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

Thousand Names of God

Post 10. 01/22/2017

Evolution of God

Many Names of God

As you might expect, that sad sojourn in a foreign land did allow some exotic ideas to assimilate into the heads of their leaders. Now that their national god had been shown to be either incapable of protecting them from marauders, or to be implicit in the destruction of their culture, they no longer thought of Him as purely Good. So their god-model again evolved to suit the current precarious situation. Yahweh was no longer the loving father of a human family, but was viewed as a more remote, austere, & fearsome moralizing force. Hence, he was no longer called by his personal name, but referred to abstractly like an absentee landlord.

Thus was born the dualistic deity of modern post-monotheist Jews : the provident persona, now known impersonally as “the Lord”, versus his evil twin, Satan, who was treated like a red-headed step-child. These were Judaised versions of Zoroastrian Ahura Mazda (“Bounteous Spirit”) and Angra Manyu (“Destructive Spirit”). Together, these opposing forces formed the co-executive god-head of the world. Before the Babylonian captivity, Satan, was merely a lowly legal inquisitioner (the Accuser) working for the insecure-yet-proud, egotistical & narcissistic king of heaven2, by trying to root-out any disloyal Israelites, who were not sufficiently sycophantic. As directed by the Lord, he proceded to prosecute God's most loyal boot-licker to within an inch of his life3 . It was only after the enlightening exile in Babylon that the weasley legalistic little devil become the preeminent super-anti-hero, portrayed as an evil genius working against the will of God.

A few generations later, the increasingly distant promised-land-lord apparently gave-up on his chosen tenants entirely, and banished them from their homeland of Zion. In their place, the Lord adopted a hopefully more loyal group of people from among the former heathens, self-selected by faith instead of genetically-inherited by race. Those mongrel gentiles then began to cross-breed their own Greek/Roman pantheon of Olympians, with the ancient Hebrew mafia of Elohim. The ring-leaders of this extended godhood family were now known as the benevolent Godfather (Jehovah), the savior Son (Jesus), and the enforcer Holy Ghost (aka “Holy Sh*t!”, aka “Trinity”), along with a heavenly host of angels & saints.  

But to add to the dramatic tension, there was now a rival god-gang headed by Satan (the Adversary)-- a former legal counselor (consigliere)-- along with his demonic thugs. That complex cast of characters provided material for centuries of religious dramas, farces, and tragedies. Yet it also led to the eventual disintegration of the Christian clan into dozens of disparate disputatious denominations. One of the earliest and most prolific sects was the Muslim revival of the fearsome Old Testament almighty-autocrat, Yahweh, now renamed "Allah" for the Arabic moon goddess, "Lah"4. Muhammad’s revulsion toward the gradual watering-down of the original unitary god-concept into a soap-opera family, inspired his restoration of the original notion of a transcendent cosmic creator, needing no demi-god subordinates to enforce his perfectionist Will in the world.

Post 10 continued . . . Click Next

2. Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown :
Disloyal traitors are their biggest fear. Remind you of a proud, pompous, you’re-fired, twittering, reality-TV president?

3. Job
The narcissistic Lord once bragged to his angels about his world-class suck-up down below. Which prompted a smart-ass angel with the job-title of 'satan' ("accuser") to retort that Job served God simply because of God’s providence. So God, with wounded ego, makes a wager with the Satan to show him who’s the boss. As an extreme test of loyalty, He allows  the angel to take Job’s wealth, his children, and his physical health (but not his life). The poor schmuck complained a lot, but never cursed his divine tormenter. The cynical moral of the story is that  “the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away”.

4. Moon Goddess
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allah_as_moon_god

One World Religion :
Religions create their gods in the image of their own people and culture. That’s OK for isolated cultures, but when they are forced to merge into a multicultural society, conflicts are inevitable. That’s why in the 21st century we need a single reasonable god-model that can be adapted to suit a variety of individual tastes & needs. Religious myths are metaphors, not absolute truths, so your myth is as good as mine.

This idealistic notion is equivalent to the high-minded political themes of “Unity in Diversity” and E Pluribus Unum. But it could also be construed as a nefarious scheme of world domination, like the “New Word Order”. So is it likely that all peoples of the world will unite under the banner of Deism into one big happy religion? Your guess is as good as mine.

Two-faced god