Part One of a Devotional

the following was written as a result of not being able to put it off much longer.  i've planned on writing this for sometime, and as you'll probably soon encounter, my writing is currently not very concrete.  i would ask for an open mind and a light heart, because most of this, however serious the subject matter may be, is written with a very light heart.  but please consider it, though i doubt i have anything to worry about in the angry email department from my few scattered readers; all of your opinions i respect, or am at least intrigued by (no, it's not you, if you're reading this, it's the other guy), and am just looking for a good discussion.  also, should i post this on facebook, or do you think the masses would have an aneurism upon reading it?  take care, be good, and do good things.  or however the quote goes.

Musings on God (A Working but Arrogant Title)

To begin, He also likes to sleep in.  He’s a fan of resting.  And who isn’t?  I myself am taking nine credit hours this semester.  There are many reasons, but it seems to boil down to a sheer lack of motivation.  Maybe He’s pretty unmotivated himself.  I mean, he’s been watching the same uninteresting archetypes write themselves plotlines ever since a grunt became an acknowledgement, one perchance of hunger.  Then came the prophets, the skeptics, the apologists, the rationalists, the reformers, the “counter-reformers,” and the linguists, the translators, trying to slap sense into everyone.  Lastly, there was Tom Shadyac, who directed Bruce Almighty and had the brilliance to cast Morgan Freeman as El Sol himself.  Good for him.

            I’m both doing everything I can to make this whole argument seem as trivial as it really can be, and trying to get you all to pay close attention to your incessant creeds, your mantras, your yogis, your gitas, and your whathaveyou.   Where do we start?  Let’s ignore Anselm, ignore Aquinas, ignore Paul, ignore even Aristotle.  Let’s take instead the route of those lowly Galilean fishermen, who had the courage to leave a measly dinner every night for the ramblings of a new prophet, and one with (assembly) very low credit at that.  Let’s just say He exists.  Why?  Because it becomes entirely absurd to muse anything on the Almighty without asserting first the He does of course exist, and to move on from there.  Whether He indeed has a penis (a subject of fierce metaphysical debate) I leave to the reader’s own interpretation.  Incidentally, the Hebrew slang for male genitalia is zayin.

            Now what does He do next?  He’s just created the cosmos, and has a few billion years to wait around for Disneyland, or to appear in tortillas; it makes perfect sense for him to do nothing but rest.  To back track, I suppose a second “given” I’m allowing myself to make is to not even acknowledge any form of Theistic fundamentalism.  So I want no fingers pointed, or tongues wagged when I say “billion years” and not “thousand years.”  And I urge you all to read modern science whenever you can, or if motivation in that capacity fails you (I suppose I can’t ask too much too soon), just turn on Nova.  Please.  Moving on.

            We have to unfortunately begin this discussion with a bit of philosophy (I know, I know).  In my eyes the two the major Western (with an emphasis on Christendom) conceptions of God originate from two of Western civilization’s most exemplary figures- Plato and Aristotle.  Plato and Aristotle’s conceptions of God seem to be analogous with much of the debate between (perhaps traditional) Catholics and (perhaps more Calvinistic) Protestants today.  The former seemed to see God as much more anthropomorphic, or personal, human, than the latter, whose now famous “Prime Mover” God shared much in common with the French philosophes Deistic God- impersonal, distant, even Eastern in nature.  Western Protestants, knowingly or not, contribute much of their speculation on God to Plato, and of course later St. Augustine, where Catholic rely more heavily on Aristotle, and the works of St. Thomas Aquinas.  Remember, the key difference is a case of impersonality versus a much more human form.

            Let’s  return to what God actually does, a very restrictive verb, one must admit.  Does he interact, does he feel, does he think, does he will, or doesn’t he?  Does he have a criterion to which we’re all subjected, is there a master plan, a deterministic fate, an end all to end all end alls?  Be careful in your decision making- for to attribute such lowly human functions to God as cognition and will is to diminish the “God factor,” to make him little more than a Bigger and Better us.  And we’re not that great, friends.  Don’t let any religion kid you otherwise.