Here is what amounts to his conclusion:
...The universe is immense and existence is hard, in the best sense of the word, and God just seems like too pat an answer, too self-serving. Add in the codifications—faiths --that allow one set of believers to pit themselves against all others and the harm done by this self-serving idea very easily outweighs the good...In other words, NO, or at least unlikely enough so as to render the concept not worth believing in.
Having also bounced this rhetoric question of God - Yes/No? through
my Hall of Thoughts on various occasions, I come to a similar deduction, the one almighty God is a human concept born in the hope for equalising justice and a life after death, a omnipotent being that can be used as universal explanation for what is and isn't happening.I can't understand why so many people are like sheep in their approach to ideas about the afterlife and how the fabric of life is knit. My guess its due to either one of the following (or any combination):
- lack of fantasy
- the human group/herd instinct
- early childhood indoctrination
- thinking of "might as well"
I almost wrote
- simplistic world view
I personally redrew my picture of where we come from, who/what runs the show while we are here and where will we go to. I think it sort of started in my early teens, when (out of all people) my religious education teacher made a remark in class along the lines of
What if Jesus came back today, after 2000 years of Christianity? We, Christians or not, would stick him into a mental institution or jail, not the cross anymore, no, we have finally moved on from that after burning people alive for 16 hundred years, but we'd declare him a fraud, a loony, an extremist.Jesus would be living as an itinerant, hang out with people our society classes as "loosers", he'd be a rebellious activist with a record for trespassing and being a nuisance in public. I couldn't explain this paradox much better than Kev Carmody, (I recommend his albums, essential listening) :
He was born in Asia Minor,
a colonized Jewish man.
His father the village carpenter,
worked wood in his occupied land.
He was apprenticed to his father's trade.
His country paid it's dues;
to the colonial Roman conquerors,
He was a working-class Jew.
Though conceived three months out of wedlock
the stigma never stuck.
He began a three year public life
but he never made a buck
because he spoke out against injustice;
saw that capitalism bled the poor.
He attacked self-righteous hypocrites
and he condemned the lawyers' law.
But they've commercialised his birthday now;
the very people he defied,
and they've sanctified their system
and claim he's on their side!
But if he appeared tomorrow,
He'd still pay the highest cost,
being a 'radical agitator'
they'd still nail him to a cross.
You see He'd stand with the down trodden masses,
identify with the weak and oppressed.
He'd condemn the hypocrites in church pews,
and the affluent, arrogant West.
He'd oppose Stalinist totalitarianism;
the exploitation of millions by one,
and 'peace' through mutual terror,
and diplomacy from the barrel of a gun.
He'd fight with Joe Hill and Walesa,
Mandela and Friere;
Try to free the third world's millions
from hunger and despair.
He'd stand with the peasants
at the pock-marked walls;
They'd haul him in on bail.
He'd condemn all forms of apartheid,
and he'd rot in their stinking jails.
He'd denounce all dictatorships
and Mammon's greed,
and the exploitation of others for gain.
He'd oppose the nuclear madness,
and the waging of wars in His name.
He'd mix with prostitutes and sinners,
challenge all to cast the first stone.
A compassionate agitator,
one of the greatest the world has known.
He'd condemn all corrupt law and order,
tear man made hierarchies down.
He'd see status and titles as dominance
and the politics of greed he'd hound.
He'd fight against the leagues of the Ku Klux Klan,
and the radical, racist right.
One of the greatest humanitarian socialists
was comrade, Jesus Christ.
So, if there was a Jesus of Nazareth, a powerful and kindhearted man who died in the belief that his cruel end would help us having our sins forgiven on judgment day, then he would be disgusted with the lip service morale of his followers. I am not an historian, far from it, so I can't really say if Jesus ever lived and what he was up to, but I am very much inclined to say that he was not the son of God, but God himself. And he appealed to the Gods within each of his fellow humans to wake up and show compassion towards all other beings sharing time and space with us. The following quote pretty much sums it up.
"When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself."That's it, not much more to say. IMHO we are all Gods/Goddesses, and because being a God means existing forever, and eternity being pretty boring after a while, we invented life, to escape the boredom of being a God.
Peter O'Toole
When we die we go back to being Gods, catch up with other Gods in Godland, and when we are fed up with godliness, we line up and parachute into a creature being born at that moment. One time round we want to find out what it is like to be a hungry child in Africa, next time round we line up in the rich kid column.IMHO it's all about gathering different kind of experiences, see the world from many angles. I am a spiritual being who is having a human experience.
Any belief someone holds, as crazy as they might sound to some, has the same chance of being the truth as the christian, muslim, hindhu or any other faith has. It can be calculated with the following formula:
Pretty slim I must admit, but not any less either. And now, just to introduce another possibility, what if whatever one believes would happen to one's soul at the time of death, will actually happen to this soul?
In other words, if you approach death and are worried that all your bad deeds will lead you straight to some kind of flamin hell, then that is where you'll go. Or if you believe you'll get reborn as a cow, you'll actually be reborn as a cow, and so on. The options are endless, but just in case, on my deathbed I'll be thinking of a nice situation I want to spend eternity in, like living with a nymphomaniac who owns a bottle shop.
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