Letters to the Editor
droogoy
Published Letters: 590 Editor's Choice: 9
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Camille and her codswallop
[Read the article: Dogma days ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Atheism alone is a rotting corpse. I substitute art and nature for God -- the grandeur of man and the vast mystery of the universe
What tommyrot? Explain exactly WHY "Atheism is a rotting corpse?" Indeed, Atheism is the last remaining bastion against religiously-fueled delusions. Its minimalist form, or implicit atheism : the simple withholding of investment of "belief" in the proclaimed deity, simply asks humans to pause and consider the gestation of their fabrications.
What could possibly be wrong with that? With encouraging a pro-active rationalism, as opposed to irrationalism?
The reason for the ubiquity of god-talk and religion is because finite-brained, limited neuron -numbered bags of protoplasm have brains just large enough to fancy an entity - but not enough brain power to elaborate it, or even define it. What they end up doing then, is investing a plain old noun with absolutist firepower issuing from their delusions, and pretensions.
Now, IF this entity of their brains is summoned, of course it has to be adorned in ultra-attributes, hence the "omnis" assigned to most of these Gods. Moreover, each "God" spun off from a subset of brains is endowed with particulars that meet that population's demands.
Thus:
The fundy Xtian God is all het up about whether Jesus is being "believed in as one's personal Savior". If not, thou canst depart to the eternal microwave.
The Catholic God is a tad more elaborate, and triune in nature. But it too is a bit squeamish about certain acts and tendencies, and will send a Catholic to "Hell" equally for committing a single act of self-gratification as for offing twenty people with an AK.
The Universalist or Unity God is very benevolent in nature and needs no "Hell" but rather encourages all its minions to one day integrate with itself in one unified field of energy.
The Mormon god has his own shtick.
Same with the Islamic Allah, and Jewish Yahweh.
Obviously, since the ideation of subsets of brains issues with great power from emotional centers- then an absolutism must be embodied in each sub-collective's brain creation.
Thus, all the human brain fabricated "Gods" must be mutually exclusive with each other.
The Catholic Triune God will not countenance the Protestant God invested in John 3:16, and vice versa. Neither will either accept the Unity God that calls for a "universal salvation". Somebody gotta get theirs at the end, dammit! Else, what's the use of bein' goody two shoes?
And Allah will likely accept none of the above.
And on an on it goes.
Point being that if such brain creations are mutually exclusive they obviously cannot all be real. And further, they all MUST be relative constructions in relation to each other.
This is why it is important, instead of finite-brained people using "God" - as if it refers to something real, to use god-concept instead.
You have this god -concept, and this is mine, or I have NO god-concept. If I have NO god-concept, I also can't be called an "unbeliever" any more than a person minus a space-time concept can be called a "space-time unbeilever". An absence of concept is not the same as an unbelief in an alleged entity underlying the concept.
The astute acknowledgedment of the implicit use of god-concepts, reinforces the attitude of cautious forbearance. The implicit relativism underscoring any god-concept acts as a restraint, backing the believer away from a militant stance of absolutism. Ideally, this should dispose him or her to be more tolerant: tolerant toward unbelievers, and tolerant toward those of different religions.
In the end, all believers have - though they may deny it - is a god-concept. The real McCoy, if such even exists, is as absent from their grasp as the twelve dimensional flying spaghetti monster.
See also this great article:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/personal/11/16/flying.spaghettimonster.ap/