Poorly-Written Deities
Until this evening, I’d somehow been completely oblivious to the fact that there’s a transfer between the 7 and the E/V/G/F/etc lines at Roosevelt Avenue. This led me this morning to take the 7 to 23rd and do the annoying above-ground transfer to a Queens-bound E, and then hop onto the R at Roosevelt Avenue. Not only did this add probably ten or fifteen minutes to my total commute, but it also placed me in the presence of a man who was very eager to inform everyone on the train car via loud shouting that Jesus was forgiving enough to fix his life and give him a very nice Honda even though he’d condemned himself to hell by jerking off to the Spice Channel too often.
So that the other passengers on the train wouldn’t have to hear two people ranting, I decided not to argue with him over it, but I really wanted to ask him:
What does God get out of condemning people to hell?
Of late, I’ve been thinking a lot of Doctor Manhattan from Watchmen, mostly for the obvious reason that the movie just came out, but in part because I’ve been experiencing what I think is probably best described as a depersonalization disorder that occasionally leaves me feeling completely indifferent toward all life including my own. Not in a weird, depressing, troubling way or anything, and not all the time, but it’s provided me an interesting perspective on things.
Tonight, though, I realized something: Alan Moore isn’t exactly the best writer in human history by any stretch, yet Doctor Manhattan is a substantially better-written, more believable omnipotent character than the God of nearly all religious texts, especially the most widespread ones.
Christians especially love to dodge the complicated questions like “why are some babies born with no faces?” and “why do children get force-fed drugs and then raped by people they thought loved them?” with their explanation-de-deus-ex-machina “God works in mysterious ways” — we’re not SUPPOSED to know the way God’s mind works because he’s just such a COMPLICATED BEING with such an INCREDIBLE CAPACITY for KNOWING, and it’s IMPOSSIBLE for our LITTLE PEA MINDS to even BEGIN to fathom ONE IOTA of his OMNISCIENCE. Yet throughout the Bible, God is characterized as basically a human with the power to shape the universe — a being with human needs and desires and likes and dislikes. Were God truly omnipotent and omniscient, his mind would likely in no way come close to resembling that of a human.
Sure, some of it can be attributed to the imperfection of human language (as employed in the Bible) as a medium for losslessly conveying information, but it goes well beyond that. All the things God wants are just projections of things humans tend to want — love, respect, adoration, justice, punishment for those who get away with the nasty things they do to others, etc. He’s just a vessel for wish fulfillment. “They never caught the guy who licked my grandmother to death, but it’d sure be great if someone eventually got ‘im!” This is especially evident in the cultural stigmas depicted and the punishments that result. “Thar wussa WHOLE CITY fulla them FILTHY FAGGITS and’n GAWD dropped a buncha METEORS on it!” or “People were mean to each other, so God drown everyone but the nice, respectful folk!”
What would God get out of that? In fact, what would an omnipotent, omniscient being get out of even paying any attention to us at all? Regardless of free will, an all-knowing being wouldn’t likely be surprised by anything. (Well, unless their precognition was affected by tachyons, but presumably God would be immune.) One could argue that God might get a kind of “pleasure” out of it, but this assumes that God would have a need to somehow attain pleasure. Every reason we could possibly come up with for God to do any of the things he’s apparently supposed to do, to feel or need any of the things he’s depicted as feeling or needing, all rely on God basically having a human mind and body. When you look beyond the conditioning of our biology and our parents and our society, nearly everything we attach significance to is in itself meaningless.
With nearly everything we do, we do it because we’re programmed to in one way or another, and it’s ultimately insignificant on a long enough timeline, or compared to the complete scope of all movement in the universe. It’s important from our perspective, but to an outside observer — especially an omnipotent/-scient/-present one who wouldn’t be subject to the same drives and needs and effects of upbringing as we humans — our behaviors wouldn’t have the same importance. Even I can see this, and as much as I sometimes wish otherwise, I’m just a dumb, meaty human with my emotional reactions sometimes temporarily partially factored out of my observations.
Of course, there’s the whole “we were created in God’s image” argument, but even if you were able to ignore basically all of science, and then ignore the fact that humans can be radically different from their opinions to their behaviors to their feelings to their needs, it would only ultimately serve to contradict the argument that God’s mind is beyond ours.
So which is it? Is God’s mind unfathomable, and his actions therefore attributable to his unfathomableness, or is he jealous and needy and loving and desiring of unbalanced revenge for wrongdoers?
