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The God We Want

Posted on 12/05/2010 by admin

Immanuel Kant observed that arguments for proofs that god exists were either so woolly they could be torn down with ease by reasoned argument, or so abstract reason couldn’t even get a handle on them. In both instances the arguments were of no value to the thinker in proving god exists.

Baruch Spinoza, a man who followed reason where it lead and did not try to steer it to any preconceived values of his own, noted that everything we say about god, all descriptions and expectations, are derived directly from our own experience and described in natural terms. That is, we experience through our senses and through thought, and we replay those experiences and thoughts back when we discuss god. To all intents and purposes, he thought, god and nature are one and the same thing.

My theology master once told me about a silk merchant who went to Africa as a missionary and failed with the tribe he visited because he preached fire and brimstone. The tribe believed their god was very distant and fairly unfeeling, and if the silk merchant had preached about a loving, personal god my theology master thought he would have gained a lot of converts.

That observation and those of all thinkers, show how much we create the god we want. We believe in what we want to believe. Worse we believe in what we are taught god is making belief no more than a tool of education.

And those beliefs are now becoming ever more metaphysical as science rolls back the frontiers of our knowledge.

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Children’s author, novelist, editor and poet.

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