Peter Moylan
2024-12-21 08:33:34 UTC
Reply
Permalinkelse can I find a bunch of people intelligent enough to discuss a
difficult topic? I know there are philosophy newsgroups, but they don't
have much traffic. Besides, the people posting there don't have an S in
their names, so they can't be real philosophers.
What started this train of thought was reading Simak's novel "A Choice
of Gods". I've put that book down where I was sure to find it, which is
not always a good idea, so now I can't quote from it directly. (It will
probably turn up a couple of years from now.) But I remember the
essential point.
Early in the book, humans have spread out through the galaxy, and they
have found traces of a very powerful entity near the galactic centre.
They know little about this entity, apart from seeing evidence that it
is powerful beyond anything humans can do. They can't communicate with
it because they can't get it to notice them.
This, very obviously, is a god or a god-like being. It has the obvious
attributes: very powerful, with powers beyond our understanding, and so
far beyond us intellectually that no communication is possible.
So far so good. But then it hit me that the gods that we humans have
invented aren't like this. Our gods are slightly modified humans.
The Christian god, for example, has some remarkable super-powers, but
otherwise is very noticeably human. In the popular imagination he is
still an old man in the sky. You can pray to him, and he will listen and
sometimes even answer. Even his moral values are surprisingly close to
human moral values.
The Jewish god is a little more strict, a little more aloof. Still, a
few human characteristics show through. And we do know that he used to
speak to people directly in the distant past.
I have less of an understanding of the Islamic god, because I can't read
Arabic, and apparently translations are insufficient. It seems to me,
though, that Muslims claim a personal relationship with their god, and
that couldn't happen if he was too different from humans.
The Hindu gods are confusing at first sight because some of them use
non-human bodies. Ultimately, though, I think they're human in their
attitudes.
With the Norse gods there's no doubt. Those gods are humans writ large.
Like their followers, they enjoy carousing and fighting.
Likewise for the old Greek gods. They were clearly just powerful humans.
Now, I'll concede that the above is just a sampling. There must be
thousands of gods I know nothing about. I'd bet, though, that most of
the ones I don't know will turn out to have human thoughts and human values.
--
Peter Moylan ***@pmoylan.org http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW
Peter Moylan ***@pmoylan.org http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW