Your god wasn’t (and isn't) God
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I’m not an atheist, believing, as it were, that there very likely is a force or thing that is the source of creation, even if that “thing” doesn’t have the figurative aspect most of us have come to attribute to that force or thing: human-like attributes.
It is the Supernatural God of Theology and most philosophical discussions.
But I am convinced that the God of the Jews, Islam, and Western Christianity is not the divine figure we’ve all come to worship within a religious context.
I saw, recently, a YouTube presentation by Michael Shermer, founder of Skeptic magazine of his appearance at an Oxford debate about God – Believers vs. Sceptics.
He was flaccid and sterile, applying atheistic bromides to his response, which wasn’t academic or scholarly by any means.
His atheistic viewpoint must have been disappointing to his debate colleagues, as it was to the audience, which was obvious from their response as the end of his spiel.
Responses from John Lennox and Peter Hitchens, believers in the “Supernatural God” helped somewhat, but I’m dealing with the biographical god of the early Israelites here.
The idea that the “being” who came forth for the early Israelites was divine, a deity (god) is patently a misrepresentation or understanding of that being, and this from the writings about him (or it): the texts that have become the Hebrew and Christian Bible and the Islamic holy book, the Quran (Koran).
This alleged god was not anything like what a god should be. He was reported, firstly, in his perverted nature, made less so by those prophets and writers of Jewish history that came after him, creating a moral patina that wasn’t in evidence when Yahweh first appeared.
Those first appearances, many with the shamanistic Moses, a god-like entity himself, are rife with disagreeable and undivine behaviors, all found in the early Israelite texts and those outside the Israelite canon or histories of Yahweh.
It’s obvious that few couldn’t care less about what early text and sources say about the “god” whose machinations and behavior premise the religions that dominate Western civilization.
A recent book by Daniel Fleming, the Ethel and Irvin A. Edelman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University offers suggestions for the origin of Yahweh, this “god” who premises religions for much of Western Civilization:
I’m not an atheist, believing, as it were, that there very likely is a force or thing that is the source of creation, even if that “thing” doesn’t have the figurative aspect most of us have come to attribute to that force or thing: human-like attributes.
It is the Supernatural God of Theology and most philosophical discussions.
But I am convinced that the God of the Jews, Islam, and Western Christianity is not the divine figure we’ve all come to worship within a religious context.
I saw, recently, a YouTube presentation by Michael Shermer, founder of Skeptic magazine of his appearance at an Oxford debate about God – Believers vs. Sceptics.
He was flaccid and sterile, applying atheistic bromides to his response, which wasn’t academic or scholarly by any means.
His atheistic viewpoint must have been disappointing to his debate colleagues, as it was to the audience, which was obvious from their response as the end of his spiel.
Responses from John Lennox and Peter Hitchens, believers in the “Supernatural God” helped somewhat, but I’m dealing with the biographical god of the early Israelites here.
The idea that the “being” who came forth for the early Israelites was divine, a deity (god) is patently a misrepresentation or understanding of that being, and this from the writings about him (or it): the texts that have become the Hebrew and Christian Bible and the Islamic holy book, the Quran (Koran).
This alleged god was not anything like what a god should be. He was reported, firstly, in his perverted nature, made less so by those prophets and writers of Jewish history that came after him, creating a moral patina that wasn’t in evidence when Yahweh first appeared.
Those first appearances, many with the shamanistic Moses, a god-like entity himself, are rife with disagreeable and undivine behaviors, all found in the early Israelite texts and those outside the Israelite canon or histories of Yahweh.
It’s obvious that few couldn’t care less about what early text and sources say about the “god” whose machinations and behavior premise the religions that dominate Western civilization.
A recent book by Daniel Fleming, the Ethel and Irvin A. Edelman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University offers suggestions for the origin of Yahweh, this “god” who premises religions for much of Western Civilization:
His book, along with those I’ve already cited and more to
come accompanying the many academic papers noted thus far with more of them
also in the hopper for your perusal, present the specifics [sic] that underlie
my accusation(s) that the god most of us have worshipped all our lives and is
the divinity that usurps the position of the supernatural God that most of us
probably think we’re worshipping.
This material should not be taken lightly since almost all of our morality, ethics, and laws are sustained by how this supposed god’s activities were redacted and modified by his early followers – the Israelites – who blended their wise and thoughtful ethicalities with some stunning nonsense, much of which have adapted Western civilization’s societies and peoples for about 4000 years.
This ongoing bromide of mine isn’t meant to belittle the religious content of Christianity or Islam. I, merely (and I use the term “merely” particularly), hope to make the point – which is specifically and academically clear – that the god we know isn’t God or divine by any stretch of belief, history, or theological accuracy.
God (Yahweh, Jehovah, whatever) is not God and to continue to press that he was or is makes for a case of lunacy that is astounding in its ignorant bravado.
RR
posted by RRRGroup at 2:37 PM
1 Comments:
3/26/2022
Presuming you still get this I'll read and comment sequentially.
Pretty interesting perspective from one of a Jesuit's instruction background.
BD
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