This article was born during a night of insomnia and
tends to be a bit rambling. This is what happens when my brain won't shut off
and let my body rest.
Let us imagine a creature.
Let's say that it's native to Betelgeuse 4. (I have no
idea if there is a Betelgeuse 4 but play along for a bit.) Let's call it the Oozing Goo Creature of Betelgeuse 4, not
because it oozes goo but because it is itself made of goo that does tend to
ooze. Quite a lot.
OK, now we've got the Oozing Goo Creature of Betelgeuse
4. Now let's say that it's intelligent. Not terribly intelligent, not a genius
by any means, but smart enough to tie its shoes (if in fact an Oozing Goo
Creature had any need for shoes, which it doesn't). Lets say that it can handle
simple linguistic concepts like nouns and verbs and such, and let's say that it
is quite happy in its Goo-friendly world, interacting with other happy Oozing
Goo Creatures and happily doing whatever Oozing Goo Creatures need to do to
make other Oozing Goo Creatures.
OK, got all that?
Now let's talk about God.
Now I don't believe that there is a God, but many of you
do, so if you can also accept the existence of Goo creatures then you have to
accept one of two concepts.
Either the god you worship does not consider Oozing Goo
Creatures to be in any way inferior to you, or the god you worship considers
either you or the Oozing Goo Creature to be superior. The latter concept is the
more difficult to wrap one's mind around, since as stated it implies no
prejudice but practically speaking most human people will opt to consider
themselves the superior of the two.
And therein lies the question. Are you capable of
accepting a lump of goo as an equal?
While you're working that one over, let's expand things a
bit. Let's say that the universe isn't just made up of people and Goo-people.
There's the Stick Figures of Aldebaran 6 and the Falling Leaf Things of Proxima
Centauri 3 and the Slime Molds of Ursa Major and the Infectious Fungal Choir of
Rigel 5. Then there's the Really Tall and Attractive People of Wolf 359 and the
Genius Supermodel People of Bernard's Star. Let's say that there's a universe
full of all kinds of intelligent creatures, some of them dull and disgusting
and easily dismissed as inferior, and others not so much.
Does this complicate the issue? Should this complicate
the issue? Your basic choices are still the same: You can either accept them
all as equals in the eyes of God (though I have never seen any evidence that
God does in fact have or need eyes) or you can consider that some of them may
be inferior in His sight and some superior.
The third option, the one I suspect most people will opt
for either openly or secretly, is less supportable: that we are God's chosen,
meant to rule over all, and all the rest unworthy of God's attention. (Or at
least, unworthy of so much of God's attention that he might loose track of his
Favorite People, the Humans.)
There is ample historical precedent for this. When
Christian Crusaders first invaded the Middle East, they refused to recognize
Muslims as human, and even went so far as to cook and eat them. (I'd hate to
think that they ate them without cooking them...that would be uncivilized.) And
during WWII, the Nazis slaughtered Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, and whatnot on a
grand scale, going so far as to render their bodies for soap and making kitsch
little knick-knacks for the home out of their tanned flesh. And all of these
were people, and it didn't matter.
In a world where "man's inhumanity to man" has
extended to such depravity, can we be at all sanguine about our attitude toward
whoever/whatever we find in the Great Beyond? (And do I need a better example
of "man's inhumanity to man" than the implied sexism of that very
phrase?)
If, like me, you reject the whole idea of divinity then
you don't believe in any ultimate reward or punishment, and the whole concept
of God's displeasure doesn't even come up. For the rest of you, however, it's
something you need to consider, and something you probably haven't given enough
attention to.
Because in all likelihood we live in a universe full of
millions of billions of trillions of quadrillions of "people" of
shapes and designs that we can't even conceive of, people we may one day meet
and interact with, and whether you believe in Divine Judgment or not there's
always the judgment of these alien peoples, and we can't rely on a sympathetic
judge or jury.
Which brings us 'round again to how we treat each
other, all the other members of the human race that we consider inferior,
peoples whose land we steal and whose homes we wreck and whose bodies we poison
and who we allow to prey upon others of those we perceive as less than us. If
you're someone that believes in Divine Judgment, then such judgment is
something you should definitely be afraid of.
As an atheist, I believe that God is a concept of human
invention, but I'm not going to try to sell anyone else on that idea. I am,
however, going to explain a bit of what I believe. It seems to me that we
created an omnipotent, omnipresent god back when our universe extended no further
than we could walk in any direction. Creating such a god was easier then,
because we had no concept of there being so damn much for a god to lord it
over. And the more we learn of the universe, the larger our universe
effectively becomes, the less the concept of God fits it. (Or perhaps the less
well we fit the concept of God.) And I don't believe that a concept that needs
to be periodically reshaped to fit the universe, as our knowledge of it
expands, is a concept worth hanging on to.
Like I said, this article grew out of an inability to
sleep and it's already morning. The sun is now fully up and the cat wants to be
fed. And I need to give this "sleep" thing another try, if for no
other reason then because my leg doesn't hurt when I'm sleeping. If I don't
have much of an ending, remember that I started out without much of a
beginning. There's certainly more I could say, but none that I am going to say.
At least, not now. G'night.
The Blues Viking
The opinions herein expressed are mine and if you don't like them you can get your own damn blog.
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