It Is Rude and Silly To Destroy A God

Just been listening to a radio thing where I think someone was telling the story of how they made their way out of some sort of strongly religious community to the outside world.

Something like maybe the Mormons or something.

And they got to recounting how hard it all was with their immediate family.  Because when they got ‘out’  they got out of believing that faith, too.

Problems in particular with her father.

And you can well imagine it. We can, can’t we?

You can’t tell anyone they’ve always been wrong about anything, really, can you?  Without some strain, some trouble, some resistance, even outrage, anger…

But to tell them they’re wrong about their god !

The hardest thing.

I don’t know what happened in that case but it is probably that they just told the father that his god simply didn’t exist.

That’s the commonest thing.  Total disbelief in god.

But why?

What’s the point?  Where’s the need?

Why do you have to tell anyone else ‘god doesn’t exist’ ?

How would you know?

You don’t know what they mean by ‘god’, probably.  Very probably.

So how can you say it doesn’t exist?

To him.  Or to anyone.

And why?  To hurt them?  To disappoint them?

 

Better to say that you don’t agree with their understanding of the nature of ‘god’.

Much better.

Especially if you say it ( in your own mind) like that:  ‘ I don’t agree with your understanding of the nature of ‘god’ ‘  That is, with ‘god’ in quotation marks.

You are meaning the word that gets applied to this that and the other. They’ll doubtless think you mean ‘god’ the thing.

The thing they think they have expertise on, knowledge about, etc.

 

The point being that ‘god’ – the word – exists and even ‘exists’ where it doesn’t exist.

I mean there are places that don’t have religions, I think.

Places where there’s no belief in supernatural beings. Certainly no belief in a supernatural being comprising wholly of love etc., etc.  etc…  and who caused this and that to happen and demands this and that ritual…

You know?

There’s places where all that kind of thing is unknown.

But even there there’s recognition, of necessity, of the ‘other’ that exists outside the self, outside the family, outside the tribe, outside even of reason perhaps and so on…

The ‘something else’  that all this came from or belongs to or is going into…

All of that’s ‘god’ to those who use the word and it’s therefore still god even where the word is not  used.

Why deny that?

It is a fundamentally useful concept.  Recognition. Cognition.  Knowledge. Perception.

 

I’m Still Struggling….

I’m still struggling to find out how to change this blog format to something I’d like.

This is a new release of WordPress and I’m not familiar with it and there are some things I’m not keen on.  Like those bands that scroll across the screen when you first come here….

I’m just beginning to get some idea of what I should/could do with them and how to do it.

🙂