The Deep End: Your God, My God, His God Etc.

So just what is it with all these deities running about the place?

The first thing that I remember wondering about once I was exposed to other religions was why on Earth there’d actually be so many pesky Gods and Goddesses running about in the cosmos without a single one of them being polite enough to step in and clear up some issues for us common folk. What was the point of so many deities existing in the world? Truly, this question baffled me for quite some time. In fact, it was so baffling that it lead me to try out atheism for a solid two years before realizing that I just didn’t have the energy to be that militant.

There’s a very comforting notion that many of us settle into once we’ve gotten in touch with our own God. That notion is that we have somehow stumbled upon something that is intrinsically unique to us. God is here for me; me and no one else. Ok, maybe my friends, family and members of the congregation, but surely no one beyond that. Sadly, this is when the two-by-four of reality comes crashing in. God is, in whatever form, here for everybody, and the vast populace of the universe has known this for eons.

Though we might not like to admit it, the warm, tingling feeling that one person gets talking to Jesus is almost identical to another warm feeling that another person gets talking to Ribos of Nebulon 7. No, I don’t actually know of any real Ribosians, but they do make a wonderful example.

It troubled me to no end that virtually all religions I knew of made no attempt whatsoever to explain this phenomenon. Typically speaking the polite response of one religion to another’s existence is “cute”. Honestly, this is where the issue stops for most people. They’re comfortable in the idea that they are having a genuine experience with divinity and that nobody else really is. Hell, it even happens within communities of the same faith. We’ve all heard someone play the more pious than thou card at some point.

There’s a few possibilities that immediately leap out at us that could serve to answer this question. The first is obvious, I’m sane, everybody else is either delusional or faking. Unfortunately, no one faith has a monopoly on the souls of mankind. That’s a lot of delusional people to accept if you’re going to go with option A. I think we can safely say that something else could be going on.

Another option is that everyone is wrong. There is nothing out there beyond us. Actually this is a pretty solid argument (I was an atheist for a reason). The big problem here is that it means there is absolutely no point to existence aside from existence itself. Nice work if you can get it, but much like option A I tend to think that all these people having religious experiences might mean something other than mass hallucination..

The other option is that everybody is right, in which case the cosmos is somehow big enough to house separate versions of every theological angle. This version works marvelously, better than most of the others except that there’s still a lot of Gods and Goddesses running about claiming they’re unique. Ultimately, that means that some of them are lying. Nobody wants to think of their God as potentially a liar, so we tend to cross this one off the list as well.

It wouldn’t be so troubling if it weren’t that so many religions report their own God as being “good”. It’s not that I think an exclusionary God couldn’t be good, but really, if people of differing faiths can have equally life altering experiences with different versions of the almighty, one wonders just what kind of “good” God would allow a falsehood to carry as much weight as the real thing.

Personally I think any God that would allow lies and truths on the same playing field can’t be all good. At the very least, if I go with the God that does allow this, I have to start thinking of him as at least mildly sneaky, and possibly even just a bit of a bastard.
So that’s something good to chew on until next time.

Next time I’ll Discuss: Why God MUST be a Bastard

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