Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Deities, Pascal's Wager, & Turkey Stuffin'

I like the term deity over god. When you use god some may think you mean God, when in fact you wrote what you meant.

The difference between a god and God is one of an undefined ideology/ theology (we could be discussing Shiva, Allah, Loki, etc) versus The God associated with Jesus and the American Legal/ Political doctrine.

Now I've been raised with the closest association to a faith being that of Christianity. So, out of a culturalized familiarity I tend to default to religious metaphors of that general faith. For example:

If the Devil is in the details who is more pious?

Is it...

... The person who argues, judges, and discriminates because of specific differences in names, places, dates, methods of prayer, etc...

... Or the person who works to find common ground among all doctrines...

i.e. Murder is bad, theft is wrong, do not praise nor follow the word of false "idols"/ other gods = people who say they speak on behalf of a benevolent god more so than the next guy/ gal...?

ooops....

Did organized religion contradict itself in a HUGE way just then?

If any deity is, by the nature of being a deity, universal and equally present in space, and earth and critters and men.... then how is it possible to have a "holy man," i.e. someone who is more holy (a deity is somehow more present in them) than anybody else? Who is to say (or be able to prove that they are more in tune with an evenly distributed, and equally powerful presence?

Seems to me, that by the nature of the assumed truths about the properties of a deity, that no one person can claim nor prove that they know anything more about any aspect of any deity more than anybody else..

Again, if any deity is, by the nature of being a deity, universal and equally present in space, and earth and critters and men.... then how would it be possible for that god to have a personality? an opinion? be able to pass judgment?

If a force (as in a deity) "loves" no one aspect of its creation (as it is also part of every aspect of its creation) more than any other it would seem impossible for it to love anything at all...
... as there is nothing that it would be capable of not loving, thus canceling out the whole concept of love...
... as there would be nothing to compare it too, or weigh it against considering it is spread evenly across all of existence and that there is no room for an opposite to exist.

So because any god is incapable of having any opinion about anything because by its nature has the same opinion of everything, what;s the fuss?

There is nothing for Pascal to wager because a god is not weakened by feeling or value judgement like the humans that depend on that security blanket of "Something is watching over me, and there is a reason for the things I can't explain... a god!!!"

This Turkey Day I'm thankful to not be afraid any more. I just worry about the rest of you.

Ask the scary questions... don't pick the easy answers... save yourselves from yourselves.






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