Progressive Divinity?

[Archangel]

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg was a pretty smart guy. What I love most about him is his ability to never take any thought for granted, to constantly challenge both knowledge and perspective - his aphorisms are an utter joy to read, and some of them are incredibly striking in the originality of thought which they demonstrate.

Anyway, reading his stuff did what it was supposed to do: It got me thinking, especially since it ties in nicely with the Ockham I'd been reading.

And one question which got stuck in my mind is this:

What gives us the idea that essentially, we're one step below God?


The first image which popped into my head was an apiary. If the bees living in those hives had some sort of awareness, they would be able to perceive the presence of their beekeeper, who, for all intents and purposes, might as well be God to them. Perhaps seldom seen, but always felt in some way, and largely in control of their destiny.
So even if they could know that much, then that would be all they could imagine to know.
But it doesn't stop at the beekeeper, does it? In the case of our bees, there are instances above their "god", whose intentions they could never know, but who do have some bearing on their existence, maybe less direct, but still real. The creditors whose money he used to buy the hives, for one. Or the mayor of his town. Or above that, even, the secretary of agriculture: If it is next to impossible for our conscious bees to fathom the intentions of their beekeeper except for some vaguely perceived notion of benign, nurturing power, then how could they ever begin to comprehend the motives behind the actions of the politicians and bankers who, in turn, control him?

If their beekeeper is God, what is God to them?


The problem is one of definition, I should think. You see, we (as in monotheists) think that if there is a kind of divinity in our lives, then that has also got to be the creative force behind the creation of the entire universe, that the Watchmaker, the Creator, and the loving Father are one and the same entity.

Why?

Isn't that supremely arrogant? For the bees to assume that their beekeeper is where the buck stops, that he is optimus maximus, that their hive is the one point of interest for the controlling power behind all of creation (some fleeting glimpses of other hives in the yard notwithstanding)? Isn't it incredibly self-absorbed to believe that because a more powerful being takes an interest in their lives, he must be The Most High? And how spectacularly egotistical, then, would be Christianity, since it believes that He became one of us?


Maybe there is no point to any of this, since the chain that extends above the beekeeper obviously doesn't make the direct influence which he has over the hive any less real, that as far as they are concerned, it makes little to no difference whether he is a god unto himself, or a mere agent; but how limited are we that the unknowable is also the the point where our imagination hits a roadblock?

[Morfin]

Let me take an unlearned stab at this, based not on knowledge of the people you refer to, but based solely on what you've set forth.

I think the concept of monotheism has as a premise that there is one creator, be-all-and-end-all, optimus maximus God. And that is a premise that must be taken on faith, along with the Christian view that Jesus was the incarnation of God on Earth.

I don't see the arrogance, I see that merely as one brick in the wall of faith -- our construct of what the higher power is. If the higher power is unknowable for mere humans, then the only way we humans can possibly attempt to understand, the only perspective we have, the only tools we have to describe the indescribable is to use human constructs. And because we have these human constructs of hierarchies, we use those to analyze/debate the concept of the higher faith we have also constructed.

To speak of other Gods, or beings superior to God -- i.e., the beekeeper who reports to the head beekeeper -- is anthropomorphizing the issue. That is, projecting human constructs of hierarchies on the metaphysical.

I'm only on my second Diet Coke so far. That is the best I can do.

[kid_vidrio]

And guess what you get? Welcome to India!
Explaining the many wonders of the world to a simple jungle dweller required many faces of an unseen power and 'boom.' They got polytheism.
Wrapping Christianity up as 'progressive divinity' was done 6,000 years ago.
Fwiw, I find it much more palatable this way than as a single infinite quantity.

[Archangel]

Yeah, I forgot to include polytheism in the OP. I mean, doesn't Haitian vodou have like one supreme god (identified with the Judaeo-Christian God) who, however, is way too exalted to be bothered with the lives of humans, which is why people acknowledge his presence and power, but pray to lesser deities instead?

That's pretty much what I was getting at.

[kid_vidrio]

Yeah, I forgot to include polytheism in the OP. I mean, doesn't Haitian vodou have like one supreme god who, however, is way too exalted to be bothered with the lives of humans, which is why people acknowledge his presence and power, but pray to lesser deities instead?
Which in turn makes us think of 'the one word for God we shall never say out loud' which in turn makes me wonder how many times, going all the way back and in all its geographical permutations we will put new rubber on the same old tire and then fight about it.
Not like it's 2009 or anything but aren't we about ready to come together under the one true God....money?

