Skip to main content

The Ever-Shrinking God

By Carl S. ~

Consider the wonderfulness of Space. Billions of galaxies filled with billions of stars, planets, moons. The very knowledge of “light years apart” boggles the mind. Randomly exploding supernovas, and even galaxies colliding, are exciting evidence that there is no one in control at a central control headquarters! From the most massive galactic systems to the simplest organisms, even those millions of bacterial forms within our own guts, everything we know seems to be ‘doing it's own thing‘ within the limitations of it's physical constraints. Coming into existence from prior forms, adapting to or fighting against its environment, procreating, seeking comfort, safety. In other words, surviving and surviving well. (A good example of this comes from Joyce Carol Oates. When her husband was fighting cancer, someone remarked that a “life and death struggle” was taking place, to which she replied that it was a “Life against life” struggle.) We haven‘t even touched on the amount of atoms which create the chair you’re sitting on, nor the empty spaces they occupy to make it a “solid.”

This is the way things are. Everything known in nature began in simplicity and keeps expanding to more and more complexity and variety just by adaptation alone Even organic isolation isn't isolation, for everything is in environment and time. An organism found at the furthest depths of earth itself still has to feed off it's environmental products. And this has been going on for billions of years.

What the hell's the “meaning” for all this? Well, I don’t see any, and anyone else who claims to know, is just fabricating meanings. Furthermore, anyone who claims a creator for such infinite variety is not only making “it” up, but avoids the perennial question: Then who created the creator? Many “explainers” claim the creator is uncreated, but that makes no sense.

Creation means there is a ”before and after “creating, therefore, creation takes place in TIME. A creator has to exist in time to create. Therefore, something created the creator in order for the creator to create before time began, which is impossible. And the creator has to be even more complex than all of nature, because after all, it takes time to build complexity. Since this creator is said to exist outside time, it doesn't exist. But, “explainers,” not content to claim an “immaterial being” created this infinitely large universe, these fantasizer- explainers assert that “he” is very, very, much like us! (In fact, many maintain this deity has all the attributes, attitudes and moral values of primitive warmongers. He is also paranoid about recognition of the other gods.)

It has been brilliantly noted that since science keeps finding natural explanations for events formerly attributed to supernatural powers, “God” has less and less to do. Interestingly, the more we KNOW about our universe, our place in it, and the more we discover how everything works, the more “God” becomes a god like every other one.

The created creator is shrinking not just by reason of scientific discoveries, but through the ridiculousness of “his” traditional theology, which has an all-powerful deity “capable” of creating, for example, earthquakes throughout the universe, and of controlling every atom in the universe, walking in a garden on a planet which is a mere speck of the universe, and creating trouble there. That’s petty and small-minded. (Nothing better to do, god?) Then, again theologically, as if it wasn't enough trouble-causing, “he” later decides that he's going to wipe out everything he created except for sample remnants on this planet, and start over. This is the behavior of a bratty, spoiled, tyrannical, child! His actions make him even smaller in the eyes of any thinking, responsible, caring, individual human, who diminishes him by comparison.

Theologically: This god decides to take on human form. Imagine the creator of the universe, on one small planet in it, packed into a body eating, pooping, farting, belching wine, having sex and in short having all the benefits, pleasures, and shortcomings of any sensate organism. He waits until he’s thirty years old and then goes around confusing and condemning everyone around him with his superiority complex. Let's face it, he's pretty small-minded, petty, and not learning what it means to be human. He diminishes himself even further to serious, honorable, seekers of fairness by his judgmental attitudes. The creator is trying out humanness and neither learning nor adapting. He makes a stab at understanding death, but doesn't stay with it long enough to find out what it's like. This takes place because he masochistically forces others to “kill” him. Then, he decides to make others feel guilty for doing so! He can't escape his nastiness, and promises to punish this same small planet once again, this time completely destroying it. For someone capable of creating a universe to be this nasty, he has to be evil. Evil is as evil does. He is shrinking in any entitlement to respect.

Theologically, again, this god is said to become the Eucharist! Which is to say, his now two thousand year-old body does not dwell in a cracker, but IS the cracker, or rather, isn't, since the cracker is still a cracker, only that it's “substance” has changed, whatever that is. But, to paraphrase author Edith Stein, “A cracker is a cracker is a cracker.” Being no ordinary cracker, it's multiplied, like in the story of the loaves and fishes, to feed thousands of people, an event unnoticed by historians of the time in which this is claimed to occur. So, the god who “created” this fantastic universe billions of years old spread out over billions of light years, has become compacted into a cracker you can hold in your hand, crush with your foot; a cracker which, worldwide, is imprisoned in boxes under lock and key, atop altars, and gets stale. How helpless can one be? And very small. Can this deity shrink even smaller?

