The Face of God
By WizenedSage (Galen Rose) ~
You may have seen this recent article. It described a survey of Christian Americans undertaken by psychologists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In the study, 511 Americans, roughly two-thirds male and three-quarters Caucasian, looked through hundreds of pairs of faces and chose which they thought looked most like god.
At this point in the article I began laughing. Essentially, the researchers were asking what these people thought an invisible being looked like! Now, last I knew, “in-visible” meant not visible. So how could this god’s face be said to look like anything? And isn’t god supposed to be a spirit being? How does a spirit have a face?
Anyway, the respondents thought god would not look like the most popular representations of an old, white-bearded, Caucasian male god, but rather, younger and friendlier – although still a male Caucasian. Even most women and many blacks agreed on this.
I had to ask myself, wouldn’t the honest answer to the question of god’s face be, “I have no fricken idea! I never saw god and don’t know anyone who has. No one could know this, or even whether god has a face!” Isn’t this a bit like asking whether electrons have smooth surfaces? If one makes a choice on such a question, he is obviously speaking ex-rectum.
According to the report, “conservatives were more likely to see god as white and powerful. Liberals saw god as younger and loving.” It appears that, for most Christians, god not only looks like them, but thinks like them, too (for more on this, see http://new.exchristian.net/2011/03/personal-god.html ).
I guess it is as Baron de Montesquieu supposedly said,
You may have seen this recent article. It described a survey of Christian Americans undertaken by psychologists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In the study, 511 Americans, roughly two-thirds male and three-quarters Caucasian, looked through hundreds of pairs of faces and chose which they thought looked most like god.
Anyway, the respondents thought god would not look like the most popular representations of an old, white-bearded, Caucasian male god, but rather, younger and friendlier – although still a male Caucasian. Even most women and many blacks agreed on this.
I had to ask myself, wouldn’t the honest answer to the question of god’s face be, “I have no fricken idea! I never saw god and don’t know anyone who has. No one could know this, or even whether god has a face!” Isn’t this a bit like asking whether electrons have smooth surfaces? If one makes a choice on such a question, he is obviously speaking ex-rectum.
According to the report, “conservatives were more likely to see god as white and powerful. Liberals saw god as younger and loving.” It appears that, for most Christians, god not only looks like them, but thinks like them, too (for more on this, see http://new.exchristian.net/2011/03/personal-god.html ).
I guess it is as Baron de Montesquieu supposedly said,
“If triangles had a god, he would have three sides.”