Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Harvey said he wanted to go for a walk.

PZ Myers points to an all too not surprising study that shows that most people's gods pretty much think like them. Otherwise known as my opinions and ideas are right because...my god thinks my ideas are good. Convenient, and impossible to prove. But being sacred, holy, spiritual, etc, it is not to be questioned. Unlike giant invisible rabbits, that would just be crazy.

This is one of the reasons I find it hard to impressed with faiths. So often the embrace of a higher power is so tightly tied to a personal desire for there to be one, and for it to be exactly like a person, or society, expects. It acts like a variable in an equation that explains why things are the way they are. And, over the centuries, more and more of its potential functions have been explained away. Until we are here and now, and to make a god being work it gets shoehorned in, and sometimes the squeeze is so tight that it can't fit, without science and history taking a hit, and for a god being at stake that is totally cool to do. Then there are the times when one tries to hold on to much of that science and history and the god being gets origamied into a new thing (God is love, or God is thought). Sure you have the deist approach as well, but when a god is that out of the picture and only acts at the earliest points, and then does nothing else...why the heck are we obsessed with it? Really, it makes giant invisible rabbits almost sound sensible.

People can feel free to have imaginary friends. Just don't try and blame you actions on them. Not even if they tell you they are a Pooka.




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