’s rabbits and bring them back to us. I was a bit embarrassed about doing this, and did not want anyone else to see me praying. I did not really know if this would work or not, but it was what my father preached we should do, what my saintly mother said we should do, and what everyone in the church talked about all the time. If you have a problem, take it to the Lord in prayer. When the rabbits never reappeared, my suspicions were aroused. There was something about this prayer business that was not quite right. At that early age, I already had great doubt that this God everyone prayed to really answered prayers. My oldest brother, however, took it a bit differently. He must have forgiven Truman for taking his rabbits away, because later, in high school, he dated Harry’s daughter, Margaret, until they both went their separate ways, seeking other partners who pleased them more. At that point, we lost our only chance to be relatives of the president of the United States of America.
Humans have worshiped and prayed to their Gods for succor ever since humans became human. The Egyptians, as one of the first organized societies, had so many Gods they cannot all be counted. They kept changing over time and new ones were continuously being created. There were at least 1400 known Egyptian Gods and Goddesses, and perhaps just as many more that are not known. Before the Egyptian communities became joined as a single entity, each town had its own God or Goddess to whom it prayed and offered sacrifices, some of those sacrifices quite macabre. All of these Gods had to be appeased, or else there were penalties for humans to pay. All of these Gods had to receive completely subservient supplicant requests, or there would be no action to help them in their lives. There was a god for every animal system. There were scarab gods, lion gods, crocodile gods, goat gods, and a multitude of other gods, most all identified pictorially as some sort of dimorphic creature. There were gods and goddesses for all natural phenomena. There was an overall deity, who became known by various names such as Aten, Ptah, Ra, or Isis. Then there was the mysterious Amen, “The Hidden One,” “The Birth in the Belly,” who seemed to be everywhere. After Egypt became organized under the Pharaohs, each Pharaoh was considered a God on earth, during his time of tenure. Ra, known as the sun God, was believed to have created the earth. The Pharaoh, as the God on earth, rode across the Nile each day in a sacred boat, to recreate the passage of the sun god from east to west each day. The Egyptians had a god for every creature and for every occasion: and all of them demanded sacrificial attention.
Does anyone detect a similarity between these Egyptian god systems and the later tripartite “good” God of a religion called Christianity? Within this Christian religion, there is a god for all personal occasions, an overall creator god, a god on earth, and a god who is everywhere at all times. There is that similarity indeed. Christians, when they formalized their religion some two hundred years after the death of Jesus, played copycat every direction they looked. They formed their multifaceted God concepts from the Egyptians, their mythology as to the events of Jesus’ life directly from Mithraism, and their “chosen people” concepts from Judaism. They even invoke the name of that most mysterious Egyptian spirit God, Amen, at the end of their prayers.
The Greeks were no less enthusiastic polytheists. In their deity system, each of their gods and goddesses also had to be pleased with whatever human sought their support in order to provide that human with success in whatever endeavor. Zeus was the king, the ruler of Mount Olympus, who also had his specific categories of control: the wind, sky, lightening, thunder, fate, law and order. His wife, Hera, ruled over marriage, childbirth, empires and kingdoms. Aphrodite took care of love, romance, beauty, desire and pleasure. Apollo was a dimorphic guy who took care of light, music, art, healing and knowledge, but also controlled the plague and darkness. Ares was in charge of war, bloodshed and violence. Artemis took care of the hunt, wildness and animals. Athena was the master of intelligence, skills, handicrafts, wisdom and strategy. Demeter took care of grain, agriculture, harvest, growth and nutrition. Dionysius was a wild guy who was in charge of wine, parties, drunkenness, festivals, madness, chaos, drugs and ecstasy. Hades was down under, in charge of death and hidden treasure. Hephaestus looked after fire, metal and crafts. Hermes was who you went to for advice about travel, communication, trade, thieving and language. Hestia was a nice lady who promoted home, earth and chastity. Poseidon was the troublemaker who often caused problems with the sea, rivers, floods, droughts and earthquakes. But that was only the beginning in this pantheon of deities. There were over thirty Titans and over twenty Giants who had control of various other parts of the human experience. If you had an experience or a problem, the Greeks had a deity that would cover that. They were very good at polytheism. They did not leave anything or anybody out. You prayed to whatever god you needed to get whatever you wanted done. None of that deism was true, as far as we know, but that was what the Greeks believed, and what they practiced in their lives.
The Romans were no less enthusiastic about finding a god that would fit every purpose and every need. They created a list of over two hundred deities that would cover all categories. Most of these were patterned after Greek deities, given slightly more specific responsibilities, but always the source of help when you are afraid, or are desperately trying to get something to turn out to your own advantage. The Romans, as best we can determine, were a bit more blasé about their gods and their religions. They had the good life. They did not have to pray incessantly for success, or constantly be afraid. Everything was going their way, at that particular time in human history. Why sweat about pleasing some far off deity when all the rest of the world was sending you protection money, and you are telling the rest of the known world at that time what to do? The only Romans who were sweating it were the soldiers they had deployed all over the known world at that time. (Does this remind you of any other nation we know at this time?) They, and the farmers who were asking for good crops to support this burgeoning urban population, were probably the only Romans praying earnestly to their gods. That’s pretty much the way it has always worked. We pray to our Gods and Goddesses when we are struggling, and at other times forget that they exist in the human imagination.
