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?
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?