God is omnipotent, omniscient, immutable, is, always was, and ever shall be. Right?
We are indeed sorry to burst your bubble, but nothing could be farther from the truth. The concept of and reaction to things out there over which we have no control is a great deal different for a bacterium, a flea, a dragonfly, a dog, an elephant, and a human. We suspect that each of them has, to a varying degree, neural imprints of the capricious and random acts of the universe and recognizes which of those random group actions form patterns which can give some direction as to how to react to those situations. We suspect that as life becomes more complex, more complex concepts as to the meaning of those patterns does emerge. We suspect that all organisms, in this sense, have some concept of god.
We can at least identify a progression of thought and concept as to the existence of God in recorded human history. We understand that the earliest humans found so many mysteries and inconsistencies in their surroundings that they had gods for everything. There was a god of fire, air, water, wind, storms, trees, animals, earth, fertility and everything else you could name. Each of these gods was rather capricious, but at least there was something that made things happen for some purpose, so they thought. It didn’t take much more for the thought to occur that if all these gods were so powerful, they must have some knowledge of each other. Pretty soon the prevailing god system was one where there were multiple gods, but they were all somehow related, These multiple gods kept messing around with each other in very humanistic ways, causing all sorts of problems for themselves and the humans under their control. It was a leap of enlightenment to realize that there was only one god, albeit with multiple names.
Monotheism may have been a step of increased sophistication in our god concepts, but monotheism is still early in its development. It continues to carry with it the two major flaws that all god systems have carried with them up to the present time. One is that god has to be appeased or satisfied in some way for us to prosper. We have to placate this super being in order to keep this he, she or it at bay. We have gotten away from sacrificing our first born children to god, or sacrificing our animals. That was indeed barbaric. It is hard for us to imagine how bloody the religious altars were to accommodate all these senseless slaughters. Sacrifice to the god of choice is now more disguised, but it remains senseless. Religious suicide bombers abound yet in our chaotic world.
The other major flaw in monotheism that still flagrantly exists, without even being questioned by most humans, is the belief that god of whatever name is personal. That is to say, the prevailing belief amongst the great majority of god believers is that god is in control of everything that happens to us, manipulates the events of human affairs according to his, her or its personal goals, and can be reached by some manipulative event such as prayer and/or some act which that super power will like – and therefore will manipulate human events to make our lives better. There is the prevailing belief that god is above the natural laws of physics and will do whatever he, she or it pleases in defiance of those laws in order to help certain humans or punish certain others.
The concept of a personal god who favors certain groups and not others is, in other words, still rather primitive. We have great respect for the humanism and intelligence of the Jewish faith, but abhor the basic belief of their religion: that they are the favored people, the chosen race of god. The Jewish people are no more favored by god than a colony of E. coli. Christian groups are no more favored by god than colonies of S. aureus. Muslims are no more favored by Allah than colonies of H. capsulatum. Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, Shintoists or any religious group by any name does not have a superforce of any description that favors them over any other race or belief.
To those of you who believe that personal monotheism is the culmination of god concepts which finally gets it right, we ask you to think again. Personal monotheism is indeed primitive; not only is it false, but it is detrimental to human advancement. Cooperation and respect from one human group to another is difficult, if not violent, when each of those groups believes that their actions are favored by god, no matter how evil those actions may be. We do not mind the concept of one god. It is a convenient way to think of all those things in the universe we do not understand. It allows us to gradually chip away at God as we come to understand mysteries of the universe. What we do mind is the personal “me and god against the rest of the world” concept of current monotheism. The sooner we evolve into an understanding that God is completely non-personal, capricious, uncaring and unfeeling, rewarding those who learn to get along with all other life, and punishing those who do not accept all others, the sooner we will build a stable world-wide society.
“Millions of Americans, far from being free human beings, are the slaves of the ignorant, impudent and unconscionable clergy. They have dredged up theological ideas so preposterous that they would make an intelligent Zulu laugh. It has been make plain that this theology is not a harmless aberration, but rather the foundation of a way of life, bellicose, domineering, brutal and malignant.”
– H L Mencken
“Catholic nuns do not have visions of the Buddha, nor do Buddhist nuns have visions of Christ. Ineluctably the image of any god beheld – whither interpreted as held in heaven or as beheld at cakera 6 will be of a local ethnic idea, historically conditioned…”
– Joseph Campbell
“The flow of creation, from where it did arise? He, the observer in the highest heaven, He alone knows, unless…he knows it not.”
– The Rig-Veda
“The true believer is responsible for the majority of all human suffering on this planet.”
– Eric Hoffer