[Archangel]

But:

If there is one all-powerful yet distant deity, couldn't these lesser gods be considered to be manifestations, avatars (since you brought up Hinduism) of the one true god?

[kid_vidrio]

But:

If there is one all-powerful yet distant deity, couldn't these lesser gods be considered to be manifestations, avatars (since you brought up Hinduism) of the one true god?
This is a great question.
Is it the animal kingdom first and then the animals are created? Or do we have a bunch of animals, arrange them and then give the whole thing a name?

[Pax Britannia]

I like to think God was an angel who created the other angels. He doesnt know how he came to be, and therefore created the universe and life in an attempt to better understand himself.

[Phil Theehor]

Yeah, I forgot to include polytheism in the OP. I mean, doesn't Haitian vodou have like one supreme god (identified with the Judaeo-Christian God) who, however, is way too exalted to be bothered with the lives of humans, which is why people acknowledge his presence and power, but pray to lesser deities instead?

That's pretty much what I was getting at.

Catholicism, too, evolved that way. If you look at the later converts from paganism (say, the Irish Catholics), you'll see God as the big boss, with all number of saints on staff to handle the smaller stuff. Many of my older relatives (those only a generation removed from Ellis Island) utilize what is basically a yellow pages of saints.

Need help selling your house? Pray to Saint Anthony. Fighting breast disease? Pray to St. Agatha. Going fishing? Pray to St. Peter.

Heck, St. Benedict is available to help you with engineering tasks, cave exploration or fighting gall stones.

[kid_vidrio]

Catholicism, too, evolved that way. If you look at the later converts from paganism (say, the Irish Catholics), you'll see God as the big boss, with all number of saints on staff to handle the smaller stuff. Many of my older relatives (those only a generation removed from Ellis Island) utilize what is basically a yellow pages of saints.

Need help selling your house? Pray to Saint Anthony. Fighting breast disease? Pray to St. Agatha. Going fishing? Pray to St. Peter.

Heck, St. Benedict is available to help you with engineering tasks, cave exploration or fighting gall stones.
Not to digress, but Santeria is really a combo of Catholocism and Yoruban mythology. Not unlike Christmas being set on the celebration of Sol Invictus, the use of one religion as a trojan horse seems to me to suggest an obvious underlying similarity which in turn again demands - why all the ism schism?

[Archangel]

I like to think God was an angel who created the other angels. He doesnt know how he came to be, and therefore created the universe and life in an attempt to better understand himself.

It's interesting how in Greek mythology, the universe is born out of itself. There is no creation per se. Chaos just is, as are Gaia and Eros. There is some debate around whether they came to be at the same time or whether Chaos was first, but the elder gods basically know no time. Time actually only becomes a factor with the birth of Zeus, who supplants the old gods and brings forth the "current" generation.

Eros is interesting here, since it demonstrates that the Greeks considered sexual desire the main creative force in the universe: Without Eros, the next series of gods could never have been born, since their existence is contingent upon the coupling of their predecessors. In Christianity, in the beginning, there is the Word: In Hellas, there is sex.

[Pax Britannia]

Trust the Greeks to get it right, I've always had a soft spot for Greek mythology.

[kid_vidrio]

It's interesting how in Greek mythology, the universe is born out of itself. There is no creation per se. Chaos just is, as are Gaia and Eros. There is some debate around whether they came to be at the same time or whether Chaos was first, but the elder gods basically know no time. Time actually only becomes a factor with the birth of Zeus, who supplants the old gods and brings forth the "current" generation.

Eros is interesting here, since it demonstrates that the Greeks considered sexual desire the main creative force in the universe: Without Eros, the next series of gods could never have been born, since their existence is contingent upon the coupling of their predecessors. In Christianity, in the beginning, there is the Word: In Hellas, there is sex.
*titans fwiw.
I too found accepting the modern version since this one worked pretty well for me. Chaos=Void as in a similarity to Tao in that respect.
They got bogged down when they tried to say they lived on the top of a mountain that people could actually get to. Oops.

[Yelram]

But:

If there is one all-powerful yet distant deity, couldn't these lesser gods be considered to be manifestations, avatars (since you brought up Hinduism) of the one true god?

Isnt that always the case? Thats really why monotheism happened, people started to rationalize groups of gods into singular entities. The pantheon of Gods representing everything, which represents God. The ideal "one true god" already exists within our world, we just label it something different. Its yet another metaphor for the reality we live in. It appears that there are multiple elements in the periodic table, but they are all created out of singular components. The Macro is always an expression of the micro, and vice versa. So the earth may be "god" but the earth is made up of small pieces that are also God. The true essence of god is in anything that exists, and yet everything that exists has the essence of God.