The Abrahamic monotheistic god is hailed as a seminal development in human cognition. Finally, say our historians, the human race matured enough to understand that all these other Gods, covering every part of the human experience in every way, simply did not exist. All these Gods were extensions of the human desire to survive. When any of us cannot overcome our fears or our foes, we look somewhere else for strength and guidance. To ascribe each little part of what we go through in life to a different deity does not make any sense, say our philosophers. There is only one creator, not many; there is only one source of everything that we know. We, as humans, should pledge our allegiance to this one deity, not many imaginary deities, which are simply reflections of our fears and desires. Only when we concentrate our effort on communicating with this one and only true deity can we reach our goals as humans. Only then can we become like our one and only deity: completely pure and good. We are imperfect creatures, who were born into an imperfect world, who have not realized that we need to be completely obeisant to this one and only creator and sustainer of everything that exists. When we are completely compliant with the directions of this one and only deity, only then will we achieve our ultimate goals in life. These are the goals that appear to be the intent of that monotheistic faith, Judaism, and those other related faiths, Christianity and Islam.
I have a much different opinion of these monotheistic faiths. While these monotheistic concepts are, in one sense, perhaps an advance in human understanding, I see them as probably more misleading than what we had before. Maybe what we had before, polytheism, is a more functional way of directing human behavior. The reason monotheism, in its current form, is not an advance in human recognition is because it is highly hypocritical, representing to be one God for all people, but instead subverted to serve the needs of whatever members of whatever religion support that particular God. Our monotheistic gods have just as many bigoted forms as our previous polytheistic systems.
Judaism believes in a one and only God. Unfortunately, this God has, throughout their recorded history, been an unquestionable tyrant. He has been malevolent as well as kind. The Jewish faithful believe that whatever bad has happened to them in the past has been because their God has been trying to teach them how to behave better. That is perhaps a healthy perspective, if you take it the right way; I do not believe that the Jewish faith does that. The problem that Judaism has, is in truly believing, in the bottom of their souls, that whatever their God has done to them in the past is because this God believes that the Hebrew race is the favored race over all races on the face of the earth, and is, when He punishes, teaching them how to be more obeisant to Him, and worthy of being the superior race. All other humans on the face of the earth, particularly their neighbors and joint descendants, who are mostly Muslim at this time, become nauseated at this suggestion that Hebrews should dominate the earth, and are superior to all others, because their imaginary God says so. All these other humans know better. All the rest, who look at this belief with even the most rudimentary doubt, immediately sense that a religion that believes its members should be superior to all other humans that exist or ever existed, is a religion that is not supportive of the rest of humanity. If this religion is to become what it should be, an example of good behavior to all the rest of us, it must abandon its claim to being the chosen superior race over all other humans. Judaism, as it now exists, appears inimical to the progress of the human race, which is completely dependent on all humans having deep and complete respect for all other humans as their equals.
Christianity cannot claim any superiority over Judaism for their God. Their God is not only a bigot, but a complete mess, a throwback to Egyptian primitive theology. Christians say that their God is personally on their side, and that unless its members pray to this God with fervent and soul felt supplication, their prayers will not be answered. The Christian God is therefore a personal God who is only for Christians, and not for any other human of any other faith who may oppose them. Since bigotry is way behind the advancement of the human race, perhaps nothing else needs to be said about the invalidity of the Christian God. There is a whole lot more, however. Christians believe that their God existed on earth in the form of a certain person called Jesus. They believe that their God exists somewhere in the sky and controls all events somewhere in the universe, and even began the universe. They also believe that their God is everywhere, in all things, at all times, like a cloud that doesn’t just provide service to computers, but services the entire universe. Christians pride themselves on being modern civilized human beings who believe in one God for all people everywhere, but actually have beliefs which are no different than the ancient Egyptians: the Egyptian Gods created the earth and its inhabitants, took care of personal service, were on earth as pharaoh rulers, and were at all times a part of all things. There is no difference. This Christian God seems quite primitive, and cannot, in its current form, promote the advancement of the human species, but instead subverts it. Even beyond this primitive polytheistic character of their God, Christians then claim that their mixed up primitive God is all good. That opens a huge can of worms. Now we are dealing with a primitive irrational God and an equally powerful adversary, the Devil, who is all bad in every way that you can describe bad. It is impossible to reconcile all of that distorted religious philosophy into anything that helps the human species survive.
