The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #150459 Message #3539690
Posted By: Little Hawk
20-Jul-13 - 09:13 AM
Thread Name: BS: Reflections on Religion and Atheism
Subject: RE: BS: Reflections on Religion and Atheism
I think there are way more than a hundred. ;-) And nobody's ever succeeded in counting them all. My father and his brother, for example, were at least demigods...although only in their own minds! (Nobody else worshipped them.) Mao was like a god in China. Stalin was like a god in Russia. Al Capone was like a god to his organization. Politicians, generals, and kings have often managed to more or less appoint themselves to such a heady position in life.
The question is, what are the characteristics of the "god" in question? Is it merely a quasi-human character made up by humans in their own image? Or is it more like an underlying principle that lies behind all manifestation? Or is it something completely indefinable? And what do those who speak of it imagine when they use the word "God"? Do they imagine an authoritative old gent on a heavenly throne? If so, where do they think he is located? Or do they imagine a guiding principle or consciousness rather than an embodiment?
There's more to the business of God than just "meets the eye", and that's why I find it interesting. If it was just a question of the old bearded guy on the throne, I'd be as utterly uninterested in the subject as I was at age 7 when I rejected that idea without a second thought.