Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia;  Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.

Hebrew Storm God

Post 10. January 22, 2018

Evolution of God

Who created God?

The Old Testament records a series of evolving god-models in the lineage of Abrahamic religions. First, there was the transcendent Creator, who simply spoke the world into existence by issuing a series of commands, like the logical steps in a computer program : 0. Abyss of undefined potential, 1. creative energy, 2. malleable matter, 3. stars & galaxies, 4. planets & moons, 5. plants & animals,  then 6. men & women, and finally on the seventh "day", the creative program reached its goal and terminated1; then we all lived happily forever after.

That was the bedtime story answer to how the world came to be : “God did it, 1,2,3”. But apparently it was a bit too simple and abstract for adolescents and adults. So the next, more melodramatic, myth portrays God as a magical shaman, who molded some red clay by hand into a human shape, then breathed life into the manikin to create the first human, and his name was "Mud" (Adam : red clay). At first the Golem2 was a harmless mindless zombie, but after eating a cursed apple his "eyes were opened", and he realized that good was boring and evil was tempting. Belatedly realizing that a single man would get lonely & horny without a compatible companion, God formed another clay doll with sexy curves . . . and a mind of her own. Inevitably, the first family fight soon ensued over whose will would be done.

After establishing the origins of the physical world, The OT writers skipped the prehistoric animist phase of human culture, and jumped right into the legendary tribal phase. The god of their particular Canaanite tribe was called "Yahweh", and was portrayed as one of the sons of a CEO deity, "El", in the family business (El & Sons, Inc)3 of administering the world after the initial set-up. Nepotism was the name of the game, so each son was in charge of a specific function of Nature. As a younger son, Yahweh's role, vice-president in charge of weather, was to provide plumbing services, bringing vital spring rains to their desert homeland -- which he spiced-up with thunder & lightning.

Eventually, as the wandering Hebrew shepherds began to settle-down into villages & towns, they perceived a need for a higher ranking deity to represent themselves as a unique important culture -- a people of destiny -- and not just another bunch of barbarian Canaanites. Therefore, they upgraded their rustic storm-god into a more urbane national icon4 in charge of all things Israel, to look after their sovereign interests. After an extremely brief golden era though, the cocky nation of Israel was decimated by their Semitic cousins from Assyria. Ironically, that smiting & scattering was interpreted as corporal punishment by their own perfectionist presiding deity.

With the kingdom of Israel "lost", the remnant Jewish clan was isolated, and suddenly became a minor player on the world stage again. This left them vulnerable to a hostile take-over by another of those expanding mesopotamian Empires. So they were snapped-up by the big-bully Babylonians, held in exile for a few generations, and then – perhaps due to their stiff-necked resistance to assimilation into the dominant culture – were allowed by their new Persian overlords to creep back to their little domain in the hills of Judea, as a shadow of their former Solomonic glory.

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1. Note : This is a loose interpretation of the Genesis sequence, which is not completely com-patible with the logic of evolution. The humans were a feedback loop in the program that introduced an internal source of creativity. Now we know that the task of creation did not end with the emergence of humans. It merely spun-off a new executive function within the original program.

2. The first Golem :
In Jewish folklore, a golem is an animated anthropo-morphic being that is magically created entirely from inanimate matter (specifically clay or mud). . . .  In the Talmud . . . Adam was initially created as a golem when his dust was "kneaded into a shapeless husk." ___Wiki

3. Elohim :
An exact cognate outside of Hebrew is found in Ugaritic ʾlhm, the family of El, the creator god and chief deity of the Canaanite pantheon. ___Wiki

4. Icon : idolized hero, represented on Earth by little golden statues, until such tchotchkes were banned by puritanical priests. Practice later revived for the Hollywood Oscars.