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| | Part Two of a Devotional.
Alright, Aristotelian God, you're up. Aristotle's God was one with very little consequence. He wasn't much of a thinker, wasn't much of a doer, wasn't really much of anything. Well, he was quite the mover, the Prime Mover, one might argue, but that's beside the point. Really, there's his magnum opus right there-moving things. Aquanis liked him, Anselm liked, him, and I'd argue that Voltaire was fan. The Islamic Faylasufs were admirers as well. They liked to speak of God as being "nothing," that is, nothing that the limited human mind can conceive. They were very careful not to let Him slip into the world of Pantheism, but only just. Besides, they were busy doing such droll things as discovering algebra, and conceiving the number zero. Filthy towel heads.
So there's your God, friends. He's a bit antisocial, to say the least. He works no miracles, declares no imperatives, and doesn't even glance us over every few millenia. He's content existing, and as His essence is to exist, he's doing a damn fine job at it.
He's rather attractive, isn't he? Especially for those of us with lower moral standards and empathy. There aren't any explicit rewards or punishments, no scriptures to memorize, and very little divinity for us to grasp. His existence lies completely outside our thought, so it seems absurd to do little more than describe what he is not. Problems immediately arise for the intuitive types out there. Putting it bluntly, why call this God? Where is the verification that such a Being exists? You are quickly left with an intellectual cop-out, an assertion that rational thought, which has taken us to his conception up to this point, must now be left behind to rot with the heathens and, well, maybe Jews (if you're that type of person, which historically speaking, you are) who would question His Mysteriousness. Such a God, such a "no-thing," seems entirely that. Nothing. He ain't much to look to, and He'll always short change you. God then, becomes the human intellect, which is fine with me, but when intellect and rationale are discarded in describing Him fully, I'm left to burn with the rest of the flock. If God exists in everyone of us, though, this seems to require men and women to discard any form of social prejudice. The Black Man is God. The Yellow Man. Yes, even the Grench, is God. That too is very attractive to me, but it creates a delightful form of Humanism (big "H"), not any sort of traditional Theism.
Lastly for this shorter chapter, I recommend you all consider reading Leo Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is Within You. And AP kids and English majors, if I italicized where I should have underlined, please don't judge me. But it's a delightful little read and will continue to do all that spiritual challenging we all seem so thirst for.
Take care.
| | | Posted 4/26/2008 2:05 AM - 2 comments
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