When looking into the cosmo many people see the “face of God.” Well, at least the tracks left by their Gawd. Even in the Moon. Oh wait, the above celestial body is not “our” moon. It’s a pic of Neptune’s moon, Triton. I wonder, is it also made out of cheese?
A cheesy moon — pretty ridiculous, right? What about a moon made from godstuff? Is that likewise ridiculous? It reminds me of a ditty I once penned. I’ll share it here:
Survivor – Divinity Island
“Do you believe in god?”
When people ask this question they are not talking about Zeus or Murdock or Shiva. Typically, they are referring to the Judeo-Christian god, recognized as “the” god in this country due to popular vote.
By “god” people do not mean the Egyptian god Ptah, the Polynesian Io. Not Krishna, Vishnu, Indra. And although El, Yahwah, and Elohim may have been precursors, they’re not really talking about them, either. Not Knum, Isis & Orisis, or Adonis. Not Ra, Obatala, Proteus, Coyote, Sedna, Springsteen. Not Wakantaka, Atum, Enki, Chaos, Gaea, or Uranus. Not Hurakan, Tawa, Citlaltonac and Citlalicue. Not Qat, Kinharingan, Wanojo, Negacork, Tien Mu, Wang Chung, Prajapati, Tawhiri-ma-tea, Tane-mahuta, Nommo, Mexitli, Apollo, Spider Grandmother. Not even Thor. Not Li-Ching, not Kassa, Athene, Shamash, Kassa, Kena, or Gananina. They mean God. You know — THE God. Almighty John Doe.
There is only one true god, people will insist. The above bunch, then, must be a confederacy of lesser gods. Or trick gods that have been exposed and tossed aside.
The religious people of this country have advanced, if that term is fitting, to the point where they believe in just one invisible agent. This is called monotheism, or theism, for short. The theist is not one who believes in a separate wind god, rain god, and a god of those things that creepeth upon the earth, such as lizards and cockroaches. He or she believes in a single god of the rain, the wind, and the cockroaches. The theist worships a catch-all god, which is handy because this type of god encompasses everything and can be considered above and beyond everything. It eliminates a lot of red tape and intra-cosmos conflict.
The real world is a polytheistic world, one god per religion, creed, and denomination, though people attempt to find some slipshod unity in all the clamoring about a god. Once you get into the details, however, the consensus disappears. The assertion that there is but one god is a political ploy.
The LORD of the Old Testament was, interestingly, a polytheist. He believed in other gods, of which he wanted to be first. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. What we have in the LORD is a god who reached the sweet sixteen round of the NCAA divinity tournament. He waved his large, foam hand and cried, “I’m number one! I’m number one!” Meanwhile, a squad of uniformly-dressed rabbis shook their pom-poms and rallied the crowd: “Go Yahweh! Goooo Yahweh! Go, fight, win!”
Today’s supposed one god remaining, the sole survivor, has been so vaporized by abstraction that few people can find reason to vote him off the island.
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[image thanks to NASA]
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