Jabberwock
March 22nd, 2009 at 10:41 pm
My friend.. you have summed it up perfectly
March 23rd, 2009 at 5:51 am
Welcome to social deviance! The place where you end up when you realize that you don’t quite fit in. Social deviants serve several important functions, but mostly we serve as a horrible warning, “See what happens if you aren’t a good girl lil susie? You end up like that woman down the street who paints obscene things and lets weeds grow all over the yard!”
You sound like you’re in a tricky, unhappy place, where things are changing a bit too fast, for that I’m sorry. No advice or anything, just pull a chair up to the freak table, grab a pint and realize you aren’t alone.
March 23rd, 2009 at 11:29 pm
Renee DesCartes argued against the evil God, but also the Good God.
Basically what your saying. If God is truely all powerful and perfect, he couldn’t be evil. We do evil things out of need (I need money, I need your woman, I need to get that job, etc…). If he’s perfect, he wouldn’t need anything.
On the other hand, if God NEEDS humanity, he’s not perfect either. DesCartes, therefore, leads to a perfectly logical assumption for Deism, if you choose to acknowledge a higher being.
Man is created as some part of necessary purpose – not out of love, not out of a need for life, just a part of something. He’s not active in our lives.
I personally feel there is – wait for it – intelligent design in the universe, but however it was made, its mostly just part of some necessary pattern.
March 25th, 2009 at 11:33 am
Your argument is very well put, though it appears to be born entirely of the movie and not the graphic novel itself. Were its progenitor the latter you’d be ignoring several aspects of Dr. Manhattan’s character excluded from the motion picture adaptation.
The most important and striking of which takes place during his conversation with Laurie on Mars. He informs her that she will soon inform him of her new, intimate romance. Despite the obvious foreknowledge, Dr, Manhattan is surprised and hurt when the moment comes. There are a number of ways to explain this, but all of them invariably imply that Dr. Manhattan is not all-knowing or perfect, not that he ever claimed to be.
But the question is raised, what does being perfect imply? A problem inherent to these arguments isn’t just that our language is an imperfect tool in describing a perfect being, but that our minds are similarly imperfect in conceiving of such a being. As a result, you have DesCartes arguing that if God needs anything he can not be perfect, while someone else might argue that a perfect being would necessarily have perfect love, which necessarily would require an external object of affection else it would be naught but the imperfection of narcissism (thus even God needs someone to love). Who is correct, if anyone?
The answer is not and should never be “God works in mysterious ways”. To do so is analogous to scientists answering “magic” upon reaching a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. “We don’t know, yet” is the honest answer in either situation.
So I suppose the answer to your final question is, neither. God isn’t unfathomable, but like science the more we learn the more there is yet unfathomed. By the infinite monkeys/Shakespeare scenario even our imperfect faculties should eventually be able to faithfully complete our knowledge of both science and God, it’s just a question of how much time out of infinity is required. This being the case we should eventually be able to, with proper context and information, evaluate the actions of God and contest or affirm the fundamental assumption that God is a perfect being. We can attempt this evaluation now, but our still incomplete knowledge of what drives our own behaviors combined with a smaller view of the greater picture results in wildly varying answers, an unrepeatable experiment as it were.
As a final tangent if God is imperfect he’s religiously equivalent to that manager that never tells you anything, dings you on your performance evaluation for failing to live up to expectations and demands you didn’t even know existed, all while failing to explain why he gets a big fat bonus for firing staff who were exceeding expectations.
March 26th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
At the risk of being stoned, could I recommend CS Lewis’ “Case For Christianity”? It may not change the mind of an honest atheist, but it does help with some of the questions, and Lewis can put the case far better than I. If nothing else, Lewis points out why people still insist on believing in something. We all have questions about our lives.
I have found Descartes’ view of a clockwork universe depressing. Is it worse to have a cruel God who watches without pity than to have no God and no divine purpose? I’ve never accepted the “obvious” answer: Yes it is better to have no God, you are free to make your own fate and destiny. I still prefer an erroneous map to none at all, rather pray to Great Cthulhu than not pray at all.
But that’s just me.
March 29th, 2009 at 10:08 pm
‘ish, I just want you to know that I posted your quote in the OMGFURFAGS board I frequent. Those that are damned by humanity applaud you for your honesty and blunt take on the subject.
March 31st, 2009 at 5:41 am
Luigiian, gorsh thanks! *blush*
April 2nd, 2009 at 12:04 am
Oh, you’re welcome. It was one hell of a thread.
March 7th, 2010 at 6:20 am
Well, for the reasons mentioned by Jabberwock the only vision of God I found acceptable was that put forth by the negative theology (e.g. Master Eckhart, Angelus Solesius and, first and foremost, Jacob Boehme).