It has been brilliantly noted that since science keeps finding natural explanations for events formerly attributed to supernatural powers, “God” has less and less to do.Well, there are plaster and plastic statues of this god, cheap paintings of him, sometimes standing with his heart exposed. (Joining the pantheon of previous gods.) Pretty crude and maudlin, if you ask me. As for estimating smallness, the shrinking number of his spokesmen excuse his sadism and make excuses for his bad behavior and complicity in crimes, even crimes against humanity. (“We don't talk about those”) Then too, so many of his chosen spokesmen are ludicrously narrow and small-minded, incredibly petty and judgmental, that we wish they also would fade away.

“God” has become so vague that Jesus is replacing “him.” This god has become copyrighted for use by preachers and politicians. Outside of the public testimonials of “miraculous interventions” from those few fortunate to survive harm, and the thanking of god for human interventions that save lives, you don't hear the name mentioned in public outside of being a colloquialism or in cursing.

The ordinary person with eyes wide open notices how this god is pedaled by hucksters selling an invisible cleaning product to wash away invisible sins and (thank god!) guilt. For which product material money is paid. Really crummy product, used to exploit the gullible buyers.

This god has become very small (a.k.a., petty) indeed: obsessed with the sex lives of humans (but not other animals), like a voyeur. Telling citizens who or what to vote for, trying to get his miracles into schools to replace evolution-reality. His salesmen are really pissed off that he's being ignored. There’s no money when a product becomes boring and passé. He's given up on trying to be real to Europeans and other educated peoples, and now makes his appeals to ignorant natives in third world /superstitious, countries. He never did like women. Not humans either... theologically speaking. So, nowadays, he’s shrunk to dwelling in imaginations, like all the other ghosts, vampires, and superheroes. Shrinking

Now, aren't you happy that “Natural is super enough” for you?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Are You an Atheist Success Story?

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our

Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation. The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith , apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith. The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers. The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother." The presenter on Genesis TV , a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films. It began: &quo

So Just How Dumb Were Jesus’ Disciples? The Resurrection, Part VII.

By Robert Conner ~ T he first mention of Jesus’ resurrection comes from a letter written by Paul of Tarsus. Paul appears to have had no interest whatsoever in the “historical” Jesus: “even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer.” ( 2 Corinthians 5:16 ) Paul’s surviving letters never once mention any of Jesus’ many exorcisms and healings, the raising of Lazarus, or Jesus’ virgin birth, and barely allude to Jesus’ teaching. For Paul, Jesus only gets interesting after he’s dead, but even here Paul’s attention to detail is sketchy at best. For instance, Paul says Jesus “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” ( 1 Corinthians 15:4 ), but there are no scriptures that foretell the Jewish Messiah would at long last appear only to die at the hands of Gentiles, much less that the Messiah would then be raised from the dead after three days. After his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus—an event Paul never mentions in his lette

Morality is not a Good Argument for Christianity

By austinrohm ~ I wrote this article as I was deconverting in my own head: I never talked with anyone about it, but it was a letter I wrote as if I was writing to all the Christians in my life who constantly brought up how morality was the best argument for Christianity. No Christian has read this so far, but it is written from the point of view of a frustrated closeted atheist whose only outlet was organizing his thoughts on the keyboard. A common phrase used with non-Christians is: “Well without God, there isn’t a foundation of morality. If God is not real, then you could go around killing and raping.” There are a few things which must be addressed. 1. Show me objective morality. Define it and show me an example. Different Christians have different moral standards depending on how they interpret the Bible. Often times, they will just find what they believe, then go back into scripture and find a way to validate it. Conversely, many feel a particular action is not

ACTS OF GOD

By David Andrew Dugle ~   S ettle down now children, here's the story from the Book of David called The Parable of the Bent Cross. In the land Southeast of Eden –  Eden, Minnesota that is – between two rivers called the Big Miami and the Little Miami, in the name of Saint Gertrude there was once built a church. Here next to it was also built a fine parochial school. The congregation thrived and after a multitude of years, a new, bigger church was erected, well made with clean straight lines and a high steeple topped with a tall, thin cross of gold. The faithful felt proud, but now very low was their money. Their Sunday offerings and school fees did not suffice. Anon, they decided to raise money in an unclean way. One fine summer day the faithful erected tents in the chariot lot between the two buildings. In the tents they set up all manner of games – ring toss, bingo, little mechanical racing horses and roulette wheels – then all who lived in the land between the two rivers we

On Living Virtuously

By Webmdave ~  A s a Christian, living virtuously meant living in a manner that pleased God. Pleasing god (or living virtuously) was explained as: Praying for forgiveness for sins  Accepting Christ as Savior  Frequently reading the Bible  Memorizing Bible verses Being baptized (subject to church rules)  Attending church services  Partaking of the Lord’s Supper  Tithing  Resisting temptations to lie, steal, smoke, drink, party, have lustful thoughts, have sex (outside of marriage) masturbate, etc.  Boldly sharing the Gospel of Salvation with unbelievers The list of virtuous values and expectations grew over time. Once the initial foundational values were safely under the belt, “more virtues'' were introduced. Newer introductions included (among others) harsh condemnation of “worldly” music, homosexuality and abortion Eventually the list of values grew ponderous, and these ideals were not just personal for us Christians. These virtues were used to condemn and disrespect fro