gods, God and religion
Originally posted by Zero
Ummmm...the Biblical god has no special claim on existence that the other gods don't. If you accept the possibility of one, you are sort of stuck with the rest of them.
Just so you know where I am NOT coming from . . . I am not religious. In fact, to put it politely, I have a strong "non-attraction" to it. However, for many years I have been extensively involved in studying the source of religion, as well as both belief and non-belief in God. Let me offer a little story to illustrate one theory of mine.
Say 2000 years ago the cultures around the Mediterranean all believed in a magical island they called Oz which was supposedly in a far away, unknown eastern ocean. No one had ever been to Oz, but there was a profusion of stories about the people who lived there, their culture, their adventures, their wealth, their supernatural powers, etc. The stories about Oz and its people are handed down from generation to generation, and so children growing up just accept the myth without question. And clearly, the stories of Oz really are nothing but myth because no one has ever personally experienced it; that doesn’t mean Oz doesn’t exist, but it does mean those who believe without experience don’t know if it does.
One day an adventurous young man named Dortheus decides to look for Oz. He goes to the Phoenicians to learn sailing and boat-building skills, builds himself a strong boat, heads south so he can follow the coast of Africa, and at the tip of Africa he heads east as the Oz legend indicates he should.
Months of sailing go by without sighting land and Dortheus, who can’t take the cold seas any longer, decides to head north. He manages to pass between Australia and New Zealand without seeing them, as well as a number of other islands until suddenly one morning he looks out to see a beautiful island. After landing, he discovers the most wonderful people who call themselves Samoans [okay, if it is 2000 BC, it’s likely 1000 years too soon for the Polynesians to be there]. The people treat Dortheus graciously, attending to his every need.
All this is nice, but one thing in particular intrigues Dortheus. After he is there awhile he finds out some of the men have developed a special diving skill that allows them to go to great depths on a single breath. Dortheus asks if they will teach him, but they say it takes years of practice and won’t agree to teach unless he commits himself to finishing the training. He agrees and spends seventeen years learning the skill.
By now he is pretty homesick and decides to return home. Months later he finally makes back, where he is greeted with much excitement. Throngs of people gather to hear the story of Oz, which Dortheus eventually allows them to call it since nobody seems able to accept that the island is really called Samoa. When Dortheus tells them about the wonderful diving skill, they all want to see it. They are amazed to see him dive deep into the Mediterranean to find fish for dinner.
Of the many people who listen, a few want to learn the diving skill, but the vast majority only want to hear the stories about Oz. Those few who want to learn the diving skill, Dortheus agrees to teach if, as was required of him, they will commit to practicing it as long as it takes to learn.
After Dortheus dies people begin to spread stories about him. They embellish descriptions of the diving skill to where Dortheus could actually live underwater, swim at an infinite speed, and pass through a shortcut at the bottom of the sea through the center of the Earth right to Oz. Oz too took on epic proportions, now described as made of solid gold, and populated by winged beings. Meanwhile, those few people who’d committed to practicing the diving skill kept at it. They found it was best to do it privately to help them stay focused, and also because some of those who were spreading the grand stories about Dortheus and Oz resented and even oppressed them.
Now jump ahead 3000 years. Historians trying to sort out what happened back then mostly have the reports of the story tellers because they had been in power, and so had dominated information flow. Of the diving skill practitioners, less than 1% of their stories and writings are preserved, and few people really think that was what Dortheus was about anyway. They think it was magic and the land of Oz. Also, those pretty smart people who recognize that the story teller stuff is nonsense, think everything associated with it is too, even Dortheus. They also look back and see the mythical stories of Oz by the populations of the Mediterranean before Dortheus in the same light as those by people who derived their stories from Dortheus himself, which isn’t exactly correct to do.
Relating all this to gods, God and religion, people have had “religion” for a long time. It has indeed often included beliefs in various supernatural beings and/or spirits (i.e., gods), and it has also had human intermediaries, such as priests, shamans, witchdoctors, etc. who supposedly acted as liaisons and interpreters for the general population. For the most part, I don’t believe any of these religious types knew what they were talking about. It was made up, a priori as we say, without benefit of any guiding experience to indicate the veracity or fallacy of it. That doesn’t mean this sort of “religion” might not be useful to society in certain ways, but that usefulness also doesn’t tell us anything about the accuracy of the beliefs associated with it.
Today, ironically, many people are atheists precisely because of religion, because it doesn’t make sense. Unfortunately, they don’t know about the divers. My studies have almost exclusively centered around searching out people who have pursued, and had some degree of success with, what is often called “enlightenment.” These “divers” are in a completely different class than normal religion because they may spend their entire lives practicing diving within. Occasionally someone like Jesus or the Buddha actually attains it completely, and then they are able to help others who are interested in doing it.
Almost no one knows about this dedicated, very small group of people who have taken the inner path. All you hear about is the 99%+ propaganda of the story tellers, and you therefore conclude there is nothing to it all but delusion. But if you really want to know what Jesus was about, study some of the monastics beginning with the so-called “desert fathers” living as hermits in caves around Palestine and Egypt not long after Jesus’ death. The writings of such people are profoundly different than religion.
What does this have to do with God? Well, after someone has acquired skill turning inward, they begin to notice something powerful and bright is there. In fact, they report actually “merging” with it, which is why this inner practice has been called
union prayer, or in India
samadhi (which means union). In the West people have interpreted this as the “God” which so many have believed in; with the Buddha at least, he discouraged any sort of interpretation of it, but instead recommended just letting the experience itself teach one what it is.
My point is that this subject of gods, God and religion is no simple matter to sort out. There actually may be something to some reports of “God” when it stems from people actively practicing the inner thing. That doesn’t mean all the qualities
religion want to attach to “God” are true. I mean, how do they know since they haven’t experienced it? Maybe God is just some organizing force that subtly resides behind things, maybe not.
So my reason for separating the God of the Bible from pagan gods is because at least some of the description is derived from two people who I suspect had had a direct experience of this force referred to as “God,” and they would be Moses and Jesus.
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