All God, All the Time
18 October 2005 by SeanGreat piece by James Caroll in the Boston Globe.
I have been dying to find a piece that allows me to use all five (other than “Admin”) of our topics categories. This little gem did it!
Also, I just have to try out our new Flickr account by adding an image (bloggers: write to the Almighty Ron and ask him for the password).
Snippet:
In the argument between creationists and scientists, those aiming to defend God make absolute claims about mysteries of the deep past as if they themselves were there. Air Force flyers have thought of God as their co-pilot in the past, but in today’s Air Force, God sits atop the chain-of-command. At the US Air Force Academy, which was rocked by sex scandals not long ago, God is now the designated dean of discipline, but this jeopardizes infidel careers. Unit cohesion requires conversion. Indeed, displays of faith can be a prerequisite for promotion throughout a government where the White House itself is a House of God. In Iraq, meanwhile, someone will turn his body into a bomb today, killing others by blowing himself up while saying, ”God is great!”
Who is this ”God” in whose name so many diverse and troubling things take place? Why is it assumed to be good to affirm one’s faith in such an entity? Why is it thought to be wicked to deny its existence? Most striking about so much talk of ”God,” both to affirm and to deny, is the way in which many who use this language seem to know exactly to what and/or whom it refers. God is spoken of as if God is the Wizard of Oz or the great CEO in the sky or Grampa or the Grand Inquisitor. God is the clock-maker, the puppeteer, the author. God is the light, the mother, the wind across the sea, the breath in every set of lungs. God is the horizon. God is all of these things.
Anyway, read the whole thing. It’s good, shiny, polished prose. And how cool is it that he mentioned the Wizard of Oz, which Dena and I were just talking about in a thread a few days ago?
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18 October 2005, on 8:46 am
Ah, it’s pantheism, or as we sometimes say, “blue glow” theism (”God is just like a blue glow underlying everything in the universe, and not some separate being”). Only problem I have with that is that it’s not God — it’s the Higgs boson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson).
18 October 2005, on 10:15 am
Ron,
Thanks for the info on stuff I hadn’t heard about! Once we get personal transporter beams, I’ll send you some pie!
21 October 2005, on 7:43 am
It’s been picked up and reprinted now at Common Dreams; find it at http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1017-20.htm. It won’t disappear from there.
21 October 2005, on 8:15 am
This really is a truly great piece. Short, sweet, to the point. I just read it again.
The conclusion would even rock a rationalist rockstar.
But here is where it gets tricky. What if God’s unknowability is the most illuminating profundity humans can know about God? That would mean that religious language, instead of opening into the absolute certitude on which all forms of triumphal superiority are based, would open into true modesty. The closed creation, in which every question has an answer, would be replaced by an infinite cosmos where every answer sparks a new question. If what we mean by ”God” is the living pulse of such open-endedness, then God is of no use in systems of dominance, censorship, power. God is everywhere, yes. But, also, God is nowhere. And that, too, shows in America, especially in its fake religiosity.
21 October 2005, on 8:45 am
Indeed friend.
Like in science – God did it can answer anything, and therefore proves nothing. Conclusion: God is useless.
4 November 2005, on 5:41 am
I ain’t believin it. I touched base with church once or twice but, W.T.F? Is this for real? Yep somehow I know it.
5 November 2005, on 7:46 pm
Daniel: I am afraid it is. We are seeing an increasingly fundamentalist world, and an increasingly fundamentalist Xian nation.
Heck, see the post about how a majority of Americans now question evolution. Yoiks!
Judges are putting the Ten Commandments on their courthouse lawns, for Jebus’ sake. Something stinks in Denmark.
That’s why we need to fight it with every ounce of rational criticism we can muster.