The Muslim faith believes in a most caring and compassionate God. Their God (through their prophet, Muhammad) admonishes them that if they do not care for the poor, the widow, the lame, the traveler in need, the orphan, or the less fortunate in any way, they cannot be entered into Muslim heaven. This is such a remarkable and lovely faith, in that phase, I wish we could all follow that segment of it. After Islam took over the Arabian peninsula, there was a flowering of the arts and education. Civilization, under Muslim rule, flourished. It flourished because Islam had great tolerance for other religions. It was the religion all other religions should be, at that particular time in human history. Science, astronomy and mathematics increased by leaps and bounds. Who destroyed all of that? It was the Christians, who came back in force during the Crusades, massacring thousands and destroying schools and libraries, burning down towns, destroying other people’s lives, destroying stored knowledge and spreading hatred of their fellow humans. It has not really stopped since. Islam has been under attack since the Crusades, and all Muslims well know that. They were making the world a better place in leaps and bounds, and were persecuted for it. Their persecutors since then have been primarily Christians and Jews. And unfortunately, in spite of its kindness to its own, Islam also has a most hateful violent side. Now they retaliate against their tormentors by following the other pole that their prophet, Muhammad, taught them: kill and torture all who do not believe in Islam.
We often hear certain people described as a devout Jew, Christian, Muslim, or devout adherent of some other religion. I think that this description is usually meant as a positive evaluation of that particular person, someone who will always be kind, and a devoted member of their society. I have a much different reaction to that description of any person’s religious belief. To me, being a devout adherent to any particular religion means that this a person whose judgment is greatly clouded, and has to be bigoted, because that person cannot see other points of view as equal to his or her own. That designation also means to me that this person not only accepts the moral aspects of his religion, but also completely accepts the wild, misleading mythology and immoral teaching of that religion, without question. Knowing such in a Jew or Christian is pretty scary, because each of those religions teaches, and has practiced, torture or death for those who do not follow their faith. In the case of Islam, nothing, to me, is more frightening than a devout Muslim. That person, depending on his or her proclivity, can always be looking for a way to either kill or torture, even both, any persons who do not believe in his or her religion (infidels). That is because there is page after page in the Koran in which their prophet, Muhammad, tells them that is exactly what they must do to reach Muslim Heaven. Both history, and current events, tell us that a devout Muslim faith, when combined with strong male hormones, have been a deadly combination, which has easily, frequently and directly, led to flagrant murder, and flagrant abuse of women.
It is so sad to see such great conflict in our current world between those of different religious faiths. The greatest misfortune is that all of our religious faiths are using their fatally flawed concepts of their Gods in order to justify acts of great violence and hatred toward one another. Hindu faiths battle each other over different interpretations of which of their antecedents carry the true word. Militant Buddhists kill and riot in order to preserve their religious sects. Israel kills and bombs in order to preserve their state, even though this is land that they took violently from those who lived there, after a flawed United Nations edict. Muslims, feeling deeply threatened by the invasion of American and European business interests, and the intrusion of other nations into their sovereign business, retaliate in the name of Allah. They bomb embassies, sink ships, and fly planes into business towers, killing thousands, all in the name of their God. The Christian/Jewish world reacts, creating wars where they have no reason to exist, trying to take over the affairs of multiple foreign nations, all in the name of protecting themselves and their religions against terrorists. Of course they need to protect themselves, and react when attacked. They do not, however, need to create wars where they are not needed, and subrogate those rules of human decency in order to protect themselves. The imprisonments at Guantanamo Bay, the NSA (national spying agency) and the secret prisons are a travesty of human justice, promoted by this country that professes to support human freedom above all other countries. This is hypocrisy of the highest order, blatantly performed for the whole world to see, by the country that we love. It is difficult to believe that any of the rest of the world can think kindly about this immense hypocrisy.
Perhaps it is time to be quite blunt about ethics, human values, and human Gods. In my opinion, we do not find evidence of any particular God, in any of this creation, that directs our personal lives. We have no evidence we can see, in any form, throughout the period of human discovery, that there is any deity that is on our side, by any means of commitment or supplication. We do not find evidence of any God that possesses goodness or badness. There is not, within our knowledge, evidence of an intrinsic part of the universe that contains a value system affecting humans. There is no God that has any values related to human activity. All values are human inventions, as best we can tell, which relate only to our lives. Our invented Gods have been used as excuses for us humans to commit unspeakable acts of violence against each other.
In Ethiopia, the village elders march into a humble home, and snatch a two year old boy from his mother. She wails disconsolately, because she knows that they will kill her child. He was born without the permission of the village elders. She sends sobbing requests to her God asking that her son be returned to her alive. In Afghanistan, American soldiers trapped in a firestorm, eminently afraid of death, pray fervently to their Christian God to preserve their lives, so that they can later kill these terrorists. Their direct opponents, Afghan freedom fighters, pray to Allah that they will be successful in killing these foreign invaders. And a timid little boy kneels behind lilac bushes, praying to a God he does not know, pleading for succor and intervention to help his older brother. All of these people and these prayers have a common substrate. All are praying to a personal God which does not exist. We do not, as humans, yet understand that the only God that exists is whatever force began this universe. This only known God force, and what is left of it, runs purely on the laws of chance, using all the evidence we have at our disposal, at this time. We do not as yet understand that there is no superpower which will intercede on our behalf. It is all up to us to create a better life for all life, where we can all exist in equilibrium.
All these historical beliefs in these imaginary Gods we have created, in order to have superbeings on our side, deter us from the goal of ethics: giving all life the greatest opportunity to pursue existence and fulfillment. Perhaps we should put it even more succinctly: All gods, as they currently exist, are unethical, as they are now defined, and as ethics is here defined.