[Yelram]

It's interesting how in Greek mythology, the universe is born out of itself. There is no creation per se. Chaos just is, as are Gaia and Eros. There is some debate around whether they came to be at the same time or whether Chaos was first, but the elder gods basically know no time. Time actually only becomes a factor with the birth of Zeus, who supplants the old gods and brings forth the "current" generation.

Eros is interesting here, since it demonstrates that the Greeks considered sexual desire the main creative force in the universe: Without Eros, the next series of gods could never have been born, since their existence is contingent upon the coupling of their predecessors. In Christianity, in the beginning, there is the Word: In Hellas, there is sex.

In JOHN the beginning is the word(or rather IN the beginning was the word, and the word was god, and the word was with God). In Genesis the beginning is the separation of light from darkness, which since nothing exists, is god SEPARATING his wholeness (read holiness) into multiple pieces. Chaos is the zero that exists BEFORE zero, and contains both 0 and 1 a list of 1000 zeros may only be worth 0, in terms of value, but you have 1000 empty things, so their is a measurable quantity to it.. Its like the empty slate, the yin, it seems to exist prior to yang, but it cant. And neither can Chaos. Its again, just a rehash of Lao Tzu, in a nice little greek friendly container.

[freegood]

The Chinese had a celestial bureacracy where there were administators and officials for certain realms and regions. If you've seen Dragonball Z think of its conceptualization of the afterlife. Yeah I'm name dropping Dragonball in philo.
Then again, the Chinese system had living legends deified from their accomplishments along with their family ancestors.

But yeah, there's no certain way of knowing how much closer to God one will get in Heaven compared to the potential closeness we can get in the here and now.

[Archetype]

To speak of other Gods, or beings superior to God -- i.e., the beekeeper who reports to the head beekeeper -- is anthropomorphizing the issue. That is, projecting human constructs of hierarchies on the metaphysical.

Well I don't know that hierarchies are human constructs more than anything else, ants have their queen, wolves have an alpha dog, etc. But I did have a similar thought. God is a concept, a manifestation of infinite wonder, an explanation for the whole, and a direction. It's the spark of something: a pure idea. But once you start adding "smaller" gods, lower on the chain of divinity, it feels like grasping at an empirical reality that isn't there, or at least, not known. I'd be recreating the problem I had with the idea of an invisible bearded man in the sky.

But, if we're talking about shared faces in the pool of all-being; recurring personae, then we can talk. As metaphor, polytheism is interesting, but again, when you look into it enough you get tangled with the specifics, because you're really just looking at your own web. How does one differentiate between fantasy and what might actually be a proper metaphor? Or what's worthy of metaphor?

[Insomniac]

"Does not the beekeeper report to one greater? So he."

[Archangel]

I don't see the arrogance, I see that merely as one brick in the wall of faith -- our construct of what the higher power is. If the higher power is unknowable for mere humans, then the only way we humans can possibly attempt to understand, the only perspective we have, the only tools we have to describe the indescribable is to use human constructs. And because we have these human constructs of hierarchies, we use those to analyze/debate the concept of the higher faith we have also constructed.

To speak of other Gods, or beings superior to God -- i.e., the beekeeper who reports to the head beekeeper -- is anthropomorphizing the issue. That is, projecting human constructs of hierarchies on the metaphysical.


Aren't you contradicting yourself? First, you say that we can only look at divinity through the human prism, but then you appear to insinuate that it's basically wrong to apply the human notion of hierarchy to the divine, which is how people have viewed it for thousands of years...

[Morfin]

I don't quite agree with what you said there, but upon re-reading your original post, I see that I misinterpreted what you were asking. Your question isn't "Is looking at this hierarchically, arrogant?" but "Is the assumption that the beekeeper is the top of the hierarchy arrogant?

When I was in high school, I remember a group of us sitting in the library talking about this (in the snotty, know-it-all way kids that age do). I asked, "Wouldn't it be a bitch, if we found out that God was just a student like us and the Earth and Universe were just some high school project he had to do?

I wouldn't choose the word arrogant, not in terms of monotheism. If we were more of a Greek culture with many gods and we got into the "my god is better than your god argument," then I'd use arrogant. But in terms of the Bible's Old Testament, which covers the Jews and Christians, the "Word" is that God is the be-all-and-end-all. So, how could anyone in those groups believe anything else? It isn't arrogance, it's the way we were brought up.