A reader asked me recently why I take issue with the concept of God. The following is essentially what I told her. Thought I’d share it with you.
I do not dislike the concept of god. It is attractive to wish that an amazing creature/spirit exists with such a broad and wise vision of life that he or she can permit mass murders, mass rapes, wars, life-destroying natural disasters – and not be disturbed by such obviously horrific things. However, I never forget that the earliest recorded concepts humans knew concerning gods originated in the fictional literature of Greece and Rome.
We have never identified all of the preceding gods that humans may have imagined. We do know that the original concept of a virgin birth and gods grew out of these Grecian and Roman fictional writings. No one originally seemed to believe that such gods were actual tangible existences, not until several thousand years ago when in the blazingly hot deserts of the middle-east humans, who were mostly goat and camel herders, proposed that there existed a single god who created our earthly planet
As I understand it, Jews were one of the first known creators of the concept of one single god, claiming for themselves the top hierarchical rung of the religion ladder. Then came Christ with a slightly altered version of the myth, and later Islam under the murderous leadership of Mohammed.
What concerns me is our present time where some 85% of all people still believe this ancient mythological idea that an invisible god exists and is the ultimate source of everyone and everything.
I see this as our self-deceiving ability to abandon our own accountability for our intellectual tribal weaknesses.
We have been for 10,000 years murdering one another in the name of our various gods in wars, pursuing personal physical gains. Our motivation has been simple greed to get our hands on everything we can to enhance the pleasure and ease of our own lives. Killing others has been our strategy. Weapons of mass destruction have become our tactic.
The alternative concept of our being a species (a scientific perspective), needing to be responsible for all of humanity in order to survive more than a brief period of time, has caused us to be mean self-destructive.
There is not a single shred of hard tangible evidence supporting such the theory of an invisible creature/spirit creating and running the universe.
There is surely none tying such a belief to a rational concept of politically better managing our continued earthly chaos. I propose humans should stop using the concept of God as a scapegoat for our own intellectual laziness.
It is time we started nurturing the social benefits of a mutually life-supporting philosophy dedicated to keeping all of us alive and well. The closest we get to it is in places like Japan and Scandinavia, and to some small extent in Western Europe, where a form of Capitalism is supplemented by Social support systems that help pick up people who have fallen through the cracks of our still-militant economic concept.
Over 50% of our American taxes, for instance, are spent making a handful of people rich, those building weapons of mass destruction. No wealthy Capitalists or Politicians are leading any initiative to even open up a national debate in the house of representatives or senate about us removing the profit motive from this extremely lucrative business.
Why do we base our entire economy on the concept of profiting off the manufacturer of weapons of mass destruction? It makes no sense whatsoever. It creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.
