Every being, created by God and unspoiled by man, is perfect, strictly defined and autonomous, entirely complete and at the same time with a built-in ability to grow and develop. This is the essence of its dignity and holiness. It is not an embodiment of God’s immense Personality, but only one of the realisations of His perfection.
Tag: creationism
According to the Buddha’s teaching the beginning of the life-stream of living beings is unthinkable. THe believer in the creation of life by God may be astonished at this reply. But if you were to ask him ‘What is the beginning of God?’ he would answer without hesitation ‘God has no beginning’, and he is not astonished at his own reply.
Tell me something. Do you believe in God?’Snow darted an apprehensive glance in my direction. ‘What? Who still believes nowadays?”It isn’t that simple. I don’t mean the traditional God of Earth religion. I’m no expert in the history of religions, and perhaps this is nothing new–do you happen to know if there was ever a belief in an…imperfect God?”What do you mean by imperfect?’ Snow frowned. ‘In a way all the gods of the old religions were imperfect, considered that their attributes were amplified human ones. The God of the Old Testament, for instance, required humble submission and sacrifices, and and was jealous of other gods. The Greek gods had fits of sulks and family quarrels, and they were just as imperfect as mortals…”No,’ I interrupted. ‘I’m not thinking of a god whose imperfection arises out of the candor of his human creators, but one whose imperfection represents his essential characteristic: a god limited in his omniscience and power, fallible, incapable of foreseeing the consequences of his acts, and creating things that lead to horror. He is a…sick god, whose ambitions exceed his powers and who does not realize it at first. A god who has created clocks, but not the time they measure. He has created systems or mechanisms that serves specific ends but have now overstepped and betrayed them. And he has created eternity, which was to have measured his power, and which measures his unending defeat.’Snow hesitated, but his attitude no longer showed any of the wary reserve of recent weeks:’There was Manicheanism…”Nothing at all to do with the principles of Good and Evil,’ I broke in immediately. ‘This god has no existence outside of matter. He would like to free himself from matter, but he cannot…’Snow pondered for a while:’I don’t know of any religion that answers your description. That kind of religion has never been…necessary. If i understand you, and I’m afraid I do, what you have in mind is an evolving god, who develops in the course of time, grows, and keeps increasing in power while remaining aware of his powerlessness. For your god, the divine condition is a situation without a goal. And understanding that, he despairs. But isn’t this despairing god of yours mankind, Kelvin? Is it man you are talking about, and that is a fallacy, not just philosophically but also mystically speaking.’I kept on:’No, it’s nothing to do with man. man may correspond to my provisional definition from some point of view, but that is because the definition has a lot of gaps. Man does not create gods, in spite of appearances. The times, the age, impose them on him. Man can serve is age or rebel against it, but the target of his cooperation or rebellion comes to him from outside. If there was only a since human being in existence, he would apparently be able to attempt the experiment of creating his own goals in complete freedom–apparently, because a man not brought up among other human beings cannot become a man. And the being–the being I have in mind–cannot exist in the plural, you see? …Perhaps he has already been born somewhere, in some corner of the galaxy, and soon he will have some childish enthusiasm that will set him putting out one star and lighting another. We will notice him after a while…”We already have,’ Snow said sarcastically. ‘Novas and supernovas. According to you they are candles on his altar.”If you’re going to take what I say literally…’…Snow asked abruptly:’What gave you this idea of an imperfect god?”I don’t know. It seems quite feasible to me. That is the only god I could imagine believing in, a god whose passion is not a redemption, who saves nothing, fulfills no purpose–a god who simply is.
Don’t creationists ever wonder about the fact that the paleontologists found ape-like skulls with the ‘human leg and foot bones,’ rather than the other way around, i.e., human skulls with ‘ape leg and foot bones?’ . . . Come on, creationists, think about it! Did God hide the human skulls, only leaving behind leg and foot bones belonging to human midgets with misshapen feet, and mix such bones only with the skulls of ape-like creatures with larger cranial capacities than living apes? What a ‘kidder’ the creationists’ God must be.
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Quote from Oliver Gaspirtz
I believe, if there is some sort of higher power, the universe is it. Whenever religious people ask me where the universe came from, I tell them that it has always been here, and was never created. The Big Bang theory is based on the fact that the universe is expanding right now. And if you rewind the tape, the universe appears to be shrinking. If you rewind the tape far enough, eventually the universe must be just one singular point. Or so the theory goes. But what if the universe has not always been expanding? What if it’s pulsating, and one pulse takes trillions of years, and right now the universe is inhaling, and before that, trillions of years ago, it was